In Naples the Inquisition had been introduced by Charles of Anjou after the battle of Benevento had acquired for him the succession to the unfortunate Manfred. The house of Aragon, which followed that of Anjou, had permitted its existence, but under conditions of such subjection to the crown that it was for the most part inert. Yet Naples offered an abundant harvest for the zealous laborer. The Waldenses from Savoy, who had settled and multiplied in Calabria and Apulia, had obtained, in 1497, from King Frederic, a confirmation of their agreements with their immediate suzerains, the nobles, and felt secure from persecution.[99] Still more inviting were the banished Jews and fugitive New Christians from Spain, who found there a tolerably safe refuge. There was also a considerable number of indigenous Jews. In the twelfth century Benjamin of Tudela describes flourishing synagogues in Capua, Naples, Salerno, Amalfi, Benevento, Melfi, Ascoli-Satriano, Tarento, Bernaldo and Otranto, and these doubtless were representatives of others existing outside of the line of his wanderings.[100] They had probably gone on increasing, although, in 1427, Joanna II called in the ruthless St. Giovanni da Capistrano to suppress their usury and, in 1447, Nicholas V appointed him conservator to enforce the disabilities and humiliations prescribed in a cruel bull which he had just issued.[101] Possibly, under this rigorous treatment, some of them may have sought baptism for, in 1449, we find Nicholas despatching to Naples Fra Matteo da Reggio as inquisitor to exterminate the apostate Judaizers, who were said to be numerous.[102] If we may believe Zurita, when Charles VIII of France made his transitory conquest of Naples, in 1495, the Jews were all compulsorily baptized, with the usual result that their Christianity was only nominal.[103] Such unwilling converts of course called for inquisitorial solicitude but, when Ferdinand of Spain obtained possession of the land, it was the fugitives from the Spanish Inquisition that rendered him especially desirous of extending its jurisdiction over his dominions on the Italian mainland. A single example will illustrate this and also throw light on the resistance which, as we shall see, the Neapolitans offered to the introduction of the Holy Office after the Spanish pattern. In the inquisitorial documents of the period, no name occurs more frequently than that of Manuel Esparza de Pantolosa, who was condemned _in absentia_ as a heretic, in Tarragona. He had evidently sought safety in flight, abandoning his property which was confiscated and sold, June 4, 1493, for 9000 libras to his brother, Micer Luis Esparza, a jurist of Valencia, whose final payment for it is dated February 2, 1499, when the inquisitor, Juan de Monasterio, was authorized to retain a hundred ducats in reward for his labors.