o prove, on the
authority of St. Augustine, that it is sometimes lawful to put
heretics to death.

But it is only by garbling and distorting the context that St. Thomas
makes the Bishop of Hippo advocate the very penalty which, as a
matter of fact, he always denounced most strongly. In the passage
quoted, St. Augustine was speaking of the benefit that ensues to the
Church _from the suicide of heretics_, but he had no idea whatever of
maintaining that the Church had the right to put to death her
rebellious children.[1] St. Thomas misses the point entirely, and
gives his readers a false idea of the teaching of St. Augustine.

[1] Ep. clxxxv, ad _Bonifacium_, no. 32.

Thinking, however, that he has satisfactorily answered all the
objections against his thesis, he states it as follows: "Heretics who
persist in their error after a second admonition ought not only to be
excommunicated, but also abandoned to the secular arm to be put to
death. For, he argues, it is much more wicked to corrupt the faith on
which depends the life of the soul, than to debase the coinage which
provides merely for temporal life; wherefore, if coiners and other
malefactors are justly doomed to death, much more may heretics be
justly slain once they are convicted. If, therefore, they persist in
their error after two admonitions, the Church despairs of their
conversion, and excommunicates them to ensure the salvation of others
whom they might corrupt; she then abandons them to the secular arm
that they may be put to death."[1]

[1] _Summa_, IIa IIae, quaest. xi, art. 3.

St. Thomas in this passage makes a mere comparison serve as an
argument. He does not seem to realize that if his reasoning were
valid, the Church could go a great deal further, and have the death
penalty inflicted in many other cases.

The fate of the relapsed heretic had varied from Lucius III to
Alexander IV. The bull _Ad Abolendam_ decreed that converted heretics
who relapsed into heresy were to be abandoned to the secular arm
without trial.[1] But at the time this Decretal was published, the
_Animadversio debita_ of the State entailed no severer penalty than
banishment and confiscation. When this term, already fearful enough,
came to mean the death penalty, the Inquisitors did not know whether
to follow the ancient custom or to adopt the new interpretation. For
a long time they followed the traditional custom. Bernard of Caux,
who was undoubtedly a zealous Inquisitor, is a