Yet, notwithstanding the canons that prohibited mercy to the relapsed and withheld, even from the inquisitor-general, the power to pardon, cases, as has been stated above (p. 148), are not infrequent, in which the relapsed were admitted to a second reconciliation. Even as early as 1486, we hear of Micer Gonzalo de Santa María, of the great converso family of Burgos, who was thrice penanced by the Inquisition and who finally died, not at the stake, but in gaol, under a sentence of perpetual prison.[606] Some scattering cases of penances subsequent to reconciliation occur at Barcelona between 1491 and 1502, mingled with others in which the full penalty of relaxation was inflicted, though no reasons are alleged for the distinction.[607] In 1511, at Cuenca, Leonor and Juana Rodríguez who had been reconciled in time of Grace, were reconciled again for fresh delinquencies.[608] In the later period, instances of the same benignity occur more frequently, although accompanied with punishment severe enough to show that the trivial evidence required to prove persistency was far exceeded. Thus, in the Toledo auto of December 27, 1654, Gaspar de los Reyes was sentenced, as a relapsed observer of the Law of Moses, to abjure _de vehementi_, to six years of galleys and a fine of a thousand ducats, while his wife, Isabel Rodríguez, and his mother, María López, both relapsed, had the same sentence, save that exile replaced the galleys and the fine was six hundred ducats each. A more unusual case was that of Manuel Rodríguez Moreira, who was relaxed for relapse in the Toledo auto of September 8, 1704, after rejecting an offer of mercy. There is even an instance, December 8, 1681, of a sentence of reconciliation, _citra p[oe]nam relapsi_--without the punishment of relapse--but this is explained by the tender age of the culprit, Diego de Castro, who was but ten years old.[609] [Sidenote: _RELAPSE_] Remembering the prudent intimation given to inquisitors that sometimes fines were more productive than confiscation, the heavy mulcts inflicted on the relapsed who were admitted to mercy, suggest that possibly there may have been financial reasons, in special cases, for benignity. We have seen the number of executions for relapse in the Mallorquin autos of 1691. Besides these there were twenty-two cases of those who had been reconciled in 1679 who were not relaxed but penanced in various ways, including fines ranging from one to five hundred libras, and aggregating in all sixty-five hundred libras.[610] It is difficult not to recognize in this a speculative exercise of rigor or mercy.