The Treatment of Heretics

Thomas Aquinas, who lived during the thirteenth century, is the celebrated philosopher of the Roman Catholic Church. Interestingly, even to this day his Summa Theologiae remains substantially the standard Roman Catholic authority. In discussing the treatment of heretics, he says in Question XI, Art. 3, 2 a, 2ae: “It is much more serious to corrupt faith, which gives life to the soul, than to falsify money, which sustains temporal life. If, therefore, the falsifiers of money or other malefactors are at once by secular princes justly given up to death, how much more may heretics, as soon as they are convicted of their heresy, be not only excommunicated, but justly killed.”