Unfortunately, in the craze for absolute limpieza, no limit was set to the number of generations through which the taint could be carried. The canon law, as we have seen, limited disabilities to grandchildren and, in 1573, Leonardo Donato describes the rule as extending to what were called the four quarters, that is, the parents and the four grandparents, and in this moderate shape he says it was the cause of constant strife and of preserving the old Judaizing memories.[871] In this, however, he greatly understated Spanish craving for purity of blood. We have seen the Córtes of Castile, in 1532, petition that it should be satisfied with great-grandparents, indicating that it was carried beyond this, and Siliceo's Toledo statute affixed no limit. Each body, it is true, could prescribe its own rules, but the more important ones discarded all limitations and refused admission to those against whom a stain could be found, however remote. In 1633 Escobar informs us that among these were included the Inquisition, the Orders of Santiago, Alcántara, Calatrava and St. John, the church of Toledo and all the greater colleges and universities, including that of Alcalá; these all required the most rigorous investigation to trace out the slightest _mancha_ in the remotest grade of parentage.[872] [Sidenote: _IMPURITY ARISING FROM PENANCE_] There were two sources of descent which caused impurity of blood--from an ancestor of either of the proscribed races, or from one who had ever been penanced by the Inquisition. As regards the former, the line was drawn at the massacres of 1391 for Jews and at the enforced baptisms of the early sixteenth century for Moors. Voluntary converts, prior to those periods, were accepted as Old Christians, the subsequent ones were considered as unwilling converts and were regarded as New Christians, together with their descendants, no matter how zealously they had embraced the Christian faith. The prevalence of intermarriage with Conversos throughout the fifteenth century had led to infinite ramifications throughout the land in the course of generations and, about 1560, Cardinal Mendoza y Bobadilla, apparently moved by some discussion on limpieza, drew up and presented to Philip II a memorial in which he showed that virtually the whole nobility of Castile and Aragon had a strain of Jewish blood.[873] There was no lack of material for tracing the dissemination of this blood through the land. In Aragon, Juan de Anchias, the zealous secretary of the first Saragossa tribunal, compiled what was known as the _Libro Verde de Aragon_, giving the affiliations of all the leading Conversos who had suffered, so as to serve as a beacon for all who desired to avoid contamination. In Castile there was no such authoritative publication, but the records of the tribunals had accumulated ample material, and the sanbenitos of the relaxed and reconciled, hung in the parish churches, kept the memory of