The reign of terror having spread to the realm of Capitan Gonzola de Avora, that official wrote: "As for the Inquisition, the method adopted was to place so much confidence in the Archbishop of Seville (Inquisitor-General Deza) and in Lucero and Juan de la Fuente that they were able to defame the whole kingdom, to destroy, without God or justice, a great part of it (that is, of the kingdom of Spain), slaying and robbing and violating maids and wives, to the great dishonor of the Christian religion… As for what concerns myself, I repeat what I have already written to you, that the damages which the wicked officials of the Inquisition have wrought in my land are so many and so great that no reasonable person on hearing of them would not grieve."
        Lucero retained his horde of rapacious officials, and gratified his criminal instincts by aiming at high game. On the death of Queen Isabella he began making demonstrations looking to the denunciation of Hermando de Talavera, archbishop of Granada and former confessor to the queen. Talavera, as in the case of many Spanish families, had a strain of Jewish blood in his veins, but was as orthodox as the pope. In some way he had incurred the hostility of Lucero, and that worthy resolved on revenge. He (Lucero) had in his custody a woman whom he had tortured on the charge of being a Jewish prophetess and maintaining a synagogue in her house. This woman he threatened with further torture unless she should testify to what she had seen in Talavera's palace. On her replying that she knew nothing about the matter, he proceeded to tell her what she had seen there, and this was it: An assembly was there held composed of Talavera and his household, with others, who agreed to traverse the kingdom, preaching and prophesying the advent of Elias and the Messiah. To escape torture the woman prisoner agreed to testify to the truth of these fabricated circumstances, as they had been dictated to her; and her testimony furnished a basis for the prosecution of Talavera and his family. If Lucero desired supporting testimony he could obtain it in the same manner as the woman's had been secured.
        The attack began by publicly and offensively arresting Talavera's nephew, the dean and officials of his church, during service and in his presence, and his sister, his nieces, and his servants, all of whom were forced by torture to give testimony against him. But about this time, 1506, Ferdinand was succeeded by Philip, who had been "seen" by the Conversos and was deeply impressed by their pecuniary arguments. As a result Lucero fell into disrepute, the Inquisition weakened, and the Suprema, including Inquisitor-General Deza, disclaimed all responsibility for the acts of Lucero, addressing a letter to the people of Cordova in which it is said that the accusations brought against that person seemed incredible, "for even highwaymen, when robbing their victims, spare their lives, while here not only the property but the lives of the victims were taken and the honor of their descendants to the tenth generation." Of course, coming from the Suprema and the Inquisitor-General, these were maudlin sentiments, uttered with hypocritical intent to deceive, for the authors of them knew that the Inquisition had never been conducted on any other lines than those followed by Lucero. Don Diego Deza, inquisitor-general, was compelled to subdelegate irrevocably to Bishop Guzman of Catania power to supersede Lucero and revise his acts, and a papal brief placed in Guzman's hands all the papers and prisoners in Cordova, Toro, and Valladolid.
        Lucero endeavored to destroy the evidence against him by burning his prisoners, and had gone so far as to announce and auto-da-fe, when the massacre he had planned was prevented by orders from the sovereigns.
        The future at this period looked dark to the inquisitors, but the sudden death of Philip, in September, 1506, lifted the cloud. Inquisitor-General Deza, ignoring Queen Juana, who exercised no authority, promptly revoked Guzman's commission to supersede Lucero, and restored to power that individual whom in his letter to the Cordova chapter he had characterized as worse than a highwayman. Then the citizens of Cordova rose up, and, declaring that they would rather sacrifice life and property than submit longer to such intolerable oppression, broke into the alcazar where the Inquisition held its seat, seized a number of the officers and liberated the prisoners, Lucero saving himself by flight.
        Inquisitor-General Deza, supported by Ferdinand, then in Naples, demanded the arrest and punishment of all who had been concerned in the uprising, and when they sent a messenger to the queen he threw him into prison. As for Pope Julius II, who knew from Deza's own statement that Lucero was somewhat below a horsetheif in character, he acted promptly against the Cordovans, declaring, in a letter to his friend Deza, that "the Jews, pretending to be Christians, who had dared to rise against the Inquisition, must be exterminated root and branch; no labor must be spared to suppress this pestilence before it should spread, to hunt out all who had participated in it, and to exercise the utmost severity in punishing them, without appeal, for their crimes."
        The once deposed and denounced Lucero was again in the saddle. The liberated prisoners, who had been in the custody of kinsmen and friends, were surrendered to him, and he was ready to continue the persecution of the aged Talavera; for Ferdinand, to vindicate Lucero, had placed the archbishop on trial. Talavera's case went to the pope, who acquitted him eight days after he was dead. As he had no wealth it was not worth while to judge him as a heretic; his family had already been plucked; he had no children, and he had already vacated his office by dying, so that Ferdinand, Deza, and Lucero might fill it as they chose.
        But here the career of Inquisitor Lucero ended. Not even the friendship of Ferdinand could longer keep him in office, and in his fall he brought with him Inquisitor-General Deza, who was superseded by Ximenes. Lucero was carried in chains to Burgos, where a court composed of a large number of church dignitaries sat upon his case. The verdict rendered by this court declared that the synagogues, assemblies, and missions of Judaism were mere inventions of eh prisoner. The prisoners he had employed as witnesses were released, and their testimony to fictitious crimes was ordered to be expunged from the records. The houses that he had torn down as conventicles of heresy were ordered rebuilt, though it would appear that they were not restored to their former owners, but remained the property of the Inquisition. Lucero's trial dragged on for two years, when, under royal pressure, the Suprema dismissed him with no other punishment than the imprisonment he had undergone, and he retired to lead the simple life in the canonry he had obtained when he and Calcena plundered Juan Munoz, the archdeacon of Castro.
        Lea reflects: "That Lucero was and exceptional monster may well e admitted, but when such wickedness could be safely perpetrated for years and be exposed and ended only through the accidental intervention of Philip and Juana (king and queen of Spain), it may safely be assumed that the temptations of secrecy and irresponsibility rendered frightful abuses, if not universal, at least frequent. The brief reign of Philip led other sorely vexed communities to appeal to the sovereigns for relief, and some of their memorials have been preserved. One from Jaen relates that the tribunal of that city procured from Lucero a useful witness whom for five years he had kept in the prison of Cordova to swear to what was wanted. His name was Diego de Algeciras, and, if the petitioners are to be believed, he was, in addition to being a perjurer, a drunkard, a gambler, a forger, and a clipper of coins. This worthy was brought to Jaen, and performed his functions so satisfactorily that the wealthiest conversos were soon imprisoned.
        "Two hundred wretches crowded the filthy jail, and it was requisite to forbid the rest of the Conversos from leaving the city without a license. With Diego's assistance, and the free use of torture on both accused and witnesses, it was not difficult to obtain whatever evidence was desired. The notary of the tribunal, Antonio de Barcena, was especially successful in this. On one occasion he locked a young girl of fifteen in a room, stripped her naked, and scourged her until she consented to bear testimony against her mother.
        "A prisoner was carried in a chair to the auto-da-fe with his feet burned to the bone; he and his wife were burned alive, and then two of their slaves were imprisoned and forced to give such evidence as was necessary to justify the execution.
        "The cells in which the unfortunates were confined in heavy chains were narrow, dark, humid, filthy, and overrun with vermin; their sequestered property was squandered by the officials, so that they starved in prison while their helpless children starved outside."
        The Inquisition became an instrumentality through which real estate speculators could make profitable deals. A memorial from Arjona, near Jaen, related that evil men of that place conspired to report their fellow citizens as heretics, so that they might buy their property cheap when it came to be confiscated and sold. Their activity resulted in bringing the inquisitors to Arjona. A house-to-house canvass followed. Women were arrested and forced in prison to give evidence against their neighbors. The suspects were arrested; their property was sequestrated, their houses locked and their children turned into the street, while the officials carried off their prisoners, who were thrust into the already overcrowded jail at Jaen. Later the confiscations were sold at auction, and the rascals who has planned the raid bought them at a bargain.
        At Llerena there was a tribunal which for many years had found little to do. Then came a new judge, one named Bravo, who had been trained for the work under Lucero. He summarily arrested a large number of wealthy persons, whom he stripped of their fortunes, and he provided for his relations by appointing them to positions in which they could appropriate the sequestrated property. Being remonstrated with for brutal treatment of his prisoners, he replied that "he who had placed them there (presumably Inquisitor-General Deza) desired that they should all die off, one by one." The appeals of their friends to Queen Juana were in vain, and this parcel of one hundred or more professing Christians were sacrificed in a huge holocaust to gratify the rapacity and cruelty of the church.
        As we know, the arresting officers of the Inquisition possessed unrestricted powers of search and seizure, and to interfere with them was to become a subject for the tribunal. The sole protection against them was assassination, which was more than once attempted, though without the success that the populace could have wished. King Ferdinand, who had enjoyed the revenues of persecution, gave most emphatic orders for the protection of the persons of the inquisitors; and when he died in January, 1516, his last words called for eh blood of heretics, which the Inquisition transformed to a stream of gold emptying into his treasury. This is the injunction which his testament, executed the day before his death, laid upon his grandson and successor, Charles V:
        "As all other virtues are nothing without faith, by which and in which we are saved, we command the said illustrious prince, our grandson, to be always zealous in defending and exalting the Catholic faith, and that he aid, defend, and favor the church of God, and labor with all his strength to destroy and extirpate heresy from our kingdom and lordships, selecting and appointing throughout them ministers, God-fearing and of good conscience, who will conduct the Inquisition justly and properly for eh service of God and the exaltation of the Catholic faith, and who will also have great zeal for the destruction of the sect of Mohammed."
        The exhortation may be considered as much a defense of his own course as a guide for his successor. Men of bloody lives have often hoped to obscure their own crimes by instigating others to deed equally villainous.
        Inquisitor-General Ximenes, in whom the governing power was lodged with the death of Ferdinand and the absence of Charles, was a reformer to the extent that he would not tolerate private "graft", or the conduct of the Inquisition for the personal and pecuniary advantage of its subordinate officials. Corruption had been protected by Ferdinand so long as he got his share of the proceeds, and his protection had hitherto made it impossible for Ximenes to reach the guilty parties. Now he made use of his authority, and attempted to bring under the ax the neck of Calcena, Ferdinand's secretary in all inquisitorial matters, who had been the accomplice of Lucero in embezzling the proceeds of confiscations. But Ximenes survived Ferdinand only a year, and his reformatory work was undone by his successor, Inquisitor-General Adrian, who made Calcena secretary of the Suprema at the same time that Charles accepted him as royal secretary to the reunited Inquisition. Adrian, who thus rewarded corruption in office, was elevated to the papacy in 1522.