The looseness which had prevailed during the early period is strikingly manifested when, in 1547, the Suprema made an attempt to gather in and preserve its past records. A commission was issued to its secretary Zurita, reciting the importance of having an inventory of all the papal bulls, briefs, registers and other papers relating to the Inquisition, which had been in the custody of the secretaries and other officials. There is, it says, information that many of these are at Calatayud and others at Huesca, among the papers of Calcena and Urries, the secretaries of Ferdinand and Charles V, and Zurita is ordered to collect these and is armed with full powers to examine witnesses and inflict penalties. All holding such papers are required to surrender them, under pain of excommunication and a hundred ducats. The inquisitors of Saragossa are instructed to assist him with censures, while letters to various parties indicate that the task is expected to be arduous. The instructions are not clear as to whether he is expected to seize the papers or merely to make inventories of them, but there can be little doubt that whatever he laid his hands on was kept.[757] What success attended his mission we have no means of knowing, but we probably owe to it many of the important documents illustrating the early history of the Inquisition. In addition to this source of incompleteness, it seemed impossible to compel the tribunals to keep their records in proper shape. In 1544, Dr. Alonso Pérez, in an inspection of Barcelona, found them in complete disorder. Another inspection, in 1550, showed still greater confusion. In 1561, Inspector Cervantes described them as being in such a state, without indexes and inventories, that it was impossible to find anything. After the visit of Salazar, the Suprema, in 1568, took the inquisitors sharply to task for not having yet provided indexes and registers; it ordered them to do so at once and to furnish a certificate to that effect within twenty days of receipt.[758] The certificate was doubtless supplied, but we may question whether the work was done. Possibly Barcelona was worse than other tribunals, but the memorial of 1623 to the Suprema states that in many of them there are processes, books, papers, informations of limpieza etc., requiring to be inventoried, sorted into bundles and reduced to order, causing great inconvenience.[759] [Sidenote: _RECORDS_]