Page:Essay on Crimes and Punishments (1775).djvu/209

This page needs to be proofread.

the latter abominable. It was an outrage to nature, to drown one man for a crime for which another paid a few pence of the money of those times. So that this law, like many other, remained unexecuted, especially when the king was excommunicated, and his kingdom interdicted by Pope Celestine III.

Saint Lewis, transported with zeal, ordered indiscriminately, that whosoever should pronounce these indecent words, should have his tongue bored, or his upper lip cut off. A citizen of Paris, having suffered this punishment, complained to Pope Innocent IV. This pontiff remonstrated to the king that the punishment was too great for the crime, which however had no effect upon his majesty. Happy had it been for mankind, if the popes had never affected any other superiority over kings.

The ordinance of Lewis XIV. says, “Those who shall be convicted of having sworn by, or blasphemed the holy name of