officials have been wounded and slain while discharging their duties. Possibly this may refer to the case of Giacomo Achiti, who was relaxed to the secular arm, May 19, 1549, for having with others resisted and slain Giovanni de Landeras, a minister of the Inquisition. Yet whatever may have been the good will of Vega, it was impossible for a viceroy to perform his duties and remain on good terms with the Holy Office. In this same year, 1549, a certain D. Pietro di Gregorio had torture administered to a familiar, for which Alberto Albertini, Bishop of Patti and inquisitor, threw him in prison, when Vega liberated him by force and was duly reproved therefore by Charles.[60] In the numerous autos de fe which are recorded during the following years, it is interesting to observe that Judaism sinks into the background and that the predominant heresies punished are Protestant. The Inquisition was aroused to renewed activity and its victims, whether burnt or penanced, were numbered by scores.[61] It is probable that peculation and waste continued for a letter of the inquisitors, April 2, 1560, to Philip II congratulates him on the prospect of some large confiscations impending; these, they say, will relieve the tribunal, which is deeply in debt and it is suggested to the king that if he will invest the proceeds in ground-rents, the income will go far to pay the salaries and perpetuate the institution. Apparently the suggestion was unheeded for the complaints of poverty and indebtedness continue; the convicts are mostly poor people, whose property barely meets their prison expenses, and some rich abbey is asked for, of which the revenues may be devoted to this holy cause.[62]