50 Key Concepts in Theology

ustified the death penalty for heresy:
‘As for heretics, their sin deserves
banishment, not only from the Church by excommunication, but also from
this world by death. To corrupt the faith, whereby the soul lives, is much
graver than to counterfeit money, which supports temporal life. Since forgers
and other malefactors are summarily condemned to death by the civil
authorities, with much more reason may heretics as soon as they are convicted
of heresy be not only excommunicated, but also justly be put to death’
(2:2:3:11). Apologists for Aquinas argue that the death penalty was a standard
form of punishment in his age.
IDEAS
Anathema: the state of being excommunicated. ‘If any one preaches a
gospel besides that which you have received, let him be anathema’ (St Paul,
Gal. 1:9).
Apostasy: the abandonment of the Christian faith in favour of some other
religion or belief-system.
Arianism: an early Christian sect inspired by Arius, who denied the
divinity of Christ.
Blasphemy: the act of defaming God.
Doceticism: teaching that denied the humanity of Jesus.
Donatists: a heretical North African sect who refused to accept the

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ministry of those clergy who had renounced their faith during the persecution
of the Church by the Roman Emperor Diocletian.
Excommunication: punitive expulsion from the Church.
Heterodoxy: teaching that varies from the official teaching of the Church.
Infidel: a member of a non-Christian religion. For many centuries the
archetypal ‘infidels’ were the Jews, who were regarded not only as wilfully
perverse in their refusal to accept Jesus but also responsible for his
crucifixion. In recent times, extreme conservative Christians have focused
their animosity towards infidels on Islam.
Maleficia: the offence of practising witchcraft.
Malleus maleficarum (or The Hammer of Witches, published by the
Inquisition in 1485–86): a misogynistic text that linked all evil to women:
‘Women are by nature instruments of Satan. They are by nature carnal, a
structural defect rooted in the original creation.’
Orthodoxy: the official teaching of the Church.
Pelagianism: the teaching of Pelagius that Adam’s original sin did not
corrupt humanity but merely set us a bad example.
Perfidy: a breach of faith.
The Inquisition: a body set up in 1232 by the Roman Catholic Church to
bring legal proceedings and judicial punishment to heretics. The Inquisition
toured the country demanding repentance from alleged ‘heretics’. If the
victims repented, they received a minor punishment. Those who refused to
confess and repent were often tortured and – if found guilty – fined,
imprisoned or killed. It is difficult to estimate how many people died at the
hands of the Inquisition.
Witch-hunts: Although heresy was often the ‘legal’ charge against
witches, the social, political and psychological motivation for witch-hunts
was more complex. Between the fourteenth and sixteenth centuries, witches
were blamed for the spread of the plague and were persecuted in hysterical,
fear-driven purges. The persecution of witches often involved brutal torture to
extract confessions. Systematic witch-hunts continued until the late
seventeenth century. In 1692 the infamous Salem Witch Trial resulted in 20
executions. Matthew Hopkins, the so-called ‘Witch-Finder General’, was
responsible for possibly 200 executions in East Anglia between 1644 and
1646. Jane Wenham, the last convicted witch in England, was sentenced to
death in 1712. The total number of witches murdered in the European

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persecutions is difficult to determine, and estimates range from 40,000 to
100,000.
BOOKS
G. R. Evans, A Brief History of Heresy (Blackwells, 2003)
Rowan Williams, Arius: Heresy and Tradition (SCM Press, 2001)

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