During the persecutions of the fifteenth century, while Ferdinand and Isabella made progress in reconquering the kingdom of Granada from the Moors, and Mahometanism, like Judaism, was declining, the Moriscoes, a middle class, resembling the New Christians, and not less dangerous to Romanism, also challenged the powers of the Inquisition. No other country in popedom was at that time more deeply imbued with disaffection of the doctrines and worship of the Church of Rome. Then in 1477, one Brother Philip de' Barberi, a Sicilian inquisitor, came to the court of Ferdinand and Isabella, who were sovereigns of Sicily, to solicit the confirmation of some privileges recently granted to the Holy Office in that island; and, having observed the peril of the Church within the enlarged and united dominions of "the Catholic kings" under whose rule nearly all Spain was comprehended, advised the creation of one undivided court of inquisition, like that of Sicily, as the only means of defence against the maranos, Moriscoes, Jews, and Mussulmans. The advice was quickly taken. First of all, the Dominicans, and after them the dignitaries of the secular clergy, crowded round the throne to pray for a reformation of the Inquisition after the Sicilian model. They appealed to the greed of King Ferdinand by offering him the proceeds of a confiscation, which might be rapidly effected, in pursuance of laws of the Church to that intent provided. They appealed to the piety of Queen Isabella, and were careful that tales of Jewish murders and Jewish desecrations should be poured incessantly into the royal ear. Ferdinand had no scruple. He sincerely prayed the Pope to sanction such a measure, and, swiftly as couriers could bring it, came the desired bull. Isabella could not blame the zeal of priests and monks; for she, too, was a zealot. She could not gainsay the urgency of the nuncio. She could not quench in her husband's bosom the thirst of gold. But she had brought half the kingdom as her dower; and therefore some deference was due to her conscience and judgment, and both in conscience and judgment she desired gentler measures. During two or three years her orator and confessor wrote books, and preachers were permitted to publish arguments, and disputants to enter into conferences, for the conviction of the Jews.