(August 30, 2019 at 3:01 am)Succubus Wrote: From ~the 4th-17th century anyone who dared to comment on the bible by questioning its veracity would find themselves tied to a post and set alight.
No intelligence allowed.
We've been discussing whether "veracity" always means "literal truth of." Certainly many important figures in the church were comfortable saying that significant parts of the Bible were not literally true.
As far as I know, execution for heresy was begun in 1215, though I may be wrong. If you have a source pointing to executions between the 4th and the 13th centuries I'd be interested to see it.
Support for execution of heretics was not universal among Christians. It was one of the things that Martin Luther declared was wrong about the Catholic Church.
To be clear, I think it was terrible that anyone was executed for heresy ever. But I think the facts don't agree with what you've written here.