The Fourth Lateran Council, the council that dogmatized transubstantiation, offered indulgences to those who would "exterminate heretics" and participate in a Crusade. Since this council refers to the RCC's influence over the state (John 19:11), it points to the fact that the state was acting at the command of the RCC. The council declared (
http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/source/lat4-c3.html):
Secular authorities, whatever office they may hold, shall be admonished and induced and if necessary compelled by ecclesiastical censure, that as they wish to be esteemed and numbered among the faithful, so
for the defense of the faith they ought publicly to take an oath that they will
strive in good faith and to the best of their ability to exterminate in the territories subject to their jurisdiction all heretics pointed out by the Church; so that whenever anyone shall have assumed authority, whether spiritual or temporal, let him be bound to confirm this decree by oath. But if a temporal ruler, after having been requested and admonished by the Church,
should neglect to cleanse his territory of this heretical foulness, let him be excommunicated by the metropolitan and the other bishops of the province. If he refuses to make satisfaction within a year, let the matter be made known to the supreme pontiff [the Pope], that he may declare
the ruler's vassals absolved from their allegiance and may offer the territory to be ruled lay Catholics, who on the extermination of the heretics may possess it without hindrance and preserve it in the purity of faith; the right, however, of the chief ruler is to be respected as long
as he offers no obstacle in this matter and permits freedom of action. The same law is to be observed in regard to those
who have no chief rulers (that is, are independent). Catholics
who have girded themselves with the cross for the extermination of the heretics, shall enjoy the indulgences and privileges granted to those who go in defense of the Holy Land
This then is the "infallible" position of the RCC not only demanding the extermination of dissenters but also describing the methods to force the civil authorities to comply with the RCC command.
Pretty hard to miss that point. Makes it very difficult to pin this on the civil authorities that are themselves being threatened by this decree if they fail to comply with it.
AS for the word “exterminate” –
The etymological origins of the word exterminate are found in the Latin word "exterminare,"
Moneantur autem et inducantur et si necesse fuerit per censuram ecclesiasticam compellantur saeculares potestates, quibuscumque fungantur officiis, ut sicut reputari cupiunt et haberi fideles, it a pro defensione fidei praestent publice iuramentum, quod de terris suae iurisdictioni subiectis universos haereticos ab ecclesia denotatos bona fide pro viribus
exterminare studebunt, ita quod amodo quandocumque quis fuerit in potestatem sive spiritualem sive temporalem assumptus, hoc teneatur capitulum iuramento firmare.
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Pope Gregory IX, Council Tolosanum, 1229 A.D.:
"We prohibit laymen possessing copies of the Old and New Testament ... We forbid them most severely to have the above books in the popular vernacular." "'The lords of the districts shall carefully seek out the heretics in dwellings, hovels, and forests, and even their underground retreats shall be entirely wiped out."
reigned from 16 June 1846 to his death in 1878. He was the
longest-reigning elected
pope in the history of the Catholic Church — over 31 years.
Pope Pius IX, (1846 - 1878.) Quanta Cura:
"Socialism, Communism, clandestine societies, Bible societies... pests of this sort must be destroyed by all means."
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The Catholic church on anti-Semitism,
Will Durant writes in
The Story of Civilization:
The Council of Vienna (1311) forbade all association between Christians and Jews. The Council of Zamora (1313) ruled that they must be kept in strict subjection and servitude. The Council of Basel (1431-33) renewed canonical decrees forbidding Christians to associate with Jews...and instructed secular authorities to confine the Jews in separate quarters, compel them to wear a distinguishing badge, and ensure their attendance at sermons aimed to convert them.
In 1243 the entire
Jewish population of Belitz, near Berlin, was burned alive on the charge that some of them had defiled a consecrated Host. [...] In
1298 every Jew in Rottingen was burned to death on the charge of desecrating a sacramental wafer. Rindfleisch, a pious baron, organized and armed a band of Christians sworn to kill all Jews;
they completely exterminated the Jewish community at Wurtzburg, and slew 698 Jews in Nuremberg.
"the ecclesiastical Council of Zamora (1313) decreed the imposition of the badge, the segregation of the Jewish from the Christian population, and a ban against the employment of Jewish physicians by Christians, or of Chrsitian servants by Jews
The Story of Civilization: Part IV "The Age of Faith" by Will Durant. Simon and Schuster, New York, 1950.
Pope Eugenius IV (1431-47)...added that
Jews should be ineligible for any public office, could not inherit property from Christians, must build no more synagogues, and must stay in their homes, behind closed doors and windows, in Passion Week (a wise provision against Catholic violence)....
In a later bull Eugenius ordered that any Italian Jew found reading Talmudic literature should suffer confiscation of his property. Pope Nicholas V commissioned St. John of Capistrano (1447) to see to it that
every clause of this repressive legislation should be enforced, and authorized him to seize the property of any Jewish physician who treated a Christian.
As one of many examples of the decrees issued by Popes in support of persecuting and murdering non-Catholics, a 1487 bull of Pope Innocent VIII commanded that people
"rise up in arms against" the Waldensians and "tread them under foot".
Catholic historian Peter de Rosa writes in Vicars of Christ (Crown Publishers, 1988), "Of eighty popes in a line from the thirteenth century on not one of them disapproved of the theology and apparatus of the Inquisition. On the contrary, one after another added his own cruel touches to the workings of this deadly machine."
