The only good result of the Inquisition’s activities was one which it never intended. In its greed for money it forgot an equally greedy and much more deserving rival. The Crown, seeing how profitable persecution had become, at length exercised the right, when it possessed the power, to take the proceeds, and seized for more useful purposes the confiscations of heretic property. The estates of a ruined nobility were taken over by the king’s officers, and the Holy Office unwittingly aided the consolidation of a secular power which in the end reduced it to a nullity. _Northern France._ In the year 1233 a relentless Dominican bigot named Friar Robert was appointed Inquisitor for Western Burgundy. This crazy fanatic raged through the north of France, burning large numbers of people. So notorious became his excesses that after some years his commission was withdrawn, and he spent the rest of his days in prison. Persecution was not greatly checked, for the intensity of the general feeling against heresy was such that even the saintly Louis IX declared that the only argument to use with a heretic was to thrust him through with a sword up to the hilt. In the hands of the Dominicans persecution went on vigorously all over France, then a much smaller country than now, and the zeal of the orthodox was frequently stimulated by Papal Bulls urging greater vigour. Milman relates a terrible occurrence in 1239, but does not state that it took place by order of the Inquisition. In the presence of the Archbishop of Rheims, seventeen bishops, and 100,000 persons, no fewer than 183 Manichæans were burnt outside the city of Rheims, and all of them perished without fear.[26] The right of asylum in churches was withdrawn from heretics in 1281 by Pope Martin IV.