Thomas Aquinas Quotes
If forgers and other malefactors are put to death by the secular power, there is much more reason for excommunicating and even putting to death one convicted of heresy.
Thomas Aquinas, ~1225-1274, Catholic Saint & Italian Scholastic Philosopher, Summa Theologica, II
Sourced by: Eigen's Political and Historical Quotations
While Aquinas brought much wisdom and good to the Church, this statement and others laid a foundation for murdering non-believers and organizing the Inquisition.
The King, a religious exremist fanatic, was a great supporter of the Inquisition whose excesses were horrible during his reign.
This edict gave great support to the Inquisitors of all Catholic countries. See {617572}
He had whipped the crowd up into a feverish pitch until someone rushed the bound and tied blacksmith and stabbed him to death. He had only criticized Mathias for being too harsh and stern a leader.
Since Muslims try and convert others, one who changes religion and becomes a Muslim is exempt. The death penalty is reserved for Muslims who leave the religion.
At the time Islam was quite conflicted about the role of innovation, science and reform. Innovators were to many theologians as dangerous to society as heretics and had to be refuted. Al-Ashari’s school of thought has prevailed in much of the Muslim world to this day.
Servetus’ book On the Motion of the Heart and Blood of Animals, was so threatening that of the 1000 copies that were printed only 3 survived the burning including ironically Calvin’s personal marked up copy.
This was the beginning of the inquisition.
While this hadith has been used to justify murdering converts or even those who criticize actions taken in the name of Islam, this statement should be seen in historical context whereby Christians also commonly murdered “heretics,” and during the Protestand reformation, both Catholics and Protestants routinely murdered not only converts from their faith, but non believers such as Jews and Muslims. The Old Testament also advocated death for heretics.
This is the justification that some Muslims use for the murder of prisoners of war if the war is perceived to be an attack on Allah. This for most includes Westerners.
Pope Innocent Iii was an interesting combination of primitive traditional Church inhumanity and intolerance for dissent and modern Christian views at the same time. Consider {45387} and {45384} for his proactive tolerance and protection of Jews and {45383} for his intolerance of Muslims and {45382} for his persecution of heretics.
If some Islamic cleric declares a war or dispute to be an attack on Islam, the penalty is indeed severe for those Muslims who do not join the fight. In some Islamic lands, unbelievers are put to death. Note that the children become the Islamic society’s hostages for the behavior of the father.
This Old Testament harsh penalty is one that Jesus later endorsed. See {588107}.
Giovanni Battista Cibo. This quotation is one of the proofs that the Inquisition was not a rogue group of zealots but represented the mainstream of the Catholic Church of the time. Note the tone whereby having a zealous inquisition is perceived almost as a “right” of which no community ought be deprived.
In an orthodox Muslim nation, freedom of speech as a right is impossible.
While Christianity and other religious groups were the inventors of these particular devices of compulsion of conscience, in modern times, but almost all other groups have given up torture and execution as a means of compelling religious obedience, many Muslim nations, even in modern times use the machine gun or the headman’s sword or other barbaric means to punish heretics. At the beginning of the third millennium, Islamic theocracies such as Iran, commonly executed followers of the Bhai and other non-Islamic religions. Many historians feel that the Muslims learned from the Christians such barbarity, but maintained the practices long after the questions had abandoned them. In addition, Shiite and Sunni Muslims have been butchering each other for centuries in dominate Islam nations and trying to force their interpretation of Islam in each other. The practice still continues.
Thomas Aquinas was an Italian Dominican friar, philosopher, Catholic priest, and Doctor of the Church. An immensely influential philosopher, theologian, and jurist in the tradition of scholasticism, he is also known within the latter as the Doctor Angelicus, the Doctor Communis, and the Doctor Universalis. The name Aquinas identifies his ancestral origins in the county of Aquino in present-day Lazio, Italy. Among other things, he was a prominent proponent of natural theology and the father of a school of thought (encompassing both theology and philosophy) known as Thomism. He argued that God is the source of both the light of natural reason and the light of faith. His influence on Western thought is considerable, and much of modern philosophy developed or opposed his ideas, particularly in the areas of ethics, natural law, metaphysics, and political theory.
