Under these circumstances, the character of the viceroys was lowered from the high standard adhered to when Charles the Emperor selected them himself. To follow the long list of them would be most tedious and useless, as they passed in rotation, governing according to the best of their lights for several years in Mexico, and then passing on, either by death or by promotion to Peru. In 1571 the Inquisition was fully established, the period marked, by the way, with a formidable eruption of Popocatepetl, and the next year the Jesuits arrived. The matter of the Inquisition had been under discussion for many years, a council, as early as the year 1529, having solemnly declared it to be "most necessary that the Holy Office of the Inquisition shall be extended to this land, because of the commerce with strangers here carried on, and because of the many corsairs abounding upon our coasts, which strangers may bring their evil customs among both natives and Castilians, who, by the grace of God, should be kept free from heresy." The full fruit of the declaration ripened only in 1570, when Don Pedro Moya de Contreras was appointed Inquisitor-General, with head-quarters in the city of Mexico. The Indians were especially exempted from its jurisdiction, only heretics from other nations falling under the ban. The _Quemadero_, a burning place in the city of Mexico, upon land since included in the Alameda, was a square platform in a large open space, where the spectacle could be witnessed by the population. The first _auto-da-fé_ was celebrated in the year 1574, when, as its chronicler mentions cheerfully, "there perished twenty-one pestilent Lutherans." From this time such ceremonies were of frequent occurrence, but the Inquisition never reached the point it did in Old Spain. Although large numbers undoubtedly perished in these, _autos-da-fé_, the number of those actually burned to death was comparatively small and insignificant compared to that of the victims to this religious fury in Europe. Early in the present century the Holy Office was suppressed throughout Spain and all Spanish dependencies, and, although the Inquisition was again established, it was only for a short time.