audience-chamber with a sanbenito _de media aspa_, in the presence of twelve priests; he abjured _de vehementi_, was sternly reprimanded and threatened, and sentenced to a long list of penalties, including deprivation of functions, reclusion for six years in a convent and a circular discipline in the Carmelite house of Toledo.[332] On this composite sentence the consulta de fe had evidently exhausted its ingenuity, and the abjuration was merely a formal necessity to justify the rest. Yet, while abjuration in itself can scarce be termed a punishment it was, even when only _de levi_, an infliction of no little severity, in consequence of the infamy which it entailed, as we have seen in the Villanueva case, where the victim and his kindred struggled for so many years in Rome to have it removed. EXILE. [Sidenote: _EXILE_] Frequent allusions above to exile as occurring in sentences indicate how customary a feature it was in the penal system of the Inquisition. By itself, or in combination with other penalties, it was an unfailing resort in offences that did not incur the graver punishment of imprisonment. It could be varied indefinitely, to suit the peculiarities of each case, and the tribunals exercised the widest discretion in its employment. In its usual form it designated certain places and a fixed number of leagues around them, which the penitent was forbidden to enter. The list of proscribed localities as a rule included Madrid, or rather the royal residences, the seat of the tribunal, the dwelling-place of the culprit, if this was not comprised in the others, and any other towns, sometimes amounting to four or five, where he had been known in his guilty career. Although this was a convenient resource to the tribunal, it was a somewhat irrational penalty, the severity of which could hardly be guessed at, for while it might be scarce more than an inconvenience to one offender, it might be the destruction of a career to a merchant established in business, or to a professional man with an assured _clientèle_. Considerations of this kind, however, rarely influenced the tribunals and, in the Toledan record of 1575-1610 we find exile included in a hundred and sixty-seven sentences. The length of exile was always specified, and varied from some months to a life-time, but it usually was a term of a few years. Sometimes it was divided into two portions, the first _preciso_ or absolute, the second _voluntario_ or dependent upon the will of the tribunal--apparently as an incentive to amendment. A variant of this occurs in the case of Diego de Toro, sentenced for bigamy at Toledo in 1652, to four years of exile absolutely and four years more which he was to fulfil whenever the tribunal should see fit to order it, thus holding it over him indefinitely.[333]