When planning to rescue a Time Patrol agent under cover of robbing a house, Manse Everard says:
"'I hope we won't hurt any innocent bystanders too badly.'" (p. 758)
(Too badly?)
Then he reflects:
"Sometimes the Patrol must be as ruthless as history itself.'" (ibid.)
Not sometimes. Always. It is the Patrol's job to guard history and therefore, as in this case, to ensure that heretics are burned at the stake. In the early 1960's, I came across a text book that made excuses for the Inquisition - one heretic, while being burned, cried out the most shocking heresies, even denying the existence of God...
Robert Hugh Benson wrote a Utopian novel in which heretics were executed. We don't have to like Benson's idea of a Utopia but it is part of the tradition of twentieth century speculative fiction.
"Death And The Knight" has only four narrative sections set in Paris, San Francisco, Harfleur and Paris, respectively. Everard decides what to do in Harfleur and does it in Paris.
We are glad of this one last Time Patrol story.
4 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
I also recall how defenders of Lenin and Stalin made excuses for the far vaster purges and executions they decreed.
Robert Hugh Benson also wrote a dystopian novel, LORD OF THE WORLD.
I don't know if Benson believed in executing heretics, because we cannot always be sure an author agrees with what his characters says and dos. If so, I would disagree with him.
Ad astra! Sean
If you actually believed that heretics would get people damned to eternal torment, it made sense to enforce orthodoxy ruthlessly. After all, eternity was -eternity-, and life was very temporary.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
I know, but I don't agree with handling heresy so harshly. The right and best way is to excommunicate heretics, expelling the obstinate from whatever church they were spreading what was believed to be error.
Another complication was this: heresy was often considered and treated as a crime against the State, even as treason. That was why condemned heretics were turned over to the State for punishment.
Another complication was this: in Medieval and early Modern times, both alleged heretics and ordinary criminals preferred to be tried in ecclesiastical, not secular courts. Because the latter had stricter standards for evidence of guilt or innocence, generally milder punishments, and were less corrupt than secular courts.
Ad astra! Sean
Dang, I meant "...the "former..." not "...the latter..."
Ad astra! Sean
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