Ormanetto, he was evidently worsted in the encounter.[233] It is not surprising that this imperfect working of the machinery of persecution should prove wholly unsatisfactory to Philip II. Twenty years had elapsed since the reconstruction of the papal Inquisition, yet in the Lombard province where, if anywhere, it should be active and unsparing and where he had ordered his representatives to give it all favor and assistance, it was proving manifestly unequal to its duties. The natural remedy lay in taking it out of hands that proved incompetent and in remodelling it after the Spanish fashion and this he resolved to do. He applied to Pius IV for the necessary briefs, but met with some delay. This was inevitable. The Roman Congregation had already ample experience of the unyielding independence of the Spanish Suprema and it could only look with disfavor on having to surrender to its rival so important a portion of its own territory, with the inevitable result of an endless series of broils in which it would probably often be worsted. At that time however Philip’s request was equivalent to a command; it was difficult to frame a plausible reason for refusal and Pius gave his assent.[234] It was Philip’s intention that the Milanese Inquisition should be organized on an imposing scale and he had a commission as inquisitor issued to Gaspar Cervantes, an experienced Spanish inquisitor, then Archbishop of Messina and recently elected to the see of Salerno, but Pius delayed the confirmation for months. Cervantes was at the council of Trent when he received the commission; he replied that, as the decree requiring episcopal residence had been adopted, he could not be absent from his see more than three months at a time, but that, if the king considered his services at Milan essential, he would resign the archbishopric. Archbishop Calini, who reports this from Trent, August 23, 1563, adds that two ambassadors from Milan had just arrived there to plead with the papal legates against the introduction of the Spanish Inquisition in their city.[235]