The tendency to shorten the term was irresistible; the conservatives had to yield and, by the middle of the sixteenth century, Simancas tells us that perpetual prison was customarily defined to be three years, if the penitent was repentant, while those condemned to irremissible prison were usually released after eight years.[446] So purely technical did the term "perpetual prison" become that inquisitors saw nothing incongruous in such sentences as "perpetual prison for one year" or "for six months," which are constantly met with, as well as "perpetual prison" followed by terms of exile. The real infliction was therefore much less severe than it appears on the records, and when periods longer than eight years were intended, they were specified, as when Salvador Razo, for Molinism, was sentenced, in the Granada auto of July 4, 1745, to ten years, of which the first five were to be spent in the galleys--a hardship remitted on account of his infirmities.[447] [Sidenote: _DURATION OF IMPRISONMENT_] The terms of imprisonment were frequently shortened, moreover, sometimes, from humane motives, but more often from financial considerations, for the dispensing power in this, as in the other penalties, was a source of profit. Thus Mayor García, a Morisca of Daimiel, condemned in the Toledo auto of September 21, 1550, to perpetual prison for six months, on January 13, 1551, petitioned the tribunal for release "as was customary with others," saying that her husband would pay what the inquisitors should demand. The matter was promptly arranged with Inquisitor Alonso Pérez for four ducats, to help to build the staging for an auto de fe--a somewhat heavy payment for two months' relief.[448] This dispensing power was the subject of a prolonged struggle between the tribunals and the Suprema. In the early period, at Barcelona, the former endeavored to secure it by the device of discretional sentences, which inquisitors could curtail or extend at will, and this was recognized in a letter of the Suprema, October 4, 1499, authorizing them, under such sentences, to dispense with the imprisonment but not with the sanbenito.[449] In 1513, however, Ximenes forbade this without his consent and the repetition of the order in 1514 and 1516 shows that it was difficult of enforcement.[450] In spite of this when the Valencia tribunal, February 25, 1540, condemned five Moriscos to "habit and prison for as long a time as we shall determine," the Suprema insisted that, when discretion was specified, it must alone be that of the inquisitor-general, a mandate that had to be repeated more than once, even as late as 1592.[451]