moreover, as we have seen, unless degraded for formal heresy, were shielded from the scandal of publicity in the audience chamber. The _auto particular_, or private auto, was often celebrated in a church, to which the spiritual and civil authorities were not invited, but where such portion of the public as could find room were at liberty to be present. More frequently it was held in the _sala_, or audience-chamber, and here again there was a distinction, for the sentence defined whether it should be with open doors or closed and, in the former case, the bell was often tolled in order to invite a curious crowd of spectators. Even the apartments of the senior inquisitor were sometimes used in this manner, as when, March 23, 1680, three alguaziles of the corregidor of Toledo, for maltreating the purveyor of the tribunal, were sentenced in the apartments to various terms of exile. When nuns were the culprits, the _autillo_ was customarily performed in their convent, as in the case, August 8, 1658, of Sor Josefa de Villegas, for superstitions and sorceries, who was sentenced to various penances, through the grating of the Augustinian nunnery of San Torquato, in presence of the nuns and, on February 13, 1685, Sor Dionisia de Rojas was sentenced in the choir of the Franciscan house of Santa Isabel, in the presence of the superior and four elderly sisters.[643] As financial distress grew more and more acute, in the seventeenth century, the tribunals shrank from the heavy expenses attendant on the elaborate demonstrations of the great public autos which, however gratifying to their pride, bore too heavily upon their diminishing resources, exposed as they were to the royal exactions. In Barcelona, there would seem to have been no public auto between 1627 and the revolt of 1640; in Valladolid, none between 1644 and 1667. In Toledo one was held, after prolonged consideration, January 1, 1651, in which the number of culprits shows that it relieved the prisons of a long accumulation; it was the last public auto celebrated in Toledo, and there was none even in a church, between 1656 and 1677.[644] Seville appears to have been less hampered and celebrated public autos generales in 1631, 1643, 1648, 1656, and a most impressive one in 1660 at which less fortunate tribunals unloaded their convicts, for there were seven relaxations in person, twenty-seven in effigy and fifty-two penitents, but this appears to be the last of its kind there.[645] [Sidenote: _CONTRIBUTORY AUTOS_]