+248.+ An annalist of Worms is quoted about Dorso's operations on the upper Rhine in 1231. Dorso burned many persons of the peasant class. The annalist adds, "The people, when they saw this, were favorable to the inquisitors and helped them; and rightly, since those heretics deserved death. Confident in the approval of the masses, they went on to make arrests in towns and villages, as they pleased, and then they said to the judges, without further evidence, 'These are heretics. We withdraw our hands from them.' The judges were thus compelled to burn many. That was not according to the sense of the Holy Scriptures, and the ecclesiastics everywhere were greatly troubled. Since, however, the people took sides with the unjust judges, their will was executed everywhere." "The pitiless and incompetent judges later saw that they could not maintain their conduct without the help of great men, whom they won by saying that they would burn rich people, whose goods the great men should have." "That pleased the great men, who helped them, and called them to their cities and towns." "The people, when they saw this, asked the reason, to which the persecutors answered, 'We would burn a hundred innocent if there was one guilty amongst them.'"[566] +249.+ It was also true of the persecutions of the philosophers in Mohammedan Spain that they were popular. "The best educated princes allowed themselves to be driven to persecute, in spite of their personal preferences, as a means of winning popularity."[567] +250. Theory of persecution.+ The public opinion of the ruling classes of Europe demanded that heresy should be exterminated at whatever cost, and yet with the suppression of open resistance the desired end seemed as far off as ever.... Trained experts were needed, whose sole business it should be to unearth the offenders and extort a confession of their guilt.... Thus to the public of the thirteenth century the organization of the Inquisition and its commitment to the children of Saint Dominic and Saint Francis appeared a perfectly natural or rather inevitable development arising from the admitted necessities of the time and the instrumentalities at hand.[568]