The Inquisition regarded the sentence of the magistrate as a mere perfunctory formality. The doctors had pointed out conclusively that heresy was a crime over which he had no jurisdiction, and if he were to assert it he would render illusory the sentence of the bishop or inquisitor.[544] Consequently, in preparation for an auto de fe, the tribunal, in advance, gave to the secular authorities a list of the condemnations so that the sentences might be drawn up and the wood, the stake and the garrotes be prepared for immediate execution.[545] It is true that thrift induced a certain amount of equivocation when, in 1579, the royal alguaziles of Saragossa claimed payment from the confiscations for their services and for the cost of the wood, and Philip II emphatically rejected the demand as unexampled, adding that the inquisitors could not order such payment without irregularity, and that the executions were in virtue of the sentences of the secular judges and not of the inquisitors.[546] This, however, was the merest quibble. In _autos generales_, the magistrates were asked to be present to receive the convicts and "execute on them the penalties imposed by the canon law of the kingdom." In _autos particulares_, held in churches which must not be polluted by judgements of blood, the Suprema pointed out, in a consulta of April 7, 1690, that the secular judges could wait at a designated place, when it sufficed that a notary informed them in writing that "N. has been declared a heretic by sentence of the Holy Office," simultaneously delivering the convict, when they must accept this assertion, and without delay execute the sentence, unless they wish the Holy Office to prosecute them as fautors of heretics and impeders of its free jurisdiction. At the same time the judges are to continue as usual to pronounce the formal sentence.[547] Still, the _estilo_ of the Inquisition required the ghastly comedy of asking mercy. In the official formula of the sentence the clause announcing relaxation to the civil magistrate proceeds "whom we ask and charge most affectionately to treat him benignantly and mercifully." In sentences of the absent and dead, where the effigy alone was abandoned to the secular arm, there is no prayer for mercy, as there was no effusion of blood to create irregularity.[548] In the rigid formalism of inquisitorial procedure, after the Suprema had established its minute control, it is safe to assume that this official formula was universally followed. [Sidenote: _RESPONSIBILITY OF THE CHURCH_]