Perino, and of 1446, in favor of Frà Andrea de la Pascena, show that the organization was maintained, but all sentences were required to be transmitted to the viceroy, who submitted them to a royal judge before they were valid. Thus, in 1451, King Alfonso confirmed a fine of ten thousand florins, levied upon the Jews as a punishment for their usuries and other offences.[319] On the mainland we have seen proof of the decay of the Inquisition in the undisturbed growth of the Waldensian communities, and the complete breaking-down of its machinery is fairly illustrated in 1427, when Joanna II. undertook to enforce certain measures against the Jews of her kingdom. Had there been an effective and organized Inquisition she would have required no better instrument for her purpose; and it could only have been the absence of this that led her to call in the indefatigable persecutor, Frà Giovanni da Capistrano, to whom she issued a commission to coerce the Jews to abandon usury and to wear the sign Tau, as provided by law. He was empowered to decree such punishments as he might deem fit, which were to be mercilessly inflicted by all judges and other officials, and he was moreover to constrain, under pain of confiscation, the Jews to surrender to him for cancellation all letters and privileges granted to them by former monarchs. Yet there was still a simulacrum of the Inquisition maintained, for in the following year, 1428, we find Martin V. confirming the appointment of Frà Niccolò di Camisio as Inquisitor of Benevento, Bari, and the Capitanata.[320] Whatever vitality the Inquisition retained was still more reduced when, in 1442, the House of Aragon obtained the throne of Naples. Giannone tells us that the Aragonese princes rarely admitted inquisitors, and, when they did so, required minute reports as to their every official act, never permitting any conviction without the participation of the secular magistrates, followed by royal confirmation, as we have seen to have been the case in Sicily. When, in 1449, Nicholas V. appointed Frà Matteo da Reggio as inquisitor to exterminate the apostate Jews who were said to be numerous throughout the kingdom, the terms employed would seem to indicate that for some time the Inquisition had been practically extinct, although but two years before he had given a commission to Frà Giovanni da Napoli, and although subsequent inquisitors were occasionally appointed.[321]