As described in an account of the Madrid auto de fe of 1632, this ceremony was imposing. The penitents to be reconciled were brought before the inquisitor-general who was presiding. While they kneeled before him he read a short catechism, comprising the creed with some additions, to each question of which they answered "Yes, I believe." Then the secretary recited the abjuration, in which they followed him. The inquisitor-general then pronounced the exorcism and the customary prayers and the royal chapel chanted the Miserere, during which the chaplains of the Inquisition struck the penitents with rods on the shoulders. After this the inquisitor-general recited the customary verses and prayers and the royal chapel sang a hymn, while the black cloth was removed from the cross, which had been covered as a sign of mourning, and the inquisitor-general concluded the solemnities with a hymn.[406] Superficially, there is nothing formidable in this reception of a wandering sheep back into the fold, but the serious aspect of reconciliation, justifying its characterization as a punishment, lay in the penalties which were virtually inseparable from it, and were customarily included in the sentence--imprisonment, sanbenito, confiscation and disabilities, with occasionally scourging and the galleys, some of which we have already considered while others will be treated hereafter. There was further the fact that the canons pardoned the heretic but once. If, after reconciliation, he was guilty of reincidence, there was no mercy for him on earth, although the Church in its kindness, would not close the portals of heaven on him and, if truly contrite, would admit him to the sacraments, although it would not spare him the stake.[407] The crucial question of relapse, however, will be considered in the next chapter and meanwhile it should be said that the Spanish Inquisition did not always enforce this cruel precept. In the later period second reconciliations were by no means infrequent, and, even in the earlier time, men sometimes shrank from the holocausts which the strict enforcement of the rule would have caused amid a population terrorized into suddenly forswearing their ancestral faith. In Majorca, under the Edict of Grace, there were three hundred and thirty-eight reconciliations, August 18, 1488, followed by ninety-six on March 26, 1490. Soon after this an Edict of Mercy was published, under which there were reconciled a second time no less than two hundred and eighty-eight of the previous penitents. One of these, Antonia, wife of Ferrer Pratz was even reconciled a third time, June 28, 1509. Scattering cases of second reconciliations can also be found elsewhere.[408] [Sidenote: _RECONCILIATION_]