Yet, shorn as the Inquisition had become of real effectiveness for its avowed functions, the office continued to be sought, doubtless because it conferred a certain measure of importance, and possibly because it afforded opportunity of illicit gains. Inquisitors were regularly appointed, and the custom grew up in Lombardy that in each city where a tribunal existed vacancies were filled on the nomination of the prior of the local Dominican convent with the assent of discreet brethren, whereupon the General Master of the Order issued the commission. In 1500 this was modified by giving the Vicar-general of Lombardy power to reject or ratify the nomination. The subordinate position to which the inquisitorial office had fallen is illustrated in the last decade of the fifteenth century by Frà Antonio da Brescia, who was inquisitor of his native place, and who was claimed as an ornament of the Dominican Order, but his eulogist has nothing to say as to his persecuting heretics, while praising his pulpit labors in many of the Italian cities.[305] * * * * * In Venice, as we have seen, the Inquisition never succeeded in shaking off the trammels of state supervision and interference. In what spirit the State regarded its relations with the Holy Office was exhibited in 1356, when Frà Michele da Pisa, the Inquisitor of Treviso, imprisoned some Jewish converts who had apostatized. This was strictly within his functions, but the secular officials interposed, forbade his proceeding to try his prisoners, seized his familiars, and tortured them on the charge of pilfering the property of the accused. These high-handed measures provoked the liveliest indignation on the part of Innocent VI., but the republic stood firm, and nothing seems to have been gained. In the correspondence which ensued, moreover, there are allusions to former troubles which show that this was by no means the first time that Frà Michele’s labors had been impeded by the secular power. Sometimes, indeed, the Signoria completely ignored the Inquisition. In 1365 a case in which a prisoner had blasphemed the Virgin was brought before the Great Council, which ordered him to be tried by the vicar of the Bishop of Castello, and on conviction to be banished, thus prescribing the punishment, and recognizing only the episcopal jurisdiction.[306]