#'actually it was seen as merciful' an exruciating death was seen as merciful? wasn't the suffering the point?

[fideidefenswhore]

It is sometimes imagined that, in consigning a heretic's body to the fire, authorities hoped to rescue the heretic's soul from the eternal flames of hell. This is, however, far from the truth. Rather, it was believed-- a belief based on particular interpretations of St Augustine of Hippo and of words attributed to Jesus in the Gospel according to St Matthew ("And these shall go into everlasting pain")-- that the soul of an unrepentant heretic would be damned for all eternity. (It is worth noting, however, that these words attributed to Jesus actually come at the end of his disquisition on the nature of the kingdom of heaven and, though they do refer to a division between 'the sheep and the goats', the 'goats' in question are those who did not give food to the hungry, water to the thirsty, or clothes to the naked, and did not visit those in prison; all this has nothing, ostensibly, to do with heretics-- unless heresy is choosing not to love.)

The Burning Time: Henry VIII, Bloody Mary, and the Protestant Martyrs of London