Punishment is not properly inflicted on the things of men, yet it is said to be inflicted for the sake of the men themselves who are punished. And to the question it can be answered, generally, [that] either men or their things are rightly burned, on whom [or which] either good laws, or good and prudent Judges, decree that punishment. But specifically, first: the Sodomites were burned of old (Gen. 19); and [so] at this time too, as the laws prescribe, by which, when I was traveling from Nuremberg thither to Altdorf, I saw two [men] burned. Then: adulteresses (Gen. 38:24); and the same [is] even now practiced among the Saxons, [still] Gentiles [pagans], as the most suitable author, St. Boniface, relates (in his letter 19 to King Ethelbald) — from which [is] the chapter Si gens Anglorum (dist. 50). Thirdly: the incestuous (Lev. 20:14). Fourthly: the sacrilegious (this chapter 7; and ff. [the Digest], the law [assigning] the punishment of sacrilege to the Lex Julia on peculation). Fifthly: authors of public damages, among the Philistines (Judg. 15:6). Sixthly: Hither too perhaps can be referred the murmurers against God, who were as it were burned and bitten to death by the fiery serpents (Num. 21). Seventhly: Magi [sorcerers], St. Gregory (bk. 1 Dialogues, ch. 4), [and] Mariana (Affairs of Spain, bk. 7). Eighthly: Evildoers, whoremongers, and Witches of every kind, today, from law 3 of the Code, On the Maleficent; Delrio (bk. 5 Magic, sect. 16). Ninthly: Heretics. Zonaras (in the life of Alexius); St. Antoninus (in the History, part 3, title 19, ch. 1, §4). See Bellarmine (bk. 3 On the Laity, ch. 22). And although the Innovators often clamor against ours, yet in the thing itself they have approved [it] — since the Basel [people] dug up David George [Joris] again, not four days [dead], but more than two years [dead], and burned [him], as in the year 1559 it came out in a certain booklet of the Academy of that place, in which this [is] the sentence of the Judges: “Since David George had been the author and favorer of a most pernicious sect, and [was] guilty of [violating] the divine majesty and the Christian religion, [it is decreed] that his corpse, or bones, and whatever should remain in his sepulchre, be dug up, [and taken] outside the Stony Gate, where the extreme punishment is taken on the condemned, together with [his] books, and his effigy [suspended] high on a spear, as it had been hung; [and] be dragged, placed upon a cart, by the executioner, and all [these things], placed at once upon a pyre, be reduced to ashes — not otherwise than as would be done with David George himself by Imperial Law, if he himself were surviving.” And before, by Calvin’s zeal, Michael Servetus was burned alive at Geneva, in the year 1553, on the 27th day of October — as his published Acts there attest, and Theodore Beza relates in the life of that same Calvin. And in the epistles of the same Calvin (p. 147), concerning a certain Anabaptist and Helvidian: “He was thrown into prison,” writes Bullinger, “to be burned with fire unless he should sing a palinode [recant]. Nevertheless Curio, beaten with rods, was cast out from Rhaetia.” Ninthly [so printed — the printer’s numbering repeats here; read “tenthly”]: Slanderers: P. Aerodius (bk. 9, ch. 20, from Ammianus). Tenthly: Agents and procurators of imperial affairs, who had afflicted the provincials with injuries (law 9 of the Code, ut causa fiscalis). Eleventh:
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One who had broken through the Nile’s embankments (the sole law, in the Code, On the Embankments of the Nile Not to Be Broken). Twelfth: Male slaves with whom their mistresses had secretly consorted as wives (the sole law, in the Code, On Women Who Joined Themselves to Their Own Slaves). Thirteenth: Parricides, in the Ecloga [under the title] περὶ πατροκτόνων [peri patroktonōn, “concerning parricides”]. Fourteenth: Slaves who had given [their] effort to the ravishing of virgins and nuns [sanctimoniales] (the sole law, Code, On the Rape of Virgins). Fifteenth: Slaves who had plotted against the life of their Masters, as law 28 (ff. [the Digest], On Punishments) says. Sixteenth: Coiners of counterfeit money, or forgers of gold pieces [solidi] (law 2, Code, On False Money). Seventeenth: The registrars of cities [tabularij] granting a false immunity (law 1, Code, On Immunity Not to Be Granted). Eighteenth: One who had given to barbarians, by a criminal faction, the means of harm against the Romans, or if anyone in another way distributed [such means, once] made (law 9, Code, On Military Affairs). Nineteenth: Jews and Heretic “heaven-worshippers” [coelicolae] who had inflicted injury on those returning to their senses [converting] from their sect (law 3, Code, On the Jews). Twentieth: Those who have wickedly handled the most sacred Eucharist. Surius, in [his] history, [treats] once and again of Jews in Germany and Poland. But many are sometimes burned alive without [judicial] laws, from the anger and cruelty of Princes — not only holy Martyrs, but others also: as by Gallienus’s command, [those] who had sought his captive father in the [triumphal] procession, in Trebellius [Pollio]; by Probus’s command, the authors of the murder of Aurelian and Tacitus, in Zosimus (in [the life of] Probus). But this is nearly always observed today, that for those who repent of their crimes there is not a burning-alive, but strangulation and then burning, as Covarruvias explains (bk. 2 Various Resolutions, ch. 10, toward the end), and Clarus (q. 99, no. 7).
But the things which are sometimes burned on account of human crimes are various. First indeed, cities and the dwellings of men (Deut. 13:16); and there is an example in Sodom and Gomorrah (Gen. 19), in our Jericho (ch. 6), Ai (ch. 8), Jerusalem (Jer. 21:10), and so many others, to whose number can be referred those which the Martian flames [of war] drank up. Second: Idols (Deut. 7:5); all the vessels of the Baalic worship (2 Kings 23:4); that nefarious golden calf which the mad Israel adored (Exod. 32; Deut. 9:22). Third: Anathema-things [devoted things], such as [were] prescribed here in ch. 6. Fourth: Sacrilegious spoils, as these Achanic ones, ch. 7. Fifth: The bones of the impious (2 Kings 23:16). Sixth: Unfruitful earth (Heb. 6; 2 Kings 23). Seventh: Finally, books and papers [that are] wicked, impious, impure, magical, [and] heretical. Concerning the Atheists, Cicero (On Divination 1), [and] Lactantius (bk. 1 On the Anger [of God], ch. 9). Of magical [books] there are examples: Acts 19; in Chrysostom (homily 38 on Acts); Ammianus (bk. 29); Athanasius (On the Incarnation); Nazianzen (oration on St. Cyprian); St. Augustine (on Psalm 61); Marcus (in the life of St. Porphyry); and the law Mathematici [Code, title] On the Bishop’s Hearing. Of Saracenic [books], in Nicholas [I] (bk. 1, On the Consultations of the Bulgars). Of the Alcoranic [books] of the Turks, in Gómez (bk. 2, on Francisco Ximénez, Cardinal). Of the Talmudic or impious blasphemies of the Jews, in Thomas of Cantimpré (bk. 1 On Bees, ch. 3, no. 7); Sixtus [of Siena] (bks. 2 and 9 of the Library); and many others cited in the former Rabbi [above, ch. 33]. Of the heretical books of Arius: Socrates (bk. 1, ch. 6); Sozomen (bk. 1, ch. 20); Theophanes (in [his] Chronicle). Of Eunomius: Theodosius (in the Code, law 26). Of Eutyches and Apollinaris: the law Quicunque (Code, On Heretics); St. Leo (to Turibius, ch. 16); Theophanes (in [his] Chronicle); St. Prosper (in [his] Chronicle). Of Nestorius: [the title] On the Highest Trinity [Code, bk. 3]; from Ephesus; Cornelius Severianus; Novella 42. Of the Monothelites: the 6th Synod (Act 13). Of the Iconoclasts: Balsamon (on the 7th Synod). Of Adalbert: bk. 2 in the life of St. Boniface. Of the Hussites, Lutherans, Calvinians, and the like: Cochlaeus (in the Hussite history), and Surius (in [his] history). For rightly might you say of all [these] what Blessed Cyril once said (Catechesis 6) of the books of the heretic Buddas: that they are “monuments of impiety.” But see Bellarmine (in the place cited, ch. 20), and — [he] who after him most diligently and most learnedly treated this whole disputation concerning these and other writings pernicious to faith, reputation, or the integrity of morals — our [own] Gretser (bk. On the Right and the Custom of Prohibiting Noxious Books). But just as St. Peter (2nd epistle, ch. 2, v. 6) says the burning of the Sodomites [was] “an example of those who were about to act impiously,” so all these flames ought either to deter us by the magnitude of the crimes which are avenged by them, or to persuade [us] that here [now] some beginning of those [flames] is already being made, which no Ocean shall ever extinguish.