The affair of Carranza seems to have been regarded as weakening the position of bishops and, with the customary audacity of the inquisitors in extending their jurisdiction, the tribunal of Cuenca boasted or threatened that it would arrest the bishop. The services of the incumbent, Pedro de Castro, in furnishing evidence against Carranza, had been too recent to permit him to be hoisted by his own petard and Valdés, in a letter of June 17, 1560, rebuked the tribunal for its superserviceable zeal.[241] We have seen how the bishops, at the Council of Trent, endeavored to protect themselves by reserving to the pope exclusive right to pronounce sentence, but this was of small avail when he assumed the right to delegate his power as he pleased. When Sixtus V, January 25, 1586, issued a commission to the Cardinal Archduke Albert of Austria, as inquisitor-general of Portugal, it specifically subjected archbishops, bishops and patriarchs to his jurisdiction and that of his subdelegates.[242] As Portugal was under the Spanish crown, this served as a precedent when in December, 1629, the Inquisition desired to prosecute Gavino Mallani, Archbishop of Oristano in Sardinia, against whom it had gathered evidence that, since his consecration, in 1627, he had never been to confession or had celebrated mass, that he was a blasphemer, that he had a familiar demon confined in a ring, etc. The Suprema submitted to Philip IV the Portuguese commission and asked him to instruct his ambassador to procure a similar one for Spain or, failing this, to obtain a special brief for the case of Mallani. Philip ordered the necessary letter to be drafted for his signature, but the effort failed. Mallani was probably sent to Rome with the evidence, for he was deposed, being succeeded, in 1635, by Pedro Vico, while he did not die until 1641.[243] In spite of this recognition of lack of jurisdiction over bishops, we have seen (Vol. I, p. 501) that, in the quarrel with Manjarre de Heredia, Bishop of Majorca, in 1668, Inquisitor-general Nithard claimed that the Inquisition could prosecute him criminally. He had the effrontery to assert, in a consulta of February 5, 1668, that its possession of this power was so notorious and so completely established in practice as to require neither argument nor demonstration, and the infatuated queen-regent sustained him in summoning the bishop to appear for trial. In spite of an adverse decision in Rome, the Inquisition continued the prosecution, even after the expulsion of Nithard, and proceedings ceased only with the death of the bishop.[244]