In the year 538, Justinian,
professing terror of certain famines, earthquakes, and pestilences in
which he saw the mysterious "recompense which was meet" prophesied by St.
Paul,[266] issued his edict condemning unnatural offenders to the sword,
"lest as the result of these impious acts" (as the preamble to his Novella
77 has it) "whole cities should perish, together with their inhabitants;
for we are taught by Holy Scripture that through these acts cities have
perished with the men in them."[267] This edict (which Justinian followed
up by a fresh ordinance to the same effect) constituted the foundation of
legal enactment and social opinion concerning the matter in Europe for
thirteen hundred years.[268] In France the _vindices flammae_ survived to
the last; St. Louis had handed over these sacrilegious offenders to the
Church to be burned; in 1750 two pederasts were burned in the Place de
Greve, and only a few years before the Revolution a Capuchin monk named
Pascal was also burned.
After the Revolution, however, began a new movement, which has continued
slowly and steadily ever since, though it still divides European nations
into two groups.
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