In 1586 one of the chief Spanish malcontents, Father Hernandez, applied to Acquaviva for permission to quit the Society. When Acquaviva refused, Hernandez gave notice to the Inquisition that the General would not let him leave the Society lest he should betray a certain secret which the Jesuits were hiding from the Inquisitors. We have seen how little the Inquisitors and leading prelates of Spain loved the Jesuits. They at once forced Hernandez to tell the secret. One of the Jesuits, it seems, had seduced a lady-penitent--a crime from which only the Inquisition could absolve--yet the Provincial Marcenius had absolved him and transferred him to another town. A great sensation was caused when the Inquisitors at once put the Provincial, the Rector of Salamanca, and two other Jesuits, in their prison, and demanded copies of the Constitutions, Privileges, and other documents of the Society. To the delight of Spain and the dismay of Acquaviva, they were going to make a general inquiry into the character and life of this semi-secret Society. Acquaviva adroitly suggested to the Pope that this was one of those occasions, which he loved, of asserting his supreme authority, and set Sixtus and the Spaniards at loggerheads. The Pope instructed his Nuncio at Madrid to intervene, and Acquaviva sent a Jesuit to win Philip II. Philip, however, was quite willing to see the Society reformed, and the Inquisitors went on to arrest other Jesuits and demand further documents. The insurgent Spaniards were now openly demanding that they should have a local commissary, independent of Acquaviva, and the General was, as quickly as possible, removing fathers from Spain and filling their places with foreigners. The Inquisition decreed that no Jesuit was to leave Spain. Nothing so fiercely awakened the energy of Sixtus V. as a quarrel with local prelates, and he now angrily threatened to depose the cardinal at the head of the Inquisition if the whole case were not at once remitted to him. So the Jesuits were released and the documents sent to Rome, in 1588. We, of course, hear no more of the wicked confessor from that time, but Acquaviva had not counted on this scrutiny of the documents of the Society by the keen eye of Sixtus V., and he dreaded the outcome. "Company of Jesus!" Sixtus used to mutter, as he meditatively stroked his long white beard; "Who are these men whom we must not name without bowing our heads?"[10] He at once issued two preliminary decrees. The first forbade the Jesuits to receive illegitimate sons; their own rule forbade this, and the decree only confirms the charge that the Jesuits looked mainly to wealth or ability in admitting novices. The second decree reserved to the general or to a provincial congregation the right to admit novices. Acquaviva opposed this, and it was modified--and would die at the death of Sixtus V.