When the Regent of Spain arrived in that kingdom, he named Don Francisco Ximenez de Cisneros inquisitor-general for the crown of Castile, and Don Juan Enguera, Bishop of Vic, for that of Aragon. The Pope expedited their bulls in 1507, and made Cisneros a cardinal. Ximenez de Cisneros began to exercise his new employment on the 1st October, when the conspiracy against the holy office had become almost general, on account of the events at Cordova, of which the Council of Castile took cognizance. All its members who had been of the party of Philip I. signalized themselves by their hatred against the Inquisition. This aversion made Ximenez de Cisneros feel the necessity of conducting himself with extreme caution, that he might not give occasion for a general convocation of the Cortes, which would have deprived him of the high office of governor of the kingdom, which he then possessed. The events at Cordova forced a great number of persons to appeal to Rome. The Pope appointed two prelates to examine the trials, and made Cardinal Cisneros judge of appeals, with the power of bringing all the trials begun by the apostolical commissioners before him. The cardinal immediately suspended the inquisitor Lucero, and sent him prisoner to Burgos; he also imprisoned all those witnesses who were suspected of having made false depositions, because some of the charges were so absurd that no one could believe them. The examination of the trials made the cardinal perceive, that an affair which implicated some of the most illustrious families of Spain could not be treated with too much delicacy:--he therefore obtained the king's permission to form a junta, which he named the _Catholic Congregation_: it was composed of twenty-two respectable persons, namely, the inquisitor-general (who was the president); the inquisitor-general of Aragon; the Bishop of Ciudad Rodrigo; those of Calahorra and Barcelona; the mitred abbot of the Benedictines at Valladolid; the president of the Council of Castile, and eight of its members; the vice-chancellor and the president of the Chancery of Aragon; two counsellors of the _Supreme_; two provincial inquisitors, and an auditor of the Chancery of Valladolid. Their first assembly was held at Burgos, on Ascension-day, in 1508, and on the 9th of July they decreed that the characters of the witnesses were vile, contemptible, and unworthy of confidence; that their declarations were full of contradictions; that they contained things unworthy of belief, and contrary to common sense; that the prisoners were consequently at liberty; that their honour, and that of the prisoners who had died, was re-established; that the houses which had been destroyed, as having been used for synagogues, should be rebuilt; and that the judgment and the notes in the register should be erased.