Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 11.djvu/771

HERESY 35 from the practical side of ecclesiastical procedure and legal enactment. Its view is much narrower than the theological, but much more precise. Orthodoxy is the doctrine maintained by the infallible Roman Church and assented to by all its faithful members ; heresy is dissent from the articles of faith established by -the Roman pontiffs and by the councils of the Roman Church. Canon law also is mainly concerned with heresy in order to punish it, and therefore is obliged to treat the whole subject with severe legal accuracy of statement. It proceeds from strict definitions. Perhaps the commonest definition is the following : heresy is " error intellectus voluntarius contra aliquam propositionem catholicam cum pertinacia assertus ab eo qui baptismum accepit." Jurists are accustomed to expand this general definition in a variety of qualifying statements, (a) All heresy is error, but every error is not a heresy. It is an error according to canon law to take usury ; it is heresy to say that to take usury is not a sin, but taking usury ig no heresy. Heresy is intellectual error. It is intellectual error believed to be truth, and that in spite of predominant opinion. Canonists distinguish between members of the Roman Church who refuse, e.g., to accept the "filioque" clause in the creed, and members of the Greek Church who make the same refusal. The refusal is in both cases an error, but it is a heresy only in the Roman Church, for there only the predominant opinion is against the error, (6) An error also only becomes heresy when it is held voluntarily. To be a heretic a man must stick to his error, although he knows that it has been condemned by the church. A heretic not only errs, but knows that he errs, and wishes to err. (c) Nor is every voluntary error a heresy ; the heretic must contradict a doctrine which has been clearly stated in the creed and has become part of the defined faith of the church, (d) Nor is an erroneous opinion voluntarily professed in opposition to the ci eed of the church heresy, unless the heretic persists in it. Pertinacity, all canonists insist, is an essential element in heresy, and unless it is present no process for heresy can leg illy proceed, (e) And lastly, a heretic must be a member of the church. He must have been baptized. Neither a Jew, a Mahometan, nor a heathen can be a heretic. They may be unbelievers, they may hold erroneous opinions, but their opinions are not heresies. From the first qualification, that heresy is an intellectual error, canonists deduce the ground of their enactments against the suspicion of heresy and against those suspected. Cation law uniformly proceeds on the idea that heresy is not merely an error but a crime. It is a crime, however, which belongs to the invisible part of man, to his intellect. It is not something done with his hands or his feet which witnesses can see, and they argue that direct proof is there fore almost impossible, and that the commission of the crime must almost always be proved from suspicions. This suspicion of heresy occupies a very large space in the dis sertations of canonists, and the weakness of their position has made them bring in a very great number of reasons which they seem to think strengthen it (see especially Dandinus, De suspect, de hceresibus). They carefully define the degrees of suspicion with the conduct appropriate to each : where the suspicion is only " light," the suspected are simply to be watched ; where it is " vehement," they are to be denounced ; where it is " violent," they are to be treated as heretics. Canonists have carefully analysed and arranged what are reasonable grounds of suspicion. Pope Innocent II [. declared that to lead a solitary life, to refuse to accommodate one s self to the prevailing manners of society, and to frequent unauthorized religious meetings were abundant grounds of suspicion ; while later canonists were accustomed to give lists of deeds which made the doers suspect : a priest who did not celebrate mass, a lay man who was seen in clerical robes, those who favoured heretics, received them as guests, gave them safe conduct, tolerated them, trusted them, defended them, fought under them, or read their books, were all to be suspect. The canonist rules for suspicion became a sort of inquisitor s vade mecunij and when really practised produced a reign of terror. Since canon law regarded heresy with such horror and detestation, it is not surprising that it gives many direc tions, which have the force of legal enactments, whereby men may avoid the clangers of heresy. Pope Alexander IV. prohibited laymen from arguing about matters of faith. The council of Toledo (1129), anxious to put down the Albigenses, ordained that every man above fourteen and every woman above twelve years of age should solemnly swear to abjure every heresy and to maintain in its com pleteness the Catholic faith. Pope Pius IV. ordered the laity to abstain from reading the Scriptures in the vulgar tongue. The promiscuous reading of books was forbidden, and an index of prohibited books believed to be dangerous to faith or morals was formed. Canon law regards heresy as a crime, and while it recog nizes that the power of the church is spiritual, and that the church visits offences with spiritual punishments such as excommunication, it proceeds on the idea that the state should assist the church in suppressing heresy, and visit heretics with civil pains and penalties, including torture and capital punishment; but this side of the history of heresy belongs as much to civil as to canon law. The church, however, did what it could against heretics. The council of Laodicea (can. 6-9) prohibited them from attend ing service, though from subsequent acts this could not have been enforced. They were not allowed to give evidence in an ecclesiastical court ; a father was prohibited from allowing his son or daughter to marry a heretic ; social intercourse with them was prohibited, &c. 3. Heresy according to Civil Law. Civil law treats heresy in a still simpler fashion. The legal idea seems to have been that, since the state approved of one creed and gave it public recognition, to profess any other creed was in some sense civil disaffection or a kind of treason, and manifested lack of loyalty. This notion, however, was supplemented by another and much deeper one in the public law of the mediaeval empire. According to the ideas of the earlier medieval jurists, civil government and ecclesiastical government were equally and in the same sense ordinances of God; and this thought found expres sion in the twin conceptions of world-king and world- priest, emperor and pope, who were God s vicars, and ruled in His name over church and state. God was the king of the world; the emperor was His vicar, and treason, therefore, included treason against God, or heresy, as well as treason against the emperor. This idea lingered long, and indeed still lingers, and compli cates the simpler civil notion of heresy. For all practical purposes, however, the deeper thought may be discarded. In civil law, heresy is pertinacious dissent from the creed approved of for the time being. For example, the Lutheran creed, the Confessio Auyustana, was heresy in all parts of Germany up to the peace of Augsburg, when it was recog nized as a creed which might be professed. It then became orthodox in the civil sense of the term, in the same way that the Roman Catholic creed was orthodox, while the Calvinist creed, still unrecognized, was heresy. Civil punishment followed religious offences as early as the time of Constantino, who enacted severe penalties against the Donatists, and ordained that all possessing Arian books should burn them on the pain of death. Laws against the reading of heretical books became very frequent

during and after the 4th century. Arcadius made the