After the death of the Inquisitor-general, Torquemada, Ferdinand and Isabella proposed Don Diego Deza, a Dominican, to the Pope, as his successor. Deza was Bishop of Jaen, and afterwards became Archbishop of Seville. The Pope signed his bulls of confirmation on the 1st of December, 1498, but limited his authority to the affairs of the kingdom of Castile. Deza was displeased at a restriction which did not exist in the bulls of his two colleagues, and refused to accept the nomination, until the Pope invested him with the same power over Aragon, in a bull, in 1499. The new inquisitor-general did not show less severity in the exercise of his office than his predecessor; but, before I enter on this part of the history, it is necessary to give some account of the mode of proceeding of the holy office, as it was the work of Torquemada, the effect of the laws which he formed, and properly belongs to his history. The processes in the Inquisition began by a denunciation, or some other information, such as a discovery accidentally made before the tribunal in another trial. When the denunciation is signed, it takes the form of a declaration, in which the informer, after having sworn to the truth of his deposition, designates those persons whom he presumes, or believes, to have anything to depose against the accused person. These persons are then heard, and their depositions, with that of the first witness, form the _summary of the information, or the preparatory instruction_. _Inquest._ When the tribunal judged that the actions or words which were denounced were sufficient to warrant an inquiry to establish the proofs, the persons who had been cited as knowing the object of the declaration were examined, and were obliged to take an oath not to reveal the questions which were put to them. None of the witnesses were informed of the subject on which they were to make their depositions; they were only asked in general terms, _if they had ever seen or heard anything which was, or appeared, contrary to the Catholic faith, or the rights of the Inquisition_. Personal experience has shown me that the witnesses who were ignorant of the cause of their citation often recollected circumstances entirely foreign to the subject, which they made known, and were then interrogated as if their examination had no other object; this accidental deposition served instead of a denunciation, and a new process was commenced. The declarations were written down by the commissary or notary, who usually aggravated the denunciation, as much as the arbitrary interpretation of the improper or equivocal expressions used by ignorant persons would permit. The declaration was twice read to the witnesses, _who did not fail to approve all that had been written_. _Censure of the Qualifiers._