We shall see that occasionally tribunals abused the use of torture, but the popular impression that the inquisitorial torture-chamber was the scene of exceptional refinement in cruelty, of specially ingenious modes of inflicting agony, and of peculiar persistence in extorting confessions, is an error due to sensational writers who have exploited credulity. The system was evil in conception and in execution, but the Spanish Inquisition, at least, was not responsible for its introduction and, as a rule, was less cruel than the secular courts in its application, and confined itself more strictly to a few well-known methods. In fact, we may reasonably assume that its use of torture was less frequent, for its scientific system of breaking down resistance, in its long-drawn procedure, was more effective than the ruder and speedier practice of the secular courts where, as we are told by Archbishop Pedro de Castro of Granada, it was notorious that no one confessed except when overcome by torture.[6] In this respect, the comparison between the Spanish and the Roman Inquisition is also eminently in favor of the former. We shall have occasion presently to see the limitations which it placed on the use of torture, while in Rome it was the rule that all who confessed or were convicted in matters of faith were tortured for the further discovery of the truth and the revelation of accomplices. In addition to this there were many classes of cases in which torture was employed by Rome to extort confession and in which it was forbidden in Spain--those involving mere presumption of heresy, such as solicitation, sorcery, blasphemy etc. Moreover in Rome the _in arbitrio judicum_ applied not only to the kind and duration of the torture but also to its repetition.[7] Spanish writers on practice, therefore, were justified in claiming for their own tribunals a sparing use of torture unknown in Italy, while, as regards its severity, the frequency with which in the trials we find that the accused overcame the torture would indicate that habitually it was not carried to extremity, as it so frequently was in the secular courts. No torture-chamber in the Inquisition possessed the resources of the corregidor who labored for three hours, in 1612, to obtain from Diego Duke of Estrada confession of a homicide--the water torture, the mancuerda, the potro, hot irons for the feet, hot bricks for the stomach and buttocks, garrotillos known as bone-breakers, the trampa to tear the legs and the bostezo to distend the mouth--and all this was an every-day matter of criminal justice.[8]