A few instances will indicate how the tribunals sometimes used their wide discretion in adapting to any given case what was deemed an appropriate penalty. It is true that when Valencia, in 1539, made Fray Torres, a priest, appear in a public auto de fe, with a bridle in his mouth and a pannier of straw on his back, the Suprema rebuked it and forbade such eccentricities for the future.[353] So when, in 1568, Inquisitor Morales reported that, during his visit to San Sebastian, he had condemned certain offenders to have sermons preached at their expense, the Suprema mildly remarked that this was a novelty.[354] In an auto de fe at Llerena, in 1579, there was a negress named Catalina, the slave of a man of Zafra. It was doubtless through consideration of his interests that she was spared the corporal chastisement visited on her accomplices, but there was a distinct invasion of his rights in a prohibition to him to sell her without licence from the inquisitors.[355] In 1607, at Valencia, a single witness accused María Tubarri, a Morisca midwife, of using Moorish ceremonies in baptising infants, and of circumcising the males; the proof, against her denial, was not thought sufficient to justify torture and she was required only to abjure _de levi_, but she was deprived for life of practising her profession.[356] There was wisdom, if a trifle arbitrary, in a sentence at Toledo, in 1685, on Lucas Morales for blasphemy, for it included, among other penalties, a prohibition to gamble--a sensible provision against relapse, for gaming was recognized as the most prolific source of blasphemy.[357] There was the same latitude in vindictive as in deterrent punishments. At Valladolid, from 1635 to 1637, there were several Judaizers convicted of maltreating an image of Christ. The consultors voted for relaxation, but the Suprema approved the decision of the inquisitors that they should have the right arm nailed to a stake in the form of a cross, while their sentences were being read in an auto de fe.[358] Less symbolical and still more original was a spectacle devised for the Mexican auto of December 7, 1664, where one of the penitents was stripped to the waist, while two Indians smeared him with honey and covered him with feathers, in which guise he was made to stand in the sun for four hours on the staging.[359] Even recruiting for the army was not beneath the dignity of the tribunal as when, in 1650, Toledo condemned Andrés de Herrera Calderon, for blasphemy, to serve for four years in the campaigns against Portugal and Catalonia, where doubtless he enriched his vocabulary of expletives.[360] There evidently was no defined limit to the power of suiting the penalty to the inquisitorial conception of the offence, and the tribunals made ample use of their prerogative. CHAPTER III. HARSHER PENALTIES. THE SCOURGE.