Should heretics be put to death?

[Ignatius]

My understanding is that a number of doctors of the church supported putting heretics to death,

Protestant Reformers authorize torture and murder.

The simple fact is that at the time some accuse Catholics of religious cruelties, Protestants, and non-denoms were doing the same or worse.

In actual fact, as reputable histories will tell you. Anti-Catholic propaganda magnified this beyond all measure. For example, the Spanish Inquisition in 500 years executed around 3,000 - 6,000 people. Fewer than the Catholics Cromwell killed in one week in Ireland!

ENGLAND
King Henry erected a system built on fear, torture and death to back his attack on the Catholic Church. Criticising the king, calling him a heretic, or failing to agree that Henry was head of the church, were punished by **disembowelment whilst still alive, hanging and quartering. **In the end, even failing to denounce anyone else who criticised these things became treason. Guilty verdicts were ensured by the introduction of the “Double Grand Jury” which made the jury trying a case liable to face trial themselves by a second jury if they came up with the wrong verdict. Acts of Attainder, allowing the execution of victims without any trial whatsoever, were also introduced. All these things were needed to enforce the Reformation in England.

Abbots who refused to surrender their monasteries also fell victim: Letter of Richard Pollard to Thomas Cromwell, November 16, 1539

Pleaseth it your Lordship to be advertised that…[On November 15] the late abbot of Glastonbury went from Wells to Glastonbury, and there was drawn through the town upon a hurdle to the hill called the Torre, where he was put to execution; …Afore his execution [he] was examined upon divers articles and interrogatories to him ministered by me, but he could accuse no man of himself of any offence against the king’s highness, nor would he confess no more gold nor silver nor any other thing more than he did before your Lordship in the Tower…I suppose it will be near Christmas before I shall have surveyed the lands at Glastonbury, and take the audit there….

On 8 April, 1538, Friar Forrest was taken to Lambeth, where, before Cranmer, he was required to state that King Henry was Head of the Church. This, however, he firmly refused to do. Forrest was sentenced to death, and on the 22nd of May he was taken to Smithfield and burned. To add to the “godly” humour of this public spectacle, the friar was burnt over a bonfire of religious statuary.

After Catholics rose up in protest at the closing of the Monasteries in 1536, King Henry wrote: Our pleasure is that . . . you shall cause such dreadful execution to be done upon a good number of the inhabitants of every town, village, and hamlet that have offended, as they may be a fearful spectacle to all others hereafter that would practice any like matter. Hundreds were massacred at random in the Catholic areas.

Others disembowelled or burnt within months included:1534: Elizabeth Barton, q.v. (The Holy Maid of Kent), with five companions;John Dering, O.S.B., Edward Bocking, O.S.B., Hugh Rich, O.S.F., Richard Masters p., Henry Gold p., 1537. Monks, 28. - After the pilgrimage of grace and the rising of Lincolnshire many, probably several hundred, were executed, of whom no record remains. The following names, which do survive, are grouped under their respective abbeys or priories. - (LIST Too long to post)

 

[Ignatius]

(continued)

Over the next few reigns around 600 Catholic priests alone, and thousands of ordinary Catholics were disembowelled or otherwise murdered by Protestants because of their faith. Topcliffe, Elizabeth’s chief torturer, had a special house full of torture equipment to be used on Catholic priests. One elderly priest was tortured 12 separate times to gain information on other priests and believers.

CALVIN

Within a few years of Calvin coming to power in Geneva fifty-eight sentences of death and seventy-six of exile took place. Two examples:

1. James Gruet, was alleged to have posted a note which implied that Calvin should leave the city:

He was at once arrested and a house to house search made for his accomplices. This method failed to reveal anything except that Gruet had written on one of Calvin’s tracts the words ‘all rubbish.’ The judges put him to the rack twice a day, morning and evening, for a whole month . . . He was sentenced to death for blasphemy and beheaded on July 26, 1547.

2. The Spanish Reformer Servetus had dared to criticize Calvin’s “Institutes of the Christian Religion” and began an angry correspondence with him. Calvin had his critic arrested. Calvin drew up forty articles of charges concerning the nature of God, infant baptism, and the attacks on his own teaching. On August 20, 1553, Calvin wrote: "I hope that Servetus will be condemned to death"

On October 26, the Council ordered that he be burned alive on the following day. Servetus took half an hour to die. Calvin noted: "'He showed the dumb stupidity of a beast . . . He went on bellowing . . . in the Spanish fashion: “Misericordias!” .

**In 1554 Calvin wrote the treatise Against the Errors of Servetus, in which he tried to justify the execution: “Many people have accused me of such ferocious cruelty that (they allege) I would like to kill again the man I have destroyed. Not only am I indifferent to their comments, but I rejoice in the fact that they spit in my face.” **

The modern-day Congregational, Prebyterian, Reformed, Baptist and many of the Charismatic churches, all look to this same Calvin as their founding spiritual authority.

Most of the other Reformers. Luther, Knox, Zwingli, also burnt, hung, drowned or otherwise executed their opponents.

One would expect leaders of a new movement “reforming” the Church and supposedly correcting the “errors” of the historic Church to be beyond reproach in their behaviour and Christian lives. But what do we see? The opposite.

The simple fact is that at the time some accuse Catholics of religious cruelties, Protestants, and non-denoms were doing the same or worse.

 

[urban-hermit]

I’m inclined to say that the 13th century is different from the 21st century.

Exactly.

I think that in the 13th century people felt that leading large numbers of people to disbelieve the truth (which they understood as Church teaching) meant bad things for society, which is why the State carried out the penalty, for what was perceived to be the common good.

Nowadays people believe somewhat differently.