[1] _Vita Vasonis_, cap. xxv, in Migne, P.L., vol. cxlii, col. 753.
[2] St. Optatus (_De Schismate Donatistarum_, lib. iii, cap. vi and vii) was one of the first of the Fathers to quote the Old Testament as his authority for the infliction of the death penalty upon heretics. But in this he was not followed either by his contemporaries or his immediate successors. Before him, Origen and St. Cyprian had protested against this appeal to the Mosaic law.
Advocates of the death penalty, like Frederic II and St. Thomas, tried to defend their view by arguments from reason. Criminals guilty of treason, and counterfeiters are condemned to death. Therefore, heretics who are traitors and falsifiers merit the same penalty. But a comparison of this kind is not necessarily a valid argument. The criminals in question were a grave menace to the social order. But we cannot say as much for each and every heresy in itself. It was unjust to place a crime against society and a sin against God on an equal footing. Such reasoning would prove that all sins were crimes of treason against God, and therefore merited death.[1] Is not a sacrilegious communion the worst possible insult to the divine majesty? Must we argue, therefore, that every unworthy communicant, if unrepentant, must be sent to the stake?
[1] Mgr. Bonomelli, Bishop of Cremona, writes: "In the Middle Ages, they reasoned thus: If rebellion against the prince deserves death, _a fortiori_ does rebellion against God. Singular logic! It is not very hard to put one's finger upon the utter absurdity of such reasoning. For every sinner is a rebel against God's law. It follows then that we ought to condemn all men to death, beginning with the kings and the legislators;" quoted by Morlais in the _Revue du Clergé Français_, August 1, 1905, p. 457.
It is evident, therefore, that neither reason, Christian tradition nor the New Testament call for the infliction of the death penalty upon heretics. The interpretation of St. John xv. 6: _Si quis in me non manserit, in ignem mittent et ardet_, made by the medieval canonists, is not worth discussing. It was an abuse of the accommodated sense which bordered upon the ridiculous, although its consequences were terrible.