It was not only living or dying heretics who paid the penalty of their unsound opinions. Men long dead, if they were represented by rich descendants, were cited before the Tribunal, judged, condemned, and the lands and goods that had descended to their heirs passed into the coffers of the Catholic kings. The scandal was so great that Isabella actually wrote to the Bishop of Segovia to defend herself against an accusation that no one had ever presumed to formulate. “I have,” said the queen, “caused great calamities, I have depopulated towns and provinces and kingdoms, for the love of Christ and of His Holy Mother, but I have never touched a maravedi of confiscated property; and I have employed the money in educating and dowering the children of the condemned.” This strange apology, which seems to have to some extent imposed upon Prescott, is shown, by more recent examination of the State papers to be a most deliberate and daring falsehood, and would go far to justify the suggestion of Bergenroth that if Ferdinand never scrupled to tell direct untruths and make false promises whenever he thought it expedient, Queen Isabella excelled her husband in “disregard of veracity.” If the Holy Office had existed in Aragon in an undeveloped state from the thirteenth to the fifteenth century, and if it was actually introduced into Castile at the suggestion of an Inquisitor of the Aragonese island of Sicily, the old independence of the inhabitants once more asserted itself when the time arrived for the introduction of the brand-new Castilian Tribunal into the old kingdom that is watered by the Ebro. Saragossa, indeed, may be nearer to Rome than Toledo; but the Catalan has ever been less submissive than his brother or cousin in Castile; less obedient to authority; more impatient of royal and ecclesiastical oppression. Yet Aragon, which had defied Innocent at Muret, and vanquished Martin at Gerona, was no match for the inquisitors of Ferdinand the Catholic. The Inquisition, as we have seen, had once before been established in Aragon; but in one most important particular the new institution differed from the old. In former days, even in the rare cases when the heretic paid the penalty of his heterodoxy with his life, his property passed to his heirs. The ecclesiastical tribunal of Ferdinand was not only more efficient in the matter of burning or otherwise disposing of accused persons; but the property of all doubtful Catholics, even of those who were graciously permitted to live after their trial, was absolutely forfeit to the crown. And the number of rich men, not only converted Jews but prosperous Christians, whose orthodoxy failed to come up to the new standard, was even in those days considered remarkable.