Thus it befell that by order of the Catholic Sovereigns their Orator at the Pontifical Court, D. Francisco de Santillana, applied to Sixtus IV for a bull that should empower Ferdinand and Isabella to set up the tribunal of the Inquisition in Castile, to enable them--as Bernaldez puts it--to proceed to the extirpation of heresy “by the way of fire”--_por via del fuego_. This bull was duly granted under date of November 7, 1478. It gave the Sovereigns the faculty of electing three bishops or archbishops or other God-fearing and upright priests, regular or secular, of over forty years of age, who must be masters or bachelors of divinity and doctors or licentiates of canon law, to make inquisition throughout the kingdom against heretics, apostates, and their abettors. His Holiness accorded to the men so elected the requisite jurisdiction to proceed according to law and custom, and he further empowered the Sovereigns to annul such nominations as they might make and to replace their nominees as they saw fit.[61] The Sovereigns were in Cordova when the bull reached them in the following month of December. But they did not at once proceed to act upon it. Before doing so, Isabella made one last effort to repress the Judaizing and apostatizing movement by the gentler measures concerted with the Cardinal of Spain in 1477. To the task of continuing with increased vigour the teachings of the “catechism” drawn up by Mendoza she now appointed Diego Alonso de Solis, Bishop of Cadiz, D. Diego de Merlo, Coadjutor of Seville, and Alonso de Ojeda, to whom these royal orders must have been a fresh source of disappointment and chagrin. Torquemada, we must assume, had withdrawn once more to his convent of Segovia, and perhaps the removal of his stern influence enabled the Queen to make this last effort to avoid the course to which he had all but constrained her. Having concluded these arrangements, the Sovereigns repaired to Toledo. There, in the spring of the year 1480, the Cortes assembled to make oath of fealty to the infant Prince of Asturias to whom Isabella had given birth in June of 1478. Whilst this oath was the chief motive of the assembly, it was by no means the only business with which it had to deal. Many other matters received attention; amongst them the necessity for remedying the evils arising out of the commerce between Christians and Jews was seriously considered. It was decreed that the old laws concerning the Jews, which lately had been falling into partial desuetude, should be re-enforced, particularly those which prescribed that all Jews should wear the distinguishing badge of the circlet of red cloth on the shoulders of their gabardines; that they should keep strictly to their Juderias, always retiring to these at nightfall; that walls to enclose these Juderias should be erected wherever they might still be wanting, and that no Jew should practise as a doctor, surgeon, apothecary, or innkeeper.