1705, a letter to Valencia asks why the visit had been neglected.[677] [Sidenote: _THE FISCAL_] When there were three inquisitors, the absence of one did not interfere with current business, but where there were only two it was a serious impediment. From the beginning the rule was absolute that two must act conjointly in all important matters, such as sentencing to torture, ordering publication of evidence, or rendering final sentence, and this in both civil and criminal actions. Minor and trivial cases, however, could be despatched by one in the absence of his colleague and he could continue to hold audiences and gather testimony, while, in the habitual leisurely transaction of inquisitorial business, procrastination caused by the crippling of the tribunal for four months in every year was evidently not regarded as of any moment.[678] In the little tribunal of Majorca, however, which could support but a single inquisitor, he was deemed competent to act by himself and he probably was excused from visitations.[679] * * * * * Next in importance to the inquisitors stood the promoter fiscal, or prosecuting officer. In the original Inquisition of the thirteenth century there was no such officer; there was candor in the position of the inquisitor as both judge and prosecutor, infinitely preferable to the hypocrisy that the trial was an action between a prosecutor and an accused with the inquisitor as an impartial judge. How this came to pass will be considered hereafter. We have seen that, even in the skeleton organization of the first tribunal in 1480, a fiscal was deemed essential. He ranked next to the inquisitors and, in 1484, it was ordered that he should assist in all public functions, after the inquisitors and Ordinary but before the judge of confiscations.[680] Yet he was a subordinate. In the regulation of salaries in 1498, the inquisitors received 60,000 maravedís, the receiver the same, while the fiscal was rated at 40,000, the same as the notaries, and even the messenger had 20,000.[681] So, in the Sicilian tribunal, in 1500, the inquisitors and receiver have 6000 sueldos, while the fiscal and notaries have only 2500.[682] It was the same with the ayuda de costa. In 1540 we find the fiscal allowed only the same as the notaries and alguazil, and when, in 1557, the scale was fixed for Saragossa, the fiscal was portioned with 1000 sueldos and the inquisitors with 3000.[683]