The Holy Office having received the letters, and supposing Juan Pedro Sanchez still under arrest in Toulouse, ordered him to be brought to Zaragoza. The courts of Toulouse replied that he had already been released and that his whereabouts were now unknown. The inquisitors inquired into the matter with that terrible thoroughness of which they commanded the means. They controlled the most wonderful police system that the world has ever seen. A vast civilian army was enrolled in the service of the Holy Office, as members of the tertiary order of St. Dominic. These were the lay brothers of the family, and as the position conferred upon those who held it certain signal benefits, of which immunity from taxation was one,[134] it will be understood that their number had to be limited, so very considerable were the applications for enrolment. Originally this had been a penitential order, but very quickly it came to be known as the Militia Christi, and its members as familiars of the Holy Office--_i.e._ part of the family of St. Dominic. They dressed in black, and wore the white cross of St. Dominic upon their doublets and cloaks, and they were made to join the Confraternity of St. Peter Martyr. The inquisitors seldom went abroad without an escort of these armed lay-brothers. In the ranks of the Militia Christi were to be found men of all professions, dignities, and callings. They formed the secret police of the Inquisition, they were the eyes and ears of the Holy Office, ubiquitous in every stratum of social life. Through these agents the inquisitors were not long in ascertaining what had taken place in the matter of Juan Pedro Sanchez, and soon the five friends were under arrest and forced to answer the serious charge of hindering the Holy Office. They were paraded in public in the Auto of May 6, 1487, as suspects--_leviter_--of Judaizing; they were penanced to stand in full view of the people, candle in hand and wearing the _sanbenito_, during Mass, and they were thereafter disqualified from holding any office or benefice or pursuing any honourable profession during the good pleasure of the inquisitors. As it was, they escaped lightly. That they were suspected _leviter_ of Judaizing, shows us how easily that suspicion might be incurred. It was purely constructive in this instance--an inference to be drawn from the fact that they had befriended a Judaizer who was under sentence. * * * * * The other case is far more horrible. It shows in operation Torquemada’s decree regarding the children of heretics, and reveals in the fullest measure its appalling inhumanity.