Another class of offenders were fautors or defenders of heretics. To place any obstruction in the way of the inquisitors was an act of fautorship. A lord who neglected to pursue heretics out of his lands; anyone giving ecclesiastical burial to a heretic; one who in conversation excused a heretic or conferred any sort of favour, however slight, upon one—all these were fautors. For a doctor to attend a heretic patient, a lawyer to plead a heretic client’s case, was exceedingly dangerous, unless they could prove beyond all doubt that they did so in ignorance. The simplest deed of common humanity done to a heretic was in the view of the Church a sin.[372] Certain crimes were triable by the Inquisition, not for themselves, but because they were indicative of false doctrine. Thus a usurer might be tried and punished by the Inquisition, not because he was a sinner, but because he showed that he did not regard himself as such. Similarly, a bigamist might be tried by the Inquisition, not because bigamy was an immoral thing—if he could prove that he acted under the stress of simple unreflecting passion the Inquisition would dismiss the case as not coming under its purview—but because his act evinced erroneous belief regarding the sacrament of marriage.[373] It was the same with a number of other moral offences. Adultery did not in itself come under the cognizance of the tribunal; but if the adulterer maintained that his transgression was not a sin, it did. There is, for instance, the case of a licentious priest living in concubinage being punished by the Inquisition, because he asserted that he was purified of his ill-living by the simple act of putting on his vestments. In a word, an error in morals is triable only if it is also an error in belief. Otherwise, it is dealt with by the ordinary ecclesiastical courts. As it is arguable that a large number of crimes are indicative of doctrinal error, the Holy Office could put forward a rather sweeping claim to judicature over all manner of wrong-doing; but in practice there was probably not much trouble as a rule, the tribunal being kept sufficiently well occupied with offences _in intellectu_. Only when the implication of heresy was the significant feature of a crime was the Inquisition likely to be interested. The list of offences coming within the sphere of inquisitorial judicature is completed with the mention of sorcery and witchcraft, practices essentially implying heresy. II