Alpha Book

" But we have
yet to mention the influence of the Church in suppressing heresy.
In theory the Roman Catholic religion was still obligatory in Catholic
states. Uniformity of faith was still considered essential to political
unity. Kings still promised at coronation faithfully to extirpate
heretical sects. In Spain, during the first half of the eighteenth
century hundreds of heretics were condemned by the Inquisition and
burned at the stake; only toward the close of the century was there an
abatement of religious intolerance. In France, King Louis XIV had
revoked the Edict of Nantes in 1685, and in the eighteenth century one
might have found laws on the French statute-books directing that men
who attended Protestant services should be made galley-slaves, that
medical aid should be withheld from impenitent heretics, and that
writers of irreligious books should suffer death. Such laws were very
poorly enforced, however, and active religious persecution was dying
out in France in the second half of the eighteenth century.


Pages:
844 845 846 847 848 849 850 851 852 853 854 855 856 857 858 859 860 861 862 863 864 865 866 867 868