Evidently the Inquisition was beginning to regard the offence with a compassionate eye, and it would be superfluous to adduce more cases of its tenderness. Still the regular scheme of punishments was nominally held in force, and is duly recapitulated by an old inquisitor about 1640, who includes fines for secular priests and adds that the galleys might be inflicted, and that those who relapsed deserved them. Abjuration _de vehementi_ was never imposed and, although the papal constitution permitted relaxation, this was never used, though it is well that there is a faculty for it in extreme cases.[278] Even the fines here alluded to were not heavy. Another authority of about the same date says that, if the priest is rich, he may be mulcted in from six to ten thousand maravedís.[279] The heaviest pecuniary penalty that I have met was imposed, in 1744, on Fernández Puyalon, cura of Ciempozuelos, who was fined in half his property, but here solicitation was complicated with heretical propositions, which, as we have seen, greatly enhanced guilt.[280] As regards the galleys, I have met with but one case of their employment--that of the Licentiate Lorenzo de Eldora, assistant cura in Torre de Beleña, tried in Toledo in 1691. He had already been punished for the same offence in Granada, and had relapsed, which explains the severity of the sentence suspending him from orders and banishing him from a number of places for ten years, of which the first five were to be spent in the galleys.[281] That this punishment was reserved for relapse may be inferred from a case which, about the same time, was occupying the Barcelona tribunal and which certainly deserved it. The Mercenarian Padre Estevan Ramoneda was accused in 1690, but it was not until 1694 that a second denunciation enabled action to be taken. After many evasions, in ignorance of the exact charge, he confessed to much more than was required. Since entering a convent, in 1660, as a boy of fifteen, his life had been one of sexual abominations, almost warranting the belief that the monasteries of the time were outposts of Sodom. The number of women whose testimony was obtained was only eight, but among these were some with whom extraordinary obscenities were practised in church. He had no defence to offer and, in his sentence, September 11, 1696, all reference to his unnatural crimes of all kinds was carefully omitted. He was deprived of confession, had a circular discipline in his convent, and was recluded for four years in the house of N. Señora del Olivar, from which he was allowed to return in October 1700.[282] This was considered sufficient punishment for a brute whose life had been spent in corrupting men, women and beasts.