He was allowed to go on infecting the minds of his penitents with his obscenity, until his death a few years afterwards, in happy ignorance that any complaint had been made against him.[205] When there were so many reasons to deter women from denunciation, it is easy to understand how small a proportion of the cases of solicitation reached the Inquisition. In 1695, Fray Luis Aritio, a Recollect, was accused to the tribunal of Valencia by two women and, on his trial, he confessed to ten.[206] [Sidenote: _IS A TECHNICAL OFFENCE_] The most available means of overcoming this repugnance was to render denunciation a binding obligation on the woman. To effect this as far as possible, when, in 1571, the clause in the Edict of Faith was suspended, the Suprema issued an edict requiring confessors, under pain of excommunication, not to absolve penitents confessing to having been solicited, unless they would promise to denounce the offender.[207] It was admitted, however, that there were degrees of danger which would release the woman from the obligation, and casuists endeavored to define this with their usual acuteness and lack of unanimity. One learned writer, about 1620, even laid down the general principle that natural law is superior to positive law, and the preservation of reputation belongs to the former, while the obligation to denounce belongs to the latter.[208] The Roman Inquisition, in 1623, made a concession to this weakness, by providing that, when noble or modest women could not be induced to denounce, there might be granted to their confessors faculties to absolve them, on condition that, when the cause of fear was removed, they would fulfil the duty, but this permission apparently was abused for, in 1626, inquisitors and bishops were warned to grant such faculties only when there were serious grounds.[209] That danger was really sometimes incurred would appear from some fragmentary cases in the Valencia records. In one of these, a baffled confessor threatens his penitent with death if she betrays him; in another a priest, on finding himself denounced, similarly threatens the confessor who had been the medium of denunciation, unless he will write that the women had withdrawn their statements.[210] The Spanish Inquisition, however, made no allowances. It was apparently to put an end to the refinements of casuistry that when, in 1629, it distributed to the tribunals the brief of Gregory XV, it granted to all inquisitors a faculty to punish confessors who taught that penitents were not obliged to denounce such solicitors.[211] To render this more effective, in 1713, it ordered that all women bringing charges of solicitation should be interrogated whether any confessor had neglected to impose on them the obligation of denunciation, and if so his name, residence and all the circumstances were to be ascertained, so that he could be called to account.[212]