The Cruciata, a society composed of archbishops, bishops, and other personages of mark, was entrusted, under various circumstances, with the task of seeing that the laws of the Church were obeyed and carried out amongst Catholics. The Family of the Inquisition, or the Militia of Christ, created during the pontificate of Honorius III., and analogous to the Order of the Templars, placed its forces at the service of the Inquisitors, and its pious zeal earned for it the good opinion of Pope Gregory IX. As we have already mentioned, it was in 1481, during the reign of Ferdinand and Isabella, that the Inquisition, provided with a new code of regulations, acquired a formidable power. Chiefly intended to bring to trial the Jews and the Moors who had again relapsed into paganism, it was then that it got the name of _The Holy Office_, and was superintended by a grand inquisitor-general and a council, termed _The Supreme_, consisting of forty-five members. When the Holy Office had a heretic, or any one suspected of being one, arrested, its agents stripped the accused person of all he had about his person, and took a detailed inventory of his clothing and furniture, in order that they might be restored to him intact should he prove to be innocent. The money so seized, whether in gold or silver, belonged by right to the tribunal, and went to pay the costs of the procedure. These formalities over, the accused person was taken to prison. Of prisons, the Inquisition had several kinds: 1st, the _common_ prison, in which were confined persons accused merely of ordinary misdemeanour, and who, consequently, were allowed to communicate with their families and friends; 2nd, the _prison of mercy_ or _of penitence_, which was set apart for those who were to be detained only temporarily; 3rd, the _intermediate prison_, reserved for those who had committed some ordinary delinquency which brought them within the jurisdiction of the Holy Office; 4th, the _secret prison_, the inmates of which were kept in solitary confinement. The dungeons of the Inquisition were like all those constructed in the Middle Ages. After an incarceration which varied in length, the prisoner was conducted, when the day of trial arrived, to the large audience hall, which was hung with black, and adorned with a figure of Christ upon the cross, the body being of ivory and the cross of ebony. At the extreme end, before a circular table, sat the Inquisitor-general in a raised chair covered with black velvet and surmounted by a canopy of the same material. To his right and left, seats placed at a lower elevation were reserved for the Inquisitors, who, with the secretary, composed the tribunal. Two clerks of the court took down the questions put by the president and the answers made by the accused; behind them stood the spies of the Inquisition, and four men wearing long black robes, with their faces concealed by a mask with openings for the mouth, the nose, and the eyes.