Under these favorable auspices, for the space of several years, order, tranquillity, and contentment reigned in Granada. The courteous and equitable, but firm, administration of the governor; the blameless life, the humble piety, the sympathetic interest of the Archbishop had awakened the love and compelled the obedience of the tributary Moslems, who compared with wonder and gratification the operation of a system of kindness and justice with the arbitrary and violent measures of the despotism to which they had heretofore always been accustomed. During that period many important and tragic events transpired. Al-Zagal, oppressed with years and calamities and broken in spirit, had gone into voluntary exile. Boabdil, by means of an ignoble and treacherous device, whose adoption was alike unworthy of a monarch and a Christian, had been deprived of the principality for which he had bartered his crown and forced to retire into Africa. Every important provision of the capitulation had been repeatedly violated, and only the tact of those who controlled the government of Granada had prevented the most serious consequences. The Jews, under circumstances of unspeakable cruelty, had been expelled from the kingdom. In the hierarchy changes had taken place which boded no good to the heretic and the suspected apostate. Cardinal Mendoza, Primate of Spain, had died, and Francisco Ximenes de Cisneros, a Franciscan friar and the confessor of the Queen, had been promoted to that exalted dignity, whose power and emoluments rivalled those of the crown. The life, the associations, the studies of this man had developed a mind whose feelings were in perfect accordance with the narrow and intolerant spirit of the age. Without indulgence for the inherent weakness of human nature, without patience to await the effect of the deliberate and rational methods of discussion which promote religious conviction, absolutely devoid of generosity, of tenderness, of sympathy, he regarded unquestioning obedience to the Church as the most imperative of all obligations and mortification of the flesh as the most meritorious of virtues. He had recently secured the appointment of Diego de Deza, one of his creatures, to the place of Inquisitor-General, which gave him absolute control of the operations of the Holy Office.