Jewish (pre-conversion) period. This system distinguished a kind of aristocracy, called (literally "high ears"), from the rest of the group, ("low ears"). Along with other distinctions based on religion, professions, and parentage this configured a tapestry of alliances and avoidances among surnames, which had a great influence on endogamistic practices of the period. Origins of the Xuetes The second persecution (1673-1695) The reasons why the Inquisition returned to act against the judaizing Majorcans after some 130 years of inactivity, and in an era in which the inquisition was already in decline are not very clear: the preoccupation of decadent economic sectors before the ascent and commercial dynamism of the converts, the resumption of religious practices in community, rather than limited to a domestic context, a new growth of religious zeal, and the judgment against Alonso López could have been influential factors. The precedents In July 1672, a merchant informed the Inquisition that some Jews of Livorno had made inquiries about the Jews of Majorca with the names "Forteses, Aguilons, Martins, Tarongins, Cortesos, Picons". In 1673, a ship with a group of Jews expelled from Oran by the Spanish Crown and headed for Livorno, called in at Palma. The Inquisition arrested a youth of some 17 years named Isaac López. López had been born in Madrid and baptized with the name Alonso, and as a small boy fled to the Berber lands with his parents. Alonso refused to renounce Judaism and was burnt alive in 1675. His execution provoked a great commotion among the "judaizers." At the same time he was also the object of great admiration for his persistence and courage. The same year López was arrested, some servants of the informed their confessor that they had spied upon their masters and observed them participating in Jewish ceremonies. In 1674, the prosecutor of the Majorca tribunal sent a report to the Supreme Inquisition in which he accused the Majorcan Crypto-Jews of 33 charges, among them their refusal to marry ("natural Christians") and their social rejection of those who did so; the practice of secrecy; the giving of Old Testament names to their children; the identification with their tribe of origin, and the arrangement of marriages as a function of that fact; the exclusion in their homes of the iconography of the New Testament and the presence of those of the Old; contempt for and insults toward Christians; exercising professions related