The Pope went a step further on November 4 following, when by a supplementary brief he appointed Sanchez de la Fuente (Bishop of Avila) to be Judge of Appeal in cases of the Faith. And from now onwards it is to Sanchez de la Fuente that the Pope addresses his briefs concerning the conduct of the affairs of the Holy Office. It was to him personally that Alexander gave orders that when a bishop was unable or unwilling to perform upon an offending cleric of his diocese the ceremony of degradation, this should be undertaken by the Bishop of Avila himself, or else by a bishop by him appointed. Thus it would seem that Torquemada had virtually been superseded, and that Sanchez de la Fuente had been rendered his superior. If so, that superiority cannot have been more than nominal. In spite of it, Torquemada remained the guiding spirit of the Holy Office in Spain, the supreme arbiter and law-giver, as we shall see when we come to consider his last “Instructions,” published in 1498. * * * * * In spite of these measures taken by the Pope with a view to softening inquisitorial severity and bringing it within more reasonable bounds, complaints to Rome seem to have continued unabatedly. [Illustration: _Photo by Donald Macbeth._ SPAIN AND PORTUGAL. From Colmenar’s “Délices d’Espagne.”] Far from restricting inquisitorial jurisdiction--as was intended--the appointment of these assistant Grand Inquisitors appears to have widened it. They now went so far as themselves to sell and dispose of confiscated property--a matter which hitherto had been conducted by the officers of the royal treasury. And this was more than Ferdinand could stomach. Where humanitarian considerations, where arguments of political expediency had failed to curb his bigotry, acquisitiveness seems easily to have carried the victory. So that at last we see the King himself turning in appeal to the Pope against this despotism of a court upon which he had conferred the power to become mightier than himself in his own kingdom. The response to his appeal was the bull of February 1495, commanding the inquisitors under pain of excommunication to desist from their course, and never to resort to it again save under royal sanction. The power to proceed against inquisitors in case of fraud or irregularity in this matter was vested in the famous Francisco Ximenes de Cisneros.[262] This man, who has been called the Richelieu of Spain, had risen from very humble beginnings, as a barefoot friar-mendicant, to the very splendid eminence of Primate of Spain--in which office he had just succeeded Cardinal Mendoza, who died in that year (1495). * * * * * In the following year Torquemada made his exit from the Court, where for a decade he had been a figure of an importance second only to that of the Sovereigns themselves.