THE SPANISH INQUISITION AS AN ALIENIST. 299 



was taken and sold. The total proceeds amounted only to two hun- 

 dred and forty and a half reales, or less than twenty-two ducats, 

 and, after deducting costs, the commissioner handed over to the 

 familiar twenty ducats. The expenses of guards and the journey 

 to Toledo consumed more than half of this ; and when Benito was 

 delivered on February 16th at the carceles secretas, there were but 

 one hundred and five and a half reales left, which were duly en- 

 tered on the prison books. The timid suggestion of the familiar 

 of some remuneration for his time was left unnoticed. 



When on February 18th Benito was examined, he willingly re- 

 peated all the articles of the creed except " suffered under Pontius 

 Pilate, was crucified, dead, and buried, and on the third day arose 

 from the dead," which he obstinately refused to utter. It was 

 easy to entangle him in a theological discussion in which he was 

 led to deny the incarnation and conception by virtue of the Holy 

 Ghost, the birth and. death, and the second advent. The efforts 

 made to convince him of his error of course only hardened him 

 in his belief, and he resolutely accepted the inferences drawn from 

 it until he came virtually to deny the Trinity the three names were 

 but three different designations for the one God. He was ready, 

 he declared, to die in defense of his belief, and all the theologians 

 in France and Spain could not convert him. When the counsel 

 assigned to him by the Inquisition found him immovable, he 

 formally withdrew from the defense in order not to incur the 

 penalties decreed against advocates who undertook to defend her- 

 etics. 



In March the inquisitors began to entertain doubts as to 

 Benito's sanity, and sent to Cobena to obtain testimony respecting 

 it. The evidence was emphatic as to his soundness of mind. The 

 euro, had known him for forty years, and had never entertained a 

 doubt of it ; the alcalde and others who knew him said the same. 

 It was true that for a year or more prior to his arrest he had 

 grown very devout, praying much and frequenting the church ; 

 moreover, on one occasion he had remained shut up in his house 

 for some days, until the alcalde and cur a broke in and found him 

 lying with a rosary in his hand in a trance, from which they 

 aroused him with a rope's end, and he had repeated this in a her- 

 mitage near the town, but in all the relations of life he had shown 

 himself in full posession of his faculties. 



Thus the case went on with the deliberation customary in the 

 Inquisition, until in July it was resolved to make a more thorough 

 investigation as to his sanity. Two learned theologians were de- 

 puted to examine him, who reported him to be crazy : his answers 

 bore no relation to the questions put to him ; he talked of the om- 

 nipotent God and the sweet name of Jesus ; the Virgin was cre- 

 ated without father and mother, and was anterior to Eve ; when 



