Note 272 — Chapter II

Early in the eleventh century the clergy first began systematically to repress independent inquiries by punishing men who attempted to think for themselves. Compare Sismondi, Hist. des Français, vol. iv. pp. 145, 146; Neander's Hist. of the Church, vol. vi. pp. 365, 366; Prescott's Hist. of Ferdinand and Isabella, vol. i. p. 261 note. Before this, such a policy, as Sismondi justly observes, was not required: ‘Pendant plusieurs siècles, l'église n'avoit été troublée par aucune hérésie; l'ignorance étoit trop complète la soumission trop servile, la foi trop aveugle, pour que les questions qui avoient si long-temps exercé la subtilité des Grecs fussent seulement comprises par les Latins.’ As knowledge advanced, the opposition between inquiry and belief became more marked: the church redoubled her efforts, and at the end of the twelfth century the popes first formally called on the secular power to punish heretics; and the earliest constitution addressed ‘inquisitoribus hæreticæ pravitatis’ is one by Alexander IV. Meyer, Inst. Jud. vol. ii. pp. 554, 556. See also on this movement, Llorente, Hist. de l'Inquisition, vol. i. p. 125, vol. iv. p. 284. In 1222 a synod assembled at Oxford caused an apostate to be burned; and this, says Lingard (Hist. of England, vol. ii. p. 148), ‘is, I believe, the first instance of capital punishment in England on the ground of religion.’ Compare Wright's Biog. Brit. Lit. vol. ii. p. 444.