Through Force or Faith? — Page 194
?— A Reply to Pope Benedict XVI 194 clear sanction and it was supervised by the influential and leading priests. (P. Shaff: History of the Christian Church, 1882. vol. 4, p. 217) With regard to the involvement of the Church in such atrocities, this author further says: … the Roman church unfortunately gave the sanction of her highest authority to the use of the torture. . . The fourth Lateran Council (1215) inspired the horrible cru- sades against the Albigenses and Waldenses, and the estab- lishment of the infamous ecclesiastico-political courts of Inquisition. These courts found the torture the most effec- tive means of punishing and exterminating heresy, and invented new forms of refined cruelty worse than those of the persecutors of heathen Rome. (P. Schaff: History of the Christian Church, 1882, vol. 4, p. 216) What were these new forms of refined cruelty, and what was the invention that the Church produced in it, can be appreciated by noting how the Church authorities baptised the old European tribes by using their concepts from the age of ignorance. One of the two ways the Church used to decide was that the priest would put a piece of iron in fire after uttering some prayers and when it would get hot, he would adopt the following method: Then the priest shall sprinkle holy water above the iron and shall say : ‘The blessing of God the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost descend upon this iron for the