After the reading of the sentence was concluded, recantation did not avert the death-penalty, as in the elder Inquisition, but it was modified to garrotting or strangling before burning, for it was received as a principle that a Christian was not to be burnt alive. This was recognized at least as early as 1484, when in a Saragossa auto a culprit is recorded as strangled before burning "porque murio reducido."[562] In addition to this, the traditions of the Old Inquisition introduced at first a certain irregularity in practice, and it did not follow that delivery to the secular arm inevitably inferred execution. In a list of _quemados y relaxados_ at Ciudad Real, there are several cases, up to 1523, of those who were "relaxed" and yet had penances of various kinds, showing that they had recanted after delivery to the magistrate and yet were spared the death-penalty.[563] In fact, it continued for some time to be a matter of debate, in which opinions were divided, whether a man who had been returned by the secular judge to the inquisitors, because he recanted and promised full confession, could be again relaxed for execution. The older doctors inclined to the merciful view and Simancas tells us of such a case in Cuenca, which was referred to the Suprema, when many experts held that the culprit could not be again relaxed, for he had made a true confession, and the secular arm had renounced its rights. Even as late as 1640 an inquisitor says that the rigor of executing a man who repents after delivery to the magistrate is not customary in Spain.[564]