exercise of an illimitable domination. It was a Sicilian Inquisitor, Philip Barberis, who suggested to Ferdinand the Catholic the advantage he might secure by extending the Holy Office to Castile. Ferdinand avowed his willingness; and Sixtus IV. gave the project his approval in 1478. But it met with opposition from the gentler-natured Isabella. She refused at first to sanction the introduction of so sinister an engine into her hereditary dominions. The clergy now contrived to raise a popular agitation against the Jews, reviving old calumnies of impossible crimes, and accusing them of being treasonable subjects. Then Isabella yielded; and in 1481 the Holy Office was founded at Seville. It began its work by publishing a comprehensive edict against all New Christians suspected of Judaizing, which offense was so constructed as to cover the most innocent observance of national customs. Resting from labor on Saturday; performing ablutions at stated times; refusing to eat pork or puddings made of blood; and abstaining from wine, sufficed to color accusations of heresy. Men who had joined the Catholic communion after the habits of a lifetime had been formed, thus found themselves exposed to peril of death by the retention of mere sanitary rules.[83] [Footnote 83: See Lavallee, _Histoire des Inquisitions_, vol. ii. pp. 341-361, for the translation of a process instituted in 1570 against a Mauresque female slave. Suspected of being a disguised infidel, she was exposed to the temptations of a Moorish spy, and convicted mainly on the evidence furnished by certain Mussulman habits to which she adhered. Llorente reports a similar specimen case, vol. i. p. 442. The culprit was a tinker aged 71, accused in 1528 of abstaining from pork and wine, and using certain ablutions. He defended himself by pleading that, having been converted at the age of 45, it did not suit his taste to eat pork or drink wine, and that his trade obliged him to maintain cleanliness by frequent washing. He was finally condemned to carry a candle at an _auto da fe_ in sign of penitence, and to pay four ducats, the costs of his trial. His detention lasted from September, 1529, till December 18, 1530.] Upon the publication of this edict, there was an exodus of Jews by thousands into the fiefs of independent vassals of the crown--the Duke of Medina Sidonia, the Marquis of Cadiz, and the Count of Arcos. All emigrants were _ipso facto_ declared heretics by the Holy Office. During the first year after its foundation, Seville beheld 298 persons burned alive, and 79 condemned to perpetual imprisonment. A large square stage of stone, called the Quemadero, was erected for the execution of those multitudes who were destined to suffer death by hanging or by flame. In the same year, 2000 were burned and 17,000 condemned to public penitence, while even a larger number were burned in effigy, in other parts of the kingdom.