The zeal and activity of the new Inquisition was greatly stimulated when the order of the Dominican monks became generally charged with its proceedings. A Spanish priest, Domingo de Guzman, commonly known as St. Dominic, who came to Rome just as the new pope Honorius III was elected, founded the fraternity of the Dominicans, and this order was specially entrusted with the “affairs of faith against heretics.” The Dominican inquisitors were appointed to further the cause in several great Italian cities, in Florence, Genoa and Venice, but the rule of tyranny and bloodshed they inaugurated was in many places strongly opposed. Pope Alexander IV backed and supported them, and with many fierce bulls strengthened their powers. Some historians believe that the inquisitors did much to establish the papal power in Italian states, and it is said that these guardians of the true faith frequently laid their hands upon political opponents and proceeded against all kinds of wrong-doers. The Inquisition, in any case, persecuted astrologers, necromancers, alchemists and wizards. The higher science of astronomy had an evil name and the greatest astronomers, as we shall presently see in the case of Galileo, were arraigned and tried for their lives. The annals of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries are full of the conflicts that raged between the Inquisition, or its agents, and the civil authorities in the various states of Europe, especially the Italian states, all of which were constantly at enmity and in conflict one against the other. The papacy was at war with the German Empire, to which some reference has already been made. The Inquisitors were, naturally, ranged on the papal side and materially contributed to the ultimate triumph of the popes. It was their earnest desire to maintain the ascendency of the papal see and to crush any hostile opposition to the Church that might arise within its own borders; but they still proceeded pitilessly against heretics and were especially severe upon any who professed a form of faith different from the prescribed Christian religion. The Inquisition did not spare the Spanish Jews, who, flying from the mandate of expulsion issued by Ferdinand and Isabella, came to Rome and were presently caught in the meshes of the Holy Office. So with the Moors exiled from Spain, the “Marranos” who had refused to profess Christianity and who came to Rome, where they were seized and to save their lives made fresh recantation. At this very time a Spanish bishop was accused of heretical belief in Mahometan tenets and arraigned before the pope in person, as chief inquisitor, at a secret consistory. He was convicted and sentenced to the loss of his episcopal dignity with all his benefices and offices, and having been degraded from every order, he was imprisoned in a chamber in St. Angelo for the term of his natural life. His religious principles were, of course, at variance with