You wrote:
“In short you have no examples until the 11th century, which is precisely the period when Scott argues the Islamic views of the appropriateness of treating heresy as a capital offense and Islamic superstitions about witchcraft infiltrated Western Europe.”
Did you miss what I actually wrote or did you not read closely enough? Here, let me help you. I’m used to helping K-State faculty anyway. I wrote:
“There were some 11th-12th century cases, the earliest cases of secretive heresy, the first major cases of group heresy in centuries...”
Get that? THERE WERE NO HERETICAL GROUPS FROM LATE ANTIQUITY UNTIL THE 11TH-12TH CENTURIES. In other words, Scott makes the mistake of assuming that heretics were treated in a certain way after Christian society encountered Islam when in reality what happened is that there simply were no notable heretical groups until the 11th-12th centuries. None. After the collapse of the Arian Church among the Visigoth and Ostrogoths and the collapse of Pelagianism there simply were no heretical groups in Western Europe that anybody knew of. None at all show up in the sources. None.
Western Europeans, however, had had intense contact with Muslims in Spain since 711. The idea that they would only develop a way of treating heretics from the Muslims in the 11th century makes no sense. Also, there were notable examples of heretics being put to death in Late Antiquity - and medieval Christians were not unaware of those cases. Apparently Scott doesn’t take that into account either.
Can you find any well-attested instances of Christian heretics being executed solely on a charge of heresy, without another capital charge as the basis for the execution, prior to the rise of Islam, and with the approval of the Church?
You've asserted they exist. Cite one. In fact, you've asserted multiple such examples exist. Cite two. But executions of heretics for plots to assassinate the Emperor or a king or for murder or for anything else which was a capital offense under the prevailing laws of the time, unless it was a law prescribing a death penalty for heresy, don't count, only execution for heresy per se, which is what donmeaker and I and Scott suggest was copied from the Muslims.