Before dealing in detail with Persecutions by Christians, we first anticipate the claim, increasingly common among Christian apologists, that the Church was not responsible for the horrors inflicted on the enemies of the Church. Instead, churchmen were innocent bystanders, impotent witnesses as ruthless secular rulers imposed their bloodthirsty will against the desparate pleas for mercy from the clergy.

This line is easily refuted since all Christian bishops in the West enjoyed temporal power, roughly comparable to that of an earl. If bishops behaved more leniently than their secular counterparts, no historian has yet managed to marshal the evidence to prove it. On the other hand we know that bishops in some places were more harsh than their secular counterparts. For example, as we shall see, Church law not only permitted but required the use of torture at times and in places where secular systems of law strictly prohibitted the use of torture.

Here is an extract from a revealing document, now in the Library at Cornell University. The Archbishop of Cologne, Clemens August Maria von Bayern, Archbishop of Cologne, had previously endowed his High Executioner with a permanent yearly income of 80 reichstaler, 20 albus, 12 malder of grain, and 4 cords of wood. The executioner had made claims for extra expenses so the Elector Archbishop. established the following tariff on 15 January, 1757.

Note that this tariff was issued during the Enlightenment and was entirely in line with practice throughout the Western Church.

It reads (in English translation):

Tariff for Torture [denominated in Reichstaler and Albus. (1 Reichstaler = 78 Albus at the time)]
1. For tearing apart and quartering by four horses	5 / 26
2. For quartering	4 / 0
3. For the necessary rope for that purpose	1 / 0
4. For hanging the four quarters in four corners, the necessary rope, nails, chains, and the transport included	5 / 26
5. For beheading and burning, everything included	5 / 26
6. For the necessary rope for this procedure, and for preparing and igniting the stake	2 / 0
7. For strangling and burning	4 / 0
8. For rope and for preparing and igniting the stake	2 / 0
9. For burning alive	4 / 0
10. For rope and for preparing and igniting the stake	2 / 0
11. For breaking alive on the wheel	4 / 0
12. For rope and chains for this procedure	2 / 0
13. For setting up the body which is tied to the wheel	2 / 52
14. For beheading only	2 / 52
15. For the necessary rope for this purpose and for cloth to cover the face	1 / 0
16. For making a hole and disposing of the corpse	1 / 26
17. For beheading and tying the body on the wheel	4 / 0
18. For the necessary rope and chains, together with the cloth	2 / 0
19. For cutting off a hand or several fingers and for beheading, all together	3 / 26
20. The same: in addition, for burning with a hot iron	1 / 26
21. For the necessary rope and cloth	1 / 26
22. For beheading and sticking the head on a pole	3 / 26
23. For the necessary rope and cloth	1 / 26
24. For beheading and tying the body on the wheel and for sticking the head on a pole, all together	5 / 0
25. For the necessary rope, chains, and cloth	2 / 0
26. For hanging	2 / 52
27. For the necessary rope, nails, and chain needed for that purpose	1 / 26
28. Before the actual execution starts, for squeezing the delinquent with red-hot tongs, apart from the above-mentioned fee for hanging, for every application	0 / 26
29. For cutting out the tongue entirely, or part of it, and afterwards for burning the mouth with a red-hot iron	5 / 0
30. For this procedure, the usual rope, tongs, and knife	2 / 0
31. For nailing to the gallows a cut-off tongue or a chopped-off hand	1 / 26
32. For one who has hanged himself, or drowned himself, or otherwise taken his own life: to take down, remove, and dig a hole to dispose of the corpse	2 / 0
33. For exiling a person from the city or country	0 / 52
34. For flogging in jail, including the rods	1 / 0
35. For thrashing	0 / 52
36. For putting in the pillory	0 / 52
37. For putting in the pillory, and for whipping, including the rope and the rods	1 / 26
38. For putting in the pillory, branding, and whipping, including coals, rope, and rods, also the branding ointment	2 / 0
39. For inspecting a prisoner after he has been branded	0 / 20
40. For putting the ladder to the gallows, regardless whether one or several are hanged on the same day	2 / 0
41. For terrorising by showing the instruments of torture	1 / 0
42. For the first degree of torture	1 / 26
43. For arranging and crushing the thumb for this degree	0 / 26
44. For the second degree of torture, including setting the limbs afterward, and for salve which is used	2 / 26
45. Should, however, a person be tortured in both degrees of torture, the executioner is to get for both degrees performed at the same time, setting the limbs afterward and for use of the salve, for all this he should be paid	6 / 0
46. For travel and daily expenses for every day, exclusive, however, of the days of execution or torture, regardless whether on these days one or several criminals are punished	0 / 48
47. For daily food	1 / 26
48. For each help	0 / 39
49. For hiring a horse, together with fodder and stabling, the daily fee	1 / 16
50. If a torture or execution takes place in Cologne, the executioner shall receive for this procedure the aforementioned execution fees, without any addition of other extra expenses, such as travel, daily expenses, food, horse hay and fodder; and he has to be satisfied with the above-mentioned execution fee
51. When he performs executions in Melaten and Deutz, he receives extra expenses for hay for his horse, and nothing else.
52. Since items 16, 32, and 40 of the present rules fall within the province of the weapons master, therefore the weaponsmaster should receive the respective fees.
53. Should the executioner perform functions for those who are vassals or sub-vassals of the archbishopric, he should receive one third more than before specified, the reason being that he enjoys his yearly investiture without any emolument from the aforesaid vassals.
54. Only the executioner and no stranger shall be employed by the vassals or sub-vassals for whatever executions have to be done.
55. Because there have been many complaints that at an execution where an official of the archbishopric presides, the executioner, either in addition to accepting the fees, or instead of accepting them, dared to demand a certain sum of money, and since this demand is regarded as an abuse, it is once and for all forbidden.
Therefore, herewith we order that every official of the archbishopric keep strictly to the above-mentioned rules and pay the executioners only the stipulated fees and nothing else, any time there is an execution; and they are asked to submit afterward their accounts with all their vouchers to the treasury of the archbishop.
Given at Bonn, January 15, 1757.

We have other similar tariffs for various bishops and for Papal Inquisitions. As we shall see it was common practice for churchmen to recoup their expenses from the estates or the families of their victims.

Another problem for this line of argument is that the Church promoted brutal behaviour and glorified its worst perpetrators. King Louis IX for example was held to typify the ideal Christian king. His Crusading zeal, persecution of Jews, and treatment of religious dissent won his sainthood. Approving of a knight who preferred arms to rational argument in response to a Jewish scholar, he asserted that only very learned clerks should argue with Jews and went on to generalise the point:

"A layman, whenever he hears the Christian faith maligned, should not attempt to defend its tenets, except with his sword, which he should thrust into the belly, as far as it will enter."
Jean de Joinville, Seneschal of Champagne, Histoire de St. Louis, 65.53 (1309)

King Louis IX, Saint Louis the ideal Christian king

Of course any criticism of, disagreement with, or even questioning of Christianity as the Catholic Church understood it, qualified as maligning the Christian faith. Saint Louis was advocating exactly the sort of persecution practiced by the Church for many centuries, where almost anything short of wholehearted agreement meited death.

For specific persecutions by Christians, see

Persecutions by Christians

Tariff for Torture