There was a time when the sovereign was the guardian of the faith, and when that included the duty to deal with anyone who questioned the dogmas of the moment. I emphasize the ” at the moment”. It was often the case that what was burned at one time was later the official Church opinion and vice versa.
Not that the unpermitted talk (back then it wasn’t called “disinformation” but “delusions”) could hurt anyone. The vast majority of the population had absolutely no interest in religious disputes, and couldn’t understand them anyway. Outbreaks of heresy were rare and usually had more of a political background. But it was somehow established that heresy was not to be tolerated.
Then came the Enlightenment, then the Industrial Revolution, conditions changed and nobody thought that such talk should be cared about – except for downright political talk.
However, times change, and what used to be the past is now the present again. The police and the courts are there to prevent “polemics with historically unequivocally proven truth,”as a judge of the Czech Constitutional Court put it in a trial with historian Josef Skala. In the world of science and rationality, there is no such thing as “unequivocally proven truth” and there cannot be. The very use of the term takes us back to the time when theologians and experts in the holy scriptures used to make decisions.
Josef Skála can be glad it ended in probation. He could have been burned or stoned, too. Which is hyperbole, but only a little. Apparently, customs we thought would never return are being restored. And there’s no telling how far it will go.