Lope de Vera was a most undesirable convert, for his case could not fail to arouse afresh the dread of infection and to stimulate the Inquisition to increased activity. Yet such stimulus was scarce needed, for it was incessantly vigilant and was troubled with few scruples when on the track of a suspect. An illustrative case offers itself when, in September, 1642, the tribunal of Galicia wrote to Valladolid that a prisoner on trial testified that Antonio López, in Manzaneda de Tribes, had practised Judaism, and it asked for his arrest. An Antonio López was readily found in Valladolid and was promptly thrown in prison, September 16th. He denied the accusation; no other testimony could be found against him and his trial dragged on until, February 3, 1644, there was a vote _in discordia_. The case went to the Suprema, which ordered further inquiry to be made of the Galician tribunal, when it was discovered that the prisoner had never been in Manzaneda. This should have been conclusive but, when another vote was reached, August 13th, it was again in discordia, and the Suprema again ordered investigations which proved fruitless. A third inconclusive vote was taken in 1645, and then the Suprema ordered the arrest of a second Antonio López, a painter, who had been discovered in Sanabria. He was arrested in December, 1645, and easily proved himself to be an Old Christian of strict observance, but to no purpose, for the blundering consulta de fe voted in discordia, April 30, 1646, and the Suprema ordered him to be exposed to threatened torture. He was stripped and bound on the trestle, but his nerves did not give way and he steadily asserted his orthodoxy. The resources of the baffled tribunal were now exhausted and, on July 14th, the Suprema ordered the cases to be suspended, when the two Antonio López were released--not acquitted--after one had been in prison nearly four years, and the other had been subjected to the agony of impending torture, merely because they bore a name which chanced to be mentioned in a distant tribunal as that of a Judaizer. Not quite so hard was the case of Gaspar Rodríguez, arrested by the tribunal of Valladolid, October 4, 1648, on the strength of advices from Cuenca, and discharged October 2, 1649, because it was tardily recognized that he did not correspond with the description of the real culprit.[808] [Sidenote: _ACTIVITY OF PERSECUTION_]