When, however, the offence was formal heresy, entailing reconciliation or relaxation, the cleric was obliged to appear in an auto de fe, like any other culprit. Cases of the kind were common enough in the early period, when many Conversos had entered the Church but, after the thorough weeding out by the Inquisition, they became rare. An essential preliminary was degradation from the priesthood, which was of two kinds, verbal and formal--the former sufficing for cases of reconciliation, while relaxation required the latter. Verbal degradation effaced the orders, but not the priestly _character_ and, in the later period, publicity was often avoided by executing the sentence in the audience-chamber, as in the Toledo cases of Jacinto Vásquez Aranso, a priest convicted of Judaism and condemned to the galleys, December 4, 1688, and of Buenaventura Frutos, cura of Mocejon, sentenced February 19, 1722.[525] Originally the ministration of a single bishop sufficed for verbal degradation, while two were required for formal, until Gregory IX, to facilitate the operations of the Inquisition, decreed that, in cases of heresy, the bishop of the culprit could perform the ceremony, in the presence of some abbots and other learned men, and finally, in 1551, the Council of Trent permitted a single bishop to officiate in all cases of formal degradation, and his vicar-general in verbal degradation.[526] The ceremony of public formal degradation was impressive. The culprit marched in the procession bearing the mitre and sanbenito of relaxation, which were removed on the staging in order that he might be seen in his priestly vestments and tonsure. In the case of Fray Joseph Díaz Pimiento, a relapsed Judaizer, burnt at the Seville auto de fe of July 25, 1720, we are told that an immense crowd was assembled, for no degradation had been witnessed there since 1623. The auto was celebrated in the church of San Pablo but, as soon as Fray Joseph's sentence was read, he was taken by a number of officials to a scaffold in the Plaza de San Francisco, where the Bishop of Lycopolis, the assistant of the archbishop, performed the ceremony. His tongue, the palms of his hands and finger tips were scraped and rubbed with tow, the tonsure was erased by cutting his hair and he was deprived of his orders one by one in the reverse order of their bestowal. He was then handed over to his superiors of the Mercenarian Order, who stripped him of the habit, after which the mitre and sanbenito with painted flames were replaced on him and he was taken to the _juzgado_, or secular court, and delivered to the deputy Assistente of the city to be formally sentenced and conducted to the _brasero_.[527] CHAPTER IV. THE STAKE.