While estimating the importance of these punishments we must remember that they implied confiscation of property. Thus whole families were orphaned and consigned to penury. Penitence in public carried with it social infamy, loss of civil rights and honors, intolerable conditions of ecclesiastical surveillance, and heavy pecuniary fines. Penitents who had been reconciled, returned to society in a far more degraded condition than convicts released on ticket of leave. The stigma attached in perpetuity to the posterity of the condemned, whose names were conspicuously emblazoned upon church-walls as foemen to Christ and to the State. It is not strange that the New Christians, wealthy as they were and allied with some of the best blood in Spain, should have sought to avert the storm descending on them by appeals to Rome. In person or by procurators, they carried their complaints to the Papal Curia, imploring the relief of private reconciliation with the Church, special exemption from the jurisdiction of the Holy Office, rehabilitation after the loss of civil rights and honors, dispensation from humiliating penances, and avvocation of causes tried by the Inquisition, to less prejudiced tribunals. The object of these petitions was to avoid perpetual infamy, to recover social status, and to obtain an impartial hearing in doubtful cases. The Papal Curia had anticipated the profits to be derived from such appeals. Sixtus IV. was liberal in briefs of indulgence, absolution and exemption, to all comers who paid largely. But when his suitors returned to Spain, they found their dearly-purchased parchments of no more value than waste paper. The Holy Office laughed Papal Bulls of Privilege to scorn, and the Pope was too indifferent to exert such authority as he might have possessed. Meanwhile, the Inquisition rapidly took shape. In 1483 Thomas of Torquemada was nominated Inquisitor General for Castile and Aragon. Under his rule a Supreme Council was established, over which he presided for life. The crown sent three assessors to this board; and the Inquisitors were strengthened in their functions by a council of jurists. Seville, Cordova, Jaen, Toledo, became the four subordinate centers of the Holy Office, each with its own tribunal and its own right of performing _autos da fe_. Commission was sent out to all Dominicans, enjoining on them the prosecution of their task in every diocese.