Nevertheless many minds were, up to a certain point, prepared for evangelical reform. In almost every class the Inquisition excited the liveliest discontent. Towards the close of the fifteenth century, a man was often to be met with traversing Spain, surrounded by a guard of fifty mounted attendants and two hundred foot-soldiers. This man, whose name was Torquemada, was the terror of the people; and consequently in his progresses he displayed the greatest distrust, imagining that every one was bent on assassinating him. On his arrival at any place, when he sat down to table, he trembled lest the dishes brought to him should have been poisoned. For this reason, before partaking of any food, he used to place before him the horn of a unicorn, to which he attributed the virtue of discovering and even of neutralizing poisons. Universal hatred accompanied him to the tomb. Torquemada, the first inquisitor-general, caused eight thousand persons to be put to death, and a hundred thousand to be imprisoned and despoiled of their goods. Whole provinces rose against this horrible tribunal.[4] 'They steal, they kill, they outrage,' wrote the chevalier de Cordova, Gonzalo de Ayora, speaking of the inquisitors to the first secretary of King Ferdinand. 'They care neither for justice nor for God himself.'[5] 'O unhappy Spain!' cried Peter Martyr d'Anghiera, councillor for the Indies, in his distress. 'Mother of so many heroes, how this horrible scourge dishonors thee!'[6] Meanwhile the universities were being enlightened. Various writings, especially those of Erasmus, were much read; and while doctors and students learned to scrutinize more closely the state of the Church, a spirit of inquiry began to penetrate those ancient institutions. There were, besides, scattered here and there in the towns and in country places, some Christians, called _Alumbrados_, who sought after an inward light and applied themselves to secret prayer. These pious Mystics were better prepared to receive divine truth.[7] [Sidenote: THE AWAKENING IN SPAIN.]