In Sicily, however, in 1451, the Inquisition obtained fresh vitality by means of an ingenious device. Frà Enrico Lugardi, Inquisitor of Palermo, produced a most impudent forgery in the shape of a long and elaborate privilege purporting to have been issued by the Emperor Frederic II. in 1224, ordering all his Sicilian subjects to give aid and comfort to the “inquisitors of heretical pravity,” and stating that, as it was unfitting that all confiscations should inure to the royal fisc without rewarding the inquisitors for their toils and perils, the confiscations henceforth should be divided equally between the fisc, the Inquisition, and the Holy See; moreover, all Jews and infidels were required once a year to supply inquisitors and their attendants, when in prosecution of their duty, with all necessaries for man and beast. Though the fraudulent character of this document was conspicuous on its face, to say nothing of a blunder in the regnal year of its date, the age was not a critical one; Frà Enrico seems to have had no trouble in inducing King Alonso to confirm it, and it was subsequently confirmed again in 1477 by Ferdinand and Isabella. The privileges which it conferred were substantial, and gave fresh importance to the Inquisition, although its judgments were still subjected to revision by the civil power. When, in 1474, famine led Sixtus IV. to request of the Viceroy Ximenes the shipment of a large supply of corn from Sicily to Rome, he wrote to the inquisitor, Frà Salvo di Cassetta, ordering him to strain every nerve to secure the granting of the favor. The inquisitor at that time was evidently a personage of influence, for Frà Salvo in fact was also confessor of the viceroy. The central tribunal of the Inquisition sat in Palermo, and there were three commissioners or deputies in charge of the three “valleys” of the island.[322]