294 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



period the endurance of torture without confession was held to 

 purge away the evidence against the accused and to entitle him to 

 an acquittal, but it was otherwise in the Inquisition. The torture 

 had been merely to gratify the curiosity of the judges and to 

 justify the foregone conclusion of his burning. Therefore, when 

 they now examined him and adjured him to tell the truth, and he 

 answered by referring to his previous statements as the truth, 

 they had him carried back to his cell, and coolly assembled their 

 consultores to pronounce on him a second sentence of relaxation 

 to the secular arm for burning. This was duly submitted to the 

 Supreme Council, which postponed its answer until November 

 24th. Then it said that it held him to be insufficiently tortured, 

 but that for the present he should be kept in prison and carefully 

 watched to determine his sanity. He was to be confined with per- 

 sons who could be relied upon and sworn to secrecy, who should 

 observe him and report. 



Another cell was accordingly selected for him, in which were 

 two friars and a physician awaiting trial, who were duly sworn 

 and instructed. So matters continued for a year, with occasional 

 examinations of his fellow-prisoners. The friars pronounced him 

 a heretic and an impostor ; the physician a sane man subject to 

 delusions. Finally, in November, 1623, another consultation was 

 held to vote upon his case, and he was unanimously sentenced to 

 burning. To this at last the Supreme Council assented, but desired 

 the execution to take place in Madrid, where the sacrilege had 

 been committed. He was to be sedulously kept in ignorance, and 

 to be secretly conveyed to the capital. There, on the Plaza 

 Mayor, January 21, 1624, there was a solemn auto dafe celebrated, 

 and he was burned alive as an impenitente negativo. 



If this was expected to strike salutary terror into the hearts of 

 sacrilegious heretics and to instill respect for the Venerable Sacra- 

 ment, it signally failed of its purpose. In less than six months, on 

 Friday, July 5, 1624, Madrid was again thrown into excitement 

 by a double sacrilege that had every appearance of organized 

 premeditation. During the celebration of morning mass in the 

 church of San Felipe, a man named Kene' Perrault, who was 

 kneeling near the altar, suddenly leaped forward at the elevation 

 of the Host, and crying out, " Why do you elevate this idol of 

 Christ, so that the people commit idolatry and offend God?" 

 he snatched it from the hand of the priest and scattered it in 

 fragments on the floor, while with a sweep of his arm he over- 

 turned the cup that was standing on the altar. At the same mo- 

 ment a similar scene was enacted at the church of Santa Bar- 

 bara, by a man named Gabriel de Guevara. It was with diffi- 

 culty that the offenders were rescued from the summary venge- 



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