That the punishment of heresy was not the real mission of its tribunal is proved by the fact that its sentences were frequently suspended, commuted, or abrogated by the sovereign, conditional on the payment of money. The rich were the especial objects of its hostility; the denunciation of a wealthy person was equivalent to conviction; and if a Hebrew or a Moslem, he could hardly escape the extreme penalty. The mystery of its organization, its unexpected arrests, its secret procedure, its frightful dungeons, the fiendish cruelty of the tortures it inflicted, and the atrocities of its public exhibitions--which partook of the nature of religious festivals, and, with shocking inconsistency, were supposed to be devoted to popular recreation--struck terror into every community and every family. The successful prosecution of heresy by the Inquisition, as well as the financial advantages it promised, and the increase of ecclesiastical and royal power which followed its establishment, appealed forcibly to the bigoted and arbitrary mind of the Spanish Queen. Not so, however, with Ferdinand, whose experience with that dread tribunal had caused him to regard its operations with disfavor, and who had rendered his orthodoxy liable to suspicion by intrusting to Jewish bankers the administration of the finances of the Crown of Aragon. His remonstrances were, however, unheeded by his obstinate and despotic consort. The Kingdom of Castile had always enjoyed an unquestioned preponderance of authority and prestige in the affairs of the Peninsula. The compact which consolidated the two great realms into one empire expressly conferred upon Isabella the exclusive control of all matters relating to ecclesiastical jurisdiction. The right of presentation to benefices--long asserted by Castilian princes as a royal prerogative, and whose exercise, denounced by the Papacy as an usurpation, had repeatedly brought upon them the censures of the Holy See--invested the Queen with a power of vast and indefinable extent over the members of the Roman Catholic hierarchy, who owed their offices to her generosity, and whose revenues were largely dispensed in accordance with her advice. Her policy and her apparent interest induced her, therefore, to consent to the introduction of the Holy Office; and its tribunal was established at Cordova, under the direction of Tomas de Torquemada, first Inquisitor-General of the kingdom, a name of awful prominence in the history of Spanish persecution.