In spite of these impressive formalities, I think it doubtful whether, after the first furious rush of persecution was past, the extreme penalty of relaxation, for reincidence after abjuration _de vehementi_, was customary. As a rule, in the later periods, inquisitors rather endeavored to avoid relaxation and, while they were callous, they were not apt to be unnecessarily cruel. I have not happened to meet with such a case, while I have found more than one in which the canons were not observed. In fact, a learned writer of the second half of the seventeenth century argues elaborately, with the citation of many authorities, to show that reincidence after abjuration _de vehementi_ does not incur the punishment of relapse, despite the penalties expressed in the formula, and this would appear to have been tacitly accepted, for a custom arose of specifying in the sentence whether or not the abjuration should entail the penalty. Thus, in 1725 at Cuenca, Doctor Zapata, accused of Judaism, was required to abjure _de vehementi_ with liability to relaxation, while in 1794, at Toledo, Damaso José López de Cruz, for heretical propositions, was sentenced to similar abjuration without such liability.[329] There was another distinction between the two forms of abjuration, for those who abjured _de vehementi_ were subject to the disgrace of appearing in an auto de fe and of wearing a sanbenito _de media aspa_--or with one band of color across it, before and behind.[330] The Instructions of 1561 state that, when there is semi-proof, or such indications that the accused cannot be acquitted, there are three remedies, compurgation, torture or abjuration; but this is scarce correct, for those who succeeded in compurgation were always, and those who overcame torture were generally, required to abjure. The Instructions add that abjuration, whether for light or vehement suspicion, is rather a measure to inspire fear for the future than a punishment for the past, and therefore it is usually accompanied with pecuniary penance.[331] In fact, it was only in trifling cases, or in suspensions, that abjuration was not associated with much severer penalties. This was inevitable in the large class of offences which, by a strained construction, inferred suspicion of heresy. In these, when guilt was proven, it received its appropriate punishment, perhaps of scourging or the galleys, and the abjuration was a mere formality to satisfy the artificial ascription of heretical belief. In cases of suspicion of real heresy, abjuration, whether _de levi_ or _de vehementi_, was a necessary adjunct to the punishment. Thus in the Toledo auto of February 7, 1694, Luis de Vargas, for "suspicions of Judaism," was sentenced to abjure _de levi_, to pay a fine of two hundred ducats and to be exiled for six years from various places. So, in 1715, at Toledo, the Carmelite Fray Francisco Martínez de Salazar, "for crimes vehemently suspect of heresy," appeared in the