Heresy, being regarded as essentially anti-social, involved exclusion from civil rights. The heretic could hold no office in Church and State, could hold no title or honour of any kind. If a father, his natural authority over his children was rendered invalid; if a husband, he no longer had legal authority over his wife; if a king, he forfeited the obedience of his subjects; if a baron, the vassalage of his tenants. He could not succeed to property or, having it, leave it by will. His debtors need pay him nothing. The incapacity to hold office in the State affected not only the offender himself, but descendants of the second generation in the paternal, the first generation in the maternal, line.[443] The idea of the taint of heresy is apparent in another penalty which the inquisitor was competent to inflict—the destruction of houses which had harboured heretical inmates or been the scene of heretical meetings.[444] This penalty is less a punishment than a symbolical act, expressive of the Church’s horror of heresy; an attempt to blot out the very memory of the offence. This practice, sanctioned in Roman law, was enjoined by the Assize of Clarendon, by the Emperor Henry VI in the edict of Prato of 1195, by Frederick II in 1232. It was consecrated by the Church in the days of Innocent III. Innocent IV actually demanded the demolition, not only of the house in which the heretic had been found, but also of neighbouring houses, if they belonged to the same property; a stringent rule modified by Alexander IV. The houses must never be rebuilt, and more, the places where they had stood must remain unused for other building. There was just one saving clause: the stones of the demolished houses might be used for pious purposes.[445] Had these regulations been literally carried out, it is obvious that whole towns might have been devastated and remained waste. But it is evident that the rules were not fulfilled to the letter. They were made to apply in Languedoc to houses in which definite heretical acts had taken place, such as the Catharan heretication. Even so, the secular arm was not disposed to approve of a penalty which not only did material damage, but diminished the yield of confiscations. Both France and Germany protested; and eventually the inquisitors agreed to issue licences to build on the sites of the demolished houses.[446] So far we have dealt, on the whole, with penalties incurred by those who, in the end, became reconciled to the Church—those who confessed, performed their penance in token of contrition and promised amendment. But there were also those who did not become reconciled. They fall under three headings—the contumacious, the impenitent, the relapsed.