Torquemada’s enemies in Spain were increasing now at an alarming rate. But, secure in the royal protection, this old man steadily and ruthlessly advanced along the path of intolerance, undismayed by ill-will. Conscious of the hatred he provoked, he may have gloried in the maledictions hurled against him by the persecuted, conceiving that the malevolence of the infidel would render his deeds the more acceptable in the sight of his God. But whatever the equanimity with which he may have confronted spiritual hostility, he took his measures to secure himself from its temporal manifestations. That he went in dread of attack is evinced not only by the fact that he was never seen abroad without his numerous escort of armed familiars, but further by the circumstance that he never sat down to dine without a horn of unicorn upon his table as a charm against poison.[252] So arbitrarily and arrogantly did he widen the sphere of autocratic jurisdiction accorded him that soon he was usurping the functions of the civil courts, thereby provoking a still deeper resentment. He conducted the business of the Holy Office in such a manner that all other courts of the kingdom became subservient to it, and where the magistrates, resenting these encroachments, attempted to withstand him, or even to question his authority, they were--as had happened in the case of the Captain-General of Valencia--promptly charged with lack of zeal and even impeached as hinderers of the Holy Office. They were compelled to submit to humiliating penances, which in the case of magistrates entailed a total loss of dignity and prestige. And such was the ascendancy this man had gained by now that complaints or appeals to the Sovereigns were useless. Meanwhile, however, and by his own act, his enemies at home had found two powerful mediators with the Pope, two powerful advocates to plead their cause before the Apostolic Court. These were Juan Arias Davila, Bishop of Segovia, and Pedro de Aranda, Bishop of Calahorra. Torquemada’s frenzied intolerance of men of Jewish blood was by no means confined to those who practised the Law of Moses. It extended to those who had accepted baptism and to their descendants, and it kept alive his mistrust of them. Very markedly is this exhibited in the proceedings he instituted against the two bishops mentioned, notwithstanding the Papal decree which inhibited inquisitors from proceeding against prelates save by special pontifical authority.