It was apparently the first time that an inquisitor had been thus publicly put on trial for official malfeasance and the opportunity was improved to render the spectacle a solemn one, fitted not only to satisfy the national interest felt in the case but to magnify the office of the accused by the scale of the machinery employed to deal with him. Lucero was carried in chains to Burgos, where the court was in residence, and was confined in the castle under strict guard. Ximenes assembled a _Congregacion Católica_, composed of twenty-one members besides himself, including a large portion of the Royal Council, the Inquisitor-general of Aragon and other inquisitors, several bishops and various other dignitaries--in short, an imposing representation of the piety and learning of the land.[568] After numerous sessions, presided over by Ximenes, sentence was rendered July 9, 1508, and was published August 1st, at Valladolid, whither the court had removed, in presence of Ferdinand and his magnates and a great concourse assembled to lend solemnity to this restoration of the honor of Castile and Andalusia, which had been so deeply compromised by the pretended revelations extorted by Lucero. This weighty verdict declared that there were no grounds for the asserted existence of synagogues, the preaching of sermons and the assemblies of missionaries of Judaism or for the prosecution of those accused. The witnesses--or rather prisoners--were discharged and everything relating to these fictitious crimes was ordered to be expunged from the records. To complete the vindication of the memory of the victims, Ferdinand ordered the rebuilding of the houses which had been torn down under the provisions of the canon law requiring the destruction of the conventicles of heresy.[569] By implication, the acquittal of the prisoners convicted Lucero, but all this was merely preliminary to his trial. [Sidenote: _REACTION--ESCAPE OF LUCERO_]