Papal States executions

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saintstephen

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I just learned of the Papal States executions. See the link below. What are some good defenses for this? Were the executions under the jurisdiction of the Monarchs of the Papal States, or the Bishop of Rome himself ?


I realize that the executions were done as part of a redemptive process, but am looking for good rational to present to non-believers as well. Thank you!
 
Just tell them that they have to respect the values of other nations in a diverse and multicultural world.
 
There are a number of points you could bring up. Since there are a bunch of executions, it is unlikely that you could research them all in order to defend each one, but you can make reasonable general statements, such as, “I don’t know what happened in each execution, but I try to give the civil power the benefit of the doubt whenever possible, and so in general I suppose they were doing the best they could with the knowledge they had.” If the person is willing to concede that sometimes executions are okay, point out that we can use that knowledge to suppose that at least in most cases these weren’t wrongful executions. There might be exceptions where people were wrongly executed – but we shouldn’t assume that until it’s proven.

If the person you are talking to thinks that all executions are sinful, and if you think the death penalty is legitimate, you might try defending the legitimacy of the death penalty as an okay thing for the state to do in some cases, and then apply that general principle to these examples of the death penalty.

If the person is okay with the death penalty but thinks the Church shouldn’t be involved in them, I think you should agree with him, and point out that the papal states were not a church, they were a physical kingdom. If the death penalty is okay then it’s okay for a physical kingdom to use it, even if the monarch happens to be the pope. As a physical kingdom, the papal states had laws, crimes, and, yes, an executioner for certain crimes. Canon Law actually forbade priests and bishops from using their ecclesiastical authority to require the death penalty or be present when an execution was carried out. (This appears, for example, in the Decretals of Gregory IX Book 3 Title 50 Chapter 9.) But the Church didn’t forbid civil authorities from using their civil power to execute some people – and if a pope or a bishop had civil power, they could and sometimes did use that authority. They can be defended for doing so by pointing out that civil authorities are allowed to use the death penalty according to Scripture.

If the person has a specific example of an execution that they think was wrongful, you can look it over and use reason and Church teaching to determine to the best of your ability if it was a rightful or wrongful execution. If you agree with the person that it was a wrongful execution, you can still assume that the authorities of the time might have thought it was a legitimate execution, and defend them in that belief. Or, if you think it was a case where they abused their authority and did something that was actually wicked and contrary to Church doctrine, point out that sometimes abuses happen, and abuse of power doesn’t imply that the Church is wrong, only that the person doing the evil deed is wrong.
 
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CCC 2267 ‘Assuming that the guilty party’s identity and responsibility have been fully determined, the traditional teaching of the Church does not exclude recourse to the death penalty, if this is the only possible way of effectively defending human lives against an unjust aggressor. If, however, non-lethal means are sufficient to defend and protect people’s safety from the aggressor, authority should limit itself to such means, as these are more in keeping with the concrete conditions of the common good and more in conformity with the dignity of the human person.’
 
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I only glanced through the list, but from what I saw, most were convicted of a crime by trial and were executed by the state. Murder, infantacide, etc would normally carry the death penalty back then. While some of the punishments would be considered harsh by today’s standards they weren’t considered severe at that time. I don’t consider these to be out of line for the time they were committed.

Blessings
 
Canon Law actually forbade priests and bishops from using their ecclesiastical authority to require the death penalty or be present when an execution was carried out. Decretals of Gregory IX Book 3 Title 50 Chapter 9
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That is the kind of info I am looking for thanks. What year(s) would that have been effective then? 1200’s forward ?

On a related point, How true generally is it that the Church was separated from civil authorities ? Was the burning of Joan of Arc done by Civil or Church authority?
 
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The Holy Bible allows the death penalty for a variety of crimes.

Traditional Catholic teaching allows the use of the death penalty.

It is only in recent times that some Catholics have expressed the view that it is time to end the death penalty. I personally believe that this is a necessary step in today’s world. The culture of death is so pervasive that I support a total culture of life. This means no abortion, no euthanasia, no death penalty. There is nothing sinful in the death penalty per se, but I think a genuine culture of life demands its prohibition. We need to consistently stand for the value and dignity of all human life from conception to natural death.
 
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I agree that Capital punishment is justified in some cases, as well as Just War doctrine.

My question here is about the best practices in defending the application in Church history, not Capital punishment in general.

I would expect that the Papal state authorities used it in much less degree that non-Papal states, but non-Papal states likely did not keep statistics.
 
saintstephen said:
My question here is about the best practices in defending the application in Church history, not Capital punishment in general.
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If I had to defend papal state use of capital punishment, I’d rely on context. The Church is the mystical body of Christ but it is also an earthly institution. This means that the Church cannot help but be influenced by the surrounding culture. At the time, capital punishment was the norm in Europe; and since it is justified by Scripture and Tradition, it makes sense that the Church would mandate its use in the Papal States.
 
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The Decretals of Gregory IX went into effect in 1234 A.D., however the specific provision I quoted in my last post went into effect slightly earlier, because an identical text was included in the Twelfth Ecumenical Council in 1215 A.D. (The Decretals simply adopted the text of Canon 18 of that Council, which was already binding on the western part of the Catholic Church.)

In addition, in 1179 A.D. the Eleventh Ecumenical Council decreed that the Church should not make use of punishments involving bloodshed; only the civil powers should do that: “As St. Leo says…the discipline of the church should be satisfied with the judgment of the priest and should not cause the shedding of blood.” “[Rather] it is helped by the laws of Catholic princes so that people often seek a salutary remedy when they fear that a corporal punishment will overtake them.” (Canon 27)

These provisions remained in Canon Law until 1917 when Pope St. Pius X issued a new Code of Canon Law. They are also repeated in an edition of Canon Law from 1582 A.D. that had been published by Pope Gregory XIII.

For more details check this out:

"The Church Does Not Kill" - Testimonies from Church History

http://www.historyandapologetics.com/2017/04/the-church-does-not-kill-testimonies.html

Regarding how separate the Church was from the State, it depended on each state’s rules. Theoretically the Church said the civil power is separate from ecclesiastical power, see this for examples:

Church and State in the Fathers and Doctors of the Church

http://www.historyandapologetics.com/2016/02/church-and-state-in-fathers-and-doctors.html

Nonetheless, despite the theory of a distinct separation of powers, it could sometimes seem a bit blurry in practice. The pope himself was an absolute monarch over a big chunk of modern Italy, though he delegated his civil powesr to his governors. Some states where the separation of powers was more clear still had magistrates called “prince-bishops,” who were quite literally a bishop appointed by the pope – and a delegate of the State – appointed by the crown – with both civil power and ecclesiastical power over a diocese. They did everything any other prince would do, even though they were bishops.

The theory apparently was that a responsible prince-bishop, including the pope, could keep his civil power and his ecclesiastical power distinct in his mind, and, so to speak, wield the crosier in one hand and the scepter in the other, while keeping the theoretical distinction between the two quite clear. If they used their civil power to authorize an execution, it was different from their ecclesiastical power, because Canon Law forbade them from doing such things in their capacity as clerics of the Church.

The bishop who handled the case of St. Joan of Arc was not supposed to be present at her execution or write a sentence involving death. His violation of this ecclesiastical law was investigated as part of the canonization process for St. Joan, and it was one of the reasons the Church declared her trial null and void.
 
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Best defense? Just tell them record keeping was a bit off back then!😉
 
Such “arguments” are red herrings, as there is blood on all hands, not just Catholic. As early as 1527, Lutherans persecuted and executed Anabaptists in northern Germany. What do people have to say about that?

Google up the British Catholic Martyrs. Their crime? Being Catholic.

That’s all.

There are hundreds of them - all slaughtered by the protestant British government.

Do you need any evidence at all regarding the despotic atheist dictators of the 20th century?

All of this stands as evidence of original sin and concupiscence - which are universal.
 
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  1. The Sovereign of the Papal States was the Pope (just like it is as Sovereign of Vatican City).
  2. The role of Sovereign of the Papal States & Sovereign of Vatican City is NOT a role granted to the Pope from Christ, nor is a role granted by the Church herself.
The role of Sovereign is granted by the people (or at least the nobility in centuries past). Originally, by the people of the Papal States, and later by treaty with Italy.

I know it’s hard to explain. But it’s kind of like how the King of England and King of Scotland used to be two separate thrones but held by the same person until consolidation to the throne of Great Britain.

For example: James VI of Scotland & James I of England were the same person.
James VII of Scotland and James II of England were the same person
William II of Scotland and William III of England were the same person

Totally different jobs, held by the same person.

en.wikipedia.org

James VI and I - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org en.wikipedia.org

en.wikipedia.org

William III of England - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org en.wikipedia.org

God Bless
 
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saintstephen said:
Were the executions under the jurisdiction of the Monarchs of the Papal States, or the Bishop of Rome himself ?
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Yes, of course. The pope was the head of state.

One notable omission from that list is Count Guido Franceschini, the villain of Browning’s book-length poem The Ring and the Book, beheaded in 1698 for the triple murder of his beautiful young wife and her adoptive parents.
 
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all of which speaks to the late 20th century, but does not thereby transfer backwards in time to answer anything of the executions.
 
I think his point is that it’s silly to point to a list of executions as if it needs defending. Executions aren’t evil, so why should we defend a list of non-evil things? If the objector thinks a particular execution was bad, we could tackle that, but no evidence for that was given – it was just a list of executions, with no argument as to why that is objectionable.

It’d be like saying, “How do you defend this list of 128 Catholic carpenters?” Um…why would we Need to? Carpentry is not a bad thing. Similarly, when a person asks how we can defend a list of 128 executions, the question is, why do we need to? Executions aren’t a bad thing.
 
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Great info thanks. I need to brush up on my history. I thought of the Papal states as monarchies, each with Bishops that reported to Rome. That gives plausible deniability to the Bishops. Sadly, staring at chess-boards is about the most education I’ve had about it. 🙂 Can you point me to a short summary of how the civil authority vs church authorities were managed ? I want to be ready to defend the Church’s role/involvement in civil matters . Based on those decrees, I assume there was some separation of powers between the Pope and the executions.
 
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saintstephen said:
Based on those decrees, I assume there was some separation of powers between the Pope and the executions.
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I’m not a historian and I don’t have a detailed answer to give you, but basically the Papal State was (and the Vatican State still is) an elective monarchy. The pope was the head of state in every sense. Just as the governor of Texas has the final word about executions in his state today, the pope did then in the Papal State, while it lasted. The Ring and the Book will give you a clear idea. You don’t have to read the whole poem – it runs to 21,000 lines, twice the length of Paradise Lost – but if you glance through the introduction and notes it’ll give you the picture.

Dickens spent a week or two in Rome when Gregory XVI was pope, and witnessed a public execution (by guillotine) while he was there. It’s in the last chapter but one, titled “Rome,” in Pictures From Italy.

https://www.amazon.com/Ring-Book-Br...=sr_1_4?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1527673816&sr=1-4

https://www.amazon.com/Pictures-Ita...=sr_1_6?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1527673943&sr=1-6
 
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