of obtaining the only full proof available.... [The inquisitors'] tasks were not only – or even primarily – to convict the contumacious heretic, but... to preserve the unity of the Church". After the suppression of the Albigensian heresy in southern France in the 13th century, inquisitorial trials diminished in the face of more pressing local needs, and any lingering trials were left to secular authorities. Inquisitorial courts conducted under local episcopacies worked closely with local secular authorities and dealt with local circumstances. Regional control of the inquisitorial process and regional concerns became dominant. By the mid-to-late 14th century papal-commissioned inquisitions had been dissolved in many parts of Europe. The Inquisitions in Spain Antisemitism and the "conversos" Peters writes,"From the mid fifteenth century on, religious anti-Semitism changed into ethnic anti-Semitism, with little difference seen between Jews and conversos except for the fact that conversos were regarded as worse than Jews because, as ostensible Christians, they had acquired privileges and positions that were denied to Jews. The result of this new ethnic anti-Semitism was the invocation of an inquisition to ferret out the false conversos who had, by becoming formal Christians, placed themselves under its authority". It was a heated mixture of this racial and religious prejudice against the conversos that ignited what later became known as the "Spanish Inquisition." The main heresy prosecuted during the period of inquisitions in Spain was the secret practice of Judaism among some conversos. (The number of conversos secretly practicing what of Judaism they could is unknown, but recent scholarship has tended to document the existence of more of them, and at later dates, than previously assumed.) From the establishment of the inquisitions up to 1530, it is estimated that approximately 2,000 "heretics" were turned over to the secular authorities for execution in Spain. There were so few Protestants in Spain that widespread persecution of Protestantism was not physically possible. In the 1560s, a little over one hundred people in Spain were convicted of Protestantism and were turned over to the secular authorities for execution. From 1560 to 1599, two hundred more people were accused of being followers of Martin Luther. "Most of them were in no sense Protestants...Irreligious sentiments, drunken mockery, anticlerical expressions, were all captiously classified by the inquisitors (or by those who denounced the cases) as 'Lutheran. Procedure and torture Evidence and witness testimony was gathered before an arrest was made. Once an