Page:William Blackstone, Commentaries on the Laws of England (4th ed, 1770, vol IV).djvu/58

46 knowing at the ame time that they were delivering the unhappy victim to certain death. Hence the capital punihments inflicted on the antient Donatits and Manichaeans by the emperors Theodoius and Jutinian : hence alo the contitution of the emperor Frederic mentioned by Lyndewode, adjudging all perons without ditinction to be burnt with fire, who were convicted of herey by the eccleiatical judge. The ame emperor, in another contitution, ordained that if any temporal lord, when admonihed by the church, hould neglect to clear his territories of heretics within a year, it hould be lawful for good catholics to eie and occupy the lands, and utterly to exterminate the heretical poeors. And upon this foundation was built that arbitrary power, o long claimed and o fatally exerted by the pope, of dipong even of the kingdoms of refractory princes to more dutiful ons of the church. The immediate event of this contitution was omething ingular, and may erve to illutrate at once the gratitude of the holy ee, and the jut punihment of the royal bigot: for upon the authority of this very contitution, the pope afterwards expelled this very emperor Frederic from his kingdom of Sicily, and gave it to Charles of Anjou.

being thus deformed by the daemon of perecution upon the continent, we cannot expect that our own iland hould be entirely free from the ame courge. And therefore we find among our antient precedents a writ de haeretico comburendo, which is thought by ome to be as antient as the common law itelf. However it appears from thence, that the conviction of herey by the common law was not in any petty eccleiatical court, but before the archbihop himelf in a provincial ynod; and that the delinquent was delivered over to the king to do as he hould pleae with him: o that the crown had a control over the piritual power, and might pardon the convict by iuing Rh