Numerous relations are extant, in print and in MS., of the great _autos publicos generales_, giving in more or less detail the elaborate ceremonial which developed itself, in the effort to render impressive these crowning manifestations of the piety that regarded, as the highest service to God, the extermination of those who persisted in worshipping him according to their own consciences. These show that fashions varied somewhat with time and place; they give the point of view of the spectator, and we may preferably take as our guide a memoir of the seventeenth century showing the internal machinery, according to the custom of Toledo, drawn up for the instruction of succeeding inquisitors.[632] The minuteness of the rules prescribed shows what importance was attached to rendering the spectacle imposing and to making manifest the subordination of the civil power, while the care taken to designate the exact place of every man or body of men indicates how fruitless was the authority granted to the tribunal in these matters to prevent the inveterate quarrels as to precedence. At the great Madrid auto of 1632, the Franciscans, indignant at the position assigned to them in the procession, after lively altercation, retired sullenly to their convent, for which the Suprema prosecuted them. These undignified squabbles were so much a matter of course that our author, in describing the report to be made to the Suprema, assumes that a place must be reserved in it for them, and for the reasons which governed the tribunal in its decisions. When cases sufficient for an auto have accumulated, the tribunal reports them to the Suprema, which orders it to be held. Then the inquisitors determine on a feast-day, which should be at least a month off, in order to give sufficient time for the preparations. Word is then sent to the corregidor and the dean of the cathedral chapter to convene their respective bodies at nine o'clock the next morning, to receive a communication from the Inquisition and, at the appointed hour, some of the higher officials, with familiars, announce to them and to the bishop the expected celebration. Then in due time mounted familiars and notaries, with drums and trumpets and clarions and the standard of the Inquisition, move in procession through the streets, and at stated places a bell-man rings a bell and the town crier proclaims "Know all dwellers in this city that the Holy Office of the Inquisition, for the glory and honor of God and the exaltation of our holy Catholic faith, will celebrate a public auto de fe at such a place on such a day." [Sidenote: _PREPARATIONS_]