cognizant of her husband’s heresy when she married him. Elsewhere it was otherwise. In _Ad extirpanda_, Innocent IV laid down the rule that the proceeds were to be divided into three equal portions, a third to go to the local authorities, a third to the officials of the Inquisition, a third to bishop and inquisitor.[432] Latterly, in Italy, a different tripartite division was made, the third which had originally gone to bishop and inquisitor having to be paid to the pope. The question of distribution was complicated by feudal considerations, the feudal lord being able to put forward a claim to any forfeited possessions of his vassal. But, however much the allocation of these revenues might vary, it was always understood that they were to be utilized for the prosecution of the war against heresy, and in particular the defraying of the expenses of the Inquisition. The secular princes no doubt played their part. They had every inducement to do so. It is always good policy, if not to stimulate, at all events to preserve, the goose that lays the golden eggs.[433] But, neither with regard to the action of the secular princes nor of the Inquisition, is it desirable to over-estimate the significance of the pecuniary penances and penalties suffered by the heretic. It is no doubt true that their importance used to be under-estimated, when the tendency was to rivet attention on the stake and torture-chamber in dealing with the Inquisition. It is also true that the opportunity of reaping mercenary profit from the prosecution of heresy was an encouragement to cupidity. It is only in human nature that it should be so. It may be true to say that ‘persecution, as a steady and continuous policy, rested, after all, upon confiscation.’[434] But that is not necessarily to say more than that the Inquisition had to meet its expenses in some way or other; and it was not unnatural to put to those expenses the proceeds of pecuniary penalties imposed directly by, or indirectly resulting from, the sentences of the tribunal. Confiscation was a very customary expedient in the Middle Ages, and once granted the Church’s reasonable analogy, on its own premises, between heresy and treason, it was an inevitable accompaniment of inquisitorial practice. That extortion and avarice were likely to be excited by the scheme is true; but to suggest avarice as a prime motive in the prosecution of heresy is quite to overshoot the mark.[435] The Church did not embark upon the destruction of Catharism because it coveted the wealth of Cathari, but because it felt it must preserve itself against a movement, which it regarded as anti-religious, anti-social and immoral.[436] In the second place, it must be remembered that the majority of mediæval heretical sects consisted of poor men. Only rarely was a rich man a heretic, and Fraticelli, Beguines, Dolcinists and most of the later sects, ardently persecuted by the Inquisition as they