The Inquisition was spread by means of peripatetic organizers who went about setting up tribunals either temporary or permanent, as circumstances might advise. Thus Dr. Francisco de la Fuente was transferred from the tribunal at Ciudad Real to second with his experience the efforts of Fray nuno de Arevalo, prior of the Geronimite convent at Guadalupe, to purify that locality of heresy. Within a year (1485) they held in the cemetery before the doors of the monastery seven autos-da-fe, in which were burned a heretical monk, fifty-two new Christians, forty-eight dead bodies, and twenty-five effigies of fugitives, while sixteen were condemned to perpetual imprisonment and others unnumbered sent to the galleys or penanced with the sanbenito for life. This probably included all of the Judaizers who had property to be confiscated for the benefit of the Holy Office; those not worth plucking were ordered out of the district by Inquisitor-General Deza a few years later.
        Resting on the crown for its authority, with all the resources of the state at its disposal, the Inquisition became in a measure independent of the Holy See - that is to say, of the pope at Rome - and it asked very little advice of the crown. It held, in fact, that the estate was subordinate to the Holy Office. The state admitted the claim so far as causes for heresy were concerned; and the Holy Office needed only to accuse a citizen of heresy, no matter what his offense, to remove him from the jurisdiction of the state altogether. Future collisions between the Inquisition and the crown were to occur over the question whether all crimes were not in the last analysis heresy, and therefore within the jurisdiction of the Holy Office. Every member of the police and all magistrates, indeed, all public officials, took an oath to assist any inquisitor who might come among them to exterminate all whom he should designate as heretics. The inquisitor opening up a new field for the establishment of a tribunal must have the entire population assembled to listen to a sermon by him, after which they were required to swear on the cross and the gospels to help the Holy Office and not to impede it in any manner or on any pretext; and it was heresy, punishable with perpetual imprisonment, for any individual either to refuse to take the oath or to violate it when taken. In this way were the inhabitants of Spain, to the last man, though he might be a heretic, bound to the service of the Inquisition.
The oath whereby the mayor of a city or the viceroy of a colony acknowledged his fealty was framed as follows:
        "Your Excellency swears and promises by your faith and word, as a true and Catholic viceroy, appointed by his Catholic majesty (here occurs the title of the reigning monarch) that you will defend with all your power the Catholic faith, held and believed by the Holy Mother Church Apostolic of Rome, the preservation and increase of it, that you will persecute and cause to be persecuted all heretics and apostates, enemies of the Church, and that you will give and order to be given the favor and aid necessary to the Holly Office of the Inquisition and its ministers, so that heretics, disturbers of our Christian religion, be apprehended and punished in conformity to justice and the sacred canons, without any omission on the part of your excellency, nor exception of any persons, whatever may be their rank or quality." And His Excellency answered: "All this I swear and promise by my faith and word."
The oath taken by the people with raised hands pledged them thus:
"I swear by God and Holy Mary and by the sign of the cross and the words of the holy gospels, that I will favor and defend and assist the holy Catholic faith and the Holy Inquisition, its officers and ministers, and that I will declare and discover all heretics whatsoever, abettors, defenders, and concealers of them, disturbers and obstructers of the said Holy Office, and that I will not give them favor, nor help, nor concealment; but that immediately that I know them I will reveal and denounce them to the senors inquisitors; and should I act differently may God so punish me as those deserve who willfully perjure themselves."
        The sedentary or stationary tribunal originally consisted of three members called "inquisitors," two of them ecclesiastics, and one a lawyer. The lawyer was there to give the illusion of legality to the proceedings by guiding the clerics, who were presumed to know no law. It soon became necessary to add to the number a functionary called the fiscal, or prosecuting officer. The subordinates were receivers of confiscations, alguazils or arresting officers, with others variously denominated notaries, secretaries, and clerks. The familiars, who were numerous, worked on the outside as spies and informers. Often the inquisitors, who were appointed by the king, came from a distance and placed the inhabitants under what the latter could only regard as foreign rule. The principal offices were hereditary, and do not appear to have been forfeitable by reason of crime. Joseph del Olmo, a notary of the Valencia tribunal, was implicated with his son Jusepe in the murder of his fellow-secretary, but he escaped punishment, and on his death was succeeded by his son and accomplice. As one of the inquisitor-generals said, the Inquisition required all sorts of men for its various activities.
        The building, a fortress, castle, palace, or monastery, where the tribunal of the Inquisition sat, furnished lodgings for the inquisitors and for as many others of the officials as could be accommodated. The greater part of the building, evidently, was included in the "secreto", which consisted of the audience-chamber, the secret prisons, and the torture-chamber. Most secret of all was the record-room, an apartment jealously guarded to prevent the abstraction and destruction of records and documents. Torquemada ordered that the secreto should be trebly locked and have three keys, each in the hands of a different official, so that no document might be taken out by one except in the presence of the others. As an exception to the proverb concerning honor among thieves, the money chest was kept in the secreto.
        The audience-chamber of the Inquisition, where the examinations took place in the strictest secrecy, also had three locks and keys. It was accessible only to privileged officials and to persons summoned. Those summoned to identify a prisoner were introduced behind a lattice-work where they could see without revealing themselves to the person accused. Lea, in his "History of the Inquisition in Spain", says: "The inquisitors, of course, were the superior officials of the tribunal. They were the judges, with practically unlimited power over the lives and fortunes and honor of all whom they summoned before them, until they were gradually restricted by the growing centralization of the Suprema (the Supreme Council). To the people they were the incarnation of the dreaded Holy Office, regarded with more fear and veneration than bishop or noble, for all the powers of church and state were placed at their disposal. They could arrest and imprison at will; with their excommunication they could, at a word, paralyze the arm of all secular officials, and, with their interdict (the cessation of religious privileges), plunge whole communities into despair. Such a concentration of secular and spiritual authority, guarded by so little limitation and responsibility, has never under any other system, been entrusted to fallible human nature."
        We know what excesses of oppression and injustice are committed by men clothed with authority to be exercised under the strictest limitations. If we will endeavor to imagine what they would do with all restrictions removed, we shall achieve an imperfect apprehension of the atrocities that characterized the rule of the Inquisitors. The imagination would fail to comprehend them all as developed by those brutal bigots.
        Other and humbler officials of the tribunals were the nuncio, or messenger, who carried dispatches to the Suprema; the portero, who served citations, notices of autos, decrees, etc.; the jailer or alcaide, who was responsible for the safe-keeping of prisoners; the chaplain, who celebrated mass every morning before the inquisitors took up the business of the day; and a physician who rendered to inmates the services made necessary by the filthy condition of the cells, and who was also present before and after "the question" to determine what degree of torture the strength of the victim would enable him to endure or survive, or how long it might be continued, and to revive him in case the punishment had been carried to the verge of death. The doctor, whom, in those days of "pastoral medicine", priests held in light esteem, was expected to serve for nothing or for a small salary, and he did not share the immunities and the emoluments that made the other positions prizes to be coveted by criminals and rascals. Sometimes the medical attendant was a surgeon, and his estate was even lower, for he was a barber as well as leech and sawbones, and very likely served without pay. Women in all conditions, little children, and men, their lives menaced by physical torture and by the insalubrious atmosphere of their unclean cells, had little assistance in the fight against disease and death.
        All of the offices of the Inquisition were for sale. The king profited by controlling the higher ones, and the tribunal peddled the lesser ones, especially the office of familiar, as a means of raising money. In 1641 a familiarship was worth fifteen hundred ducats - $2,100. there were qualifications for the office, and the applicant underwent interrogatories as to his possession of them. If he failed to qualify, the office would cost him more, for he must purchase dispensations for his shortcomings. A good moral character and a clean record were not among the qualities required.
        The "Hermandad" is frequently mentioned in connection with the Holy Office. It was a religious confraternity, the bulk of whose membership was formed by the familiars, but which was open to other officials of the Inquisition. Its organization dates, probably, from the year 1500. it attained its greatest strength about one hundred years later. A large membership free was exacted, and the candidate, whose initiation was attended with ceremonial, made oath to peril his life in executing the commands of the Holy Office, and to denounce all heretics. The organization turned out in a body at the autos-da-fe, its strength, which in some places exceeded five hundred, aiding the Inquisition to impress its power on the people. the Hermandad survived the Inquisition, and Fernando VII of Spain sought its assistance in restoring the departing glories of that institution. He only brought the order into disrepute, and the insignia with which he decorated its members were insulted even by the ecclesiastical authorities.
As if the swarms of familiars in the service of the Inquisition were not enough to harass the subjects of the Spanish monarchs, there was yet another class of spies and detectives, unconnected with the Inquisition officially, who worked for their own hand, on commission. They were called "delators," and they served God, the king, and the holy Catholic faith by furnishing information as to confiscated property which the receiver of the tribunal had failed to locate. Under Ferdinand they were promised sometimes one-third and sometimes one-half of all they should unearth; and sometimes they got it and at other times they did not, for Ferdinand violated as many agreements as he kept, if not more. As with other departments we get a view of pious corruption and rascality in following the development of this branch of the work of pillage carried on by the Inquisition. By collusion between the delator and the receiver, the latter could overlook parcels of confiscated property, and even point out its location. The delator would then report it as a discovery of his own, and share his commission with the receiver. The greed of the king in cutting down commissions greatly reduced the profits of delating, and it did not flourish as a calling after the first quarter of the sixteenth century.
        The royal and ecclesiastical prisons of the centuries covered by the history of the Inquisition were unwholesome and filthy, but in this respect they could hardly have equaled the dungeons of the Inquisitions. Those at Palermo were constructed in subterranean caverns, without light or drainage. At Toledo they must have been as bad, for Mari Rodriquez, in 1552, after lying in one of them or nine months with a year-old baby, appealed to the tribunal for removal, as her cell was utterly dark and she and her companions suffered from sickness. Her pitiless captors replied that what she needed was to discharge her conscience and save her soul. The prisoners died in their cells by scores, and their bodies or effigies were burned at the next jail delivery called an auto-da-fe. In Vallodolid twelve, and in Madrid eight, whose death, probably hastened by torture, had occurred in prison, were burned at a single auto.
        The prisons of Llerena and Jaen in 1506 were described by a contemporaneous memorial as horrible dens, overrun with rats, snakes, and other vermin, where the wretched captives sickened in despair and were starved by the embezzlement of a large portion of the moneys allowed for their support; no physician was permitted to attend the sick, and the attendants treated them like dogs. Lea, who makes allowance for "rhetorical exaggeration," imagines that this description is applicable to Cordova under Lucero, and concludes that matters were not much better at Seville.