On 16 August 1341, as he entered the bishop of Barcelona's imposing stone palace to sign yet another arrest warrant, the Dominican inquisitor Bernat de Puigcercós gave every appearance of being a very powerful man indeed. With nearly a half century of service in the order to his credit, he had already achieved a great deal, and showed no indication of wanting to slow down any time soon. He was known in the most exalted of secular circles, both comital and royal, throughout his native Catalonia. Benefiting from an impressive elite education, including a stint of higher theological studies at Paris, he had taught in some of the Aragonese province's leading convent schools. He had been a conventual prior and a provincial vicar in that same province, before ruling as provincial prior of Aragon for nearly a decade (1324–1333), longer than any previous incumbent. He was a prolific writer whose opinions were valued on everything from apocalyptic speculation to the finer points of high finance and economics. He had also served for many years as a papally appointed inquisitor, and the weight of his verdicts had fallen heavily on Beghards and Judaizers alike. And now, on this late summer day, the venerable inquisitor's attention was focused on a Jew named David de Ripoll – accused of abducting his own daughter and granddaughters to prevent their forcible baptism at the hands of a converted son-in-law. Given both his previous track record and his current eagerness to prosecute members of the Jewish community, this did not bode well for the accused.