Various expedients were adopted in order to replenish the royal treasury. Amongst others, a Bull of 1527 gave the King the right of nominating the heads of all monasteries in his realm, with all the pecuniary advantages which this privilege involved. But Dom Joäo soon found that he could not make much from this source without scandalising his people and incurring the enmity of the Church. There was however a source of revenue, yet untapped, which was not open to this objection: namely, the novos cristaos. If he could proceed against them as was done in Spain, a lucrative harvest was ready to hand. Accordingly, early in 1581 the King instructed Bras Neto, his agent in Rome, to apply to the Holy See for a Bull establishing the Inquisition in Portugal on the lines of that of Seville, and urged him to use every means in his power to this end, since it would be for the service of God and of himself, and for the good of his people.
Bras Neto's task proved to be one of considerable difficulty. One Cardinal, the Florentine Lorenzo Pucci, declared roundly that no Inquisition was needed, and that it was only a plan to fleece the Jews; and his nephew, Antonio, who succeeded him as Cardinal, proved little more tractable. The Jews themselves had always been influential with the Curia, and they resisted strenuously. Bras Neto found that, for his purpose, heresy was a better name to conjure with than Judaism; and he did not fail to press the necessity for the Inquisition as a safeguard against it. At length he succeeded, and on December 17, 1531, the Bull Cum ad nihil was signed, which provided for the inauguration of the Inquisition at Lisbon. The reasons given were that some of the novos cristaos were returning to the rites of their Jewish forefathers, that certain Christians were Judaising, and that others were following "the Lutheran and other damnable heresies and errors" or practising magical arts. These reasons were, as Herculano has said, "in part false, in part misleading, and in part ridiculous": there were no Lutherans in Portugal; the novos cristaos had as yet given no trouble there; and the Christians of Portugal were no more inclined to Judaism, and less inclined to magic than those of other parts of Europe. But the allegations had served their purpose. On January 13, 1532, a brief was dispatched to Frey Diogo da Suva, the King's confessor, expediting the Bull and nominating him as Inquisitor-General; and it looked as if the question was ended. As a matter of fact it was hardly begun. For now began a series of intrigues and counter-intrigues on the matter, now one side getting the best of it and now the other. The brave knight Duarte de Paz, who was the agent for the Jews, worked for them with a zeal and vigour restrained only by the fact that he was a Portuguese subject. The King more than once procured laws which placed the Jews at the mercy of his subjects, and then had to withdraw them. Money, promises, threats were freely expended on both sides. Herculano calculates that between February, 1531, when the
