As the Suprema gradually assumed control over the tribunals, there grew up certain more or less recognized rules of procedure. Thus, if there was evidence of heretical utterances, and the accused confessed them but denied intention, he was to be tortured; if this brought confession of intention, he was to be reconciled with confiscation in a public auto as a formal heretic; if he overcame the torture he had to abjure _de vehementi_ in an auto, with scourging, vergüenza, exile etc., according to his station and the character of the propositions. This, we are told, was merciful, for the common opinion of the doctors was that, if the propositions were formally heretical, the offender should be relaxed, in spite of his denying intention. Mercy was carried even further for, if ignorance was alleged with probable justification, the accused was not tortured nor condemned as a heretic, but abjured _de levi_, with discretional penalties. There was moreover, as we have seen, a vast range of propositions in which heresy was only inferential, characterized as scandalous, offensive to pious ears etc., for which abjuration _de levi_ was considered sufficient, with spiritual penances.[314] In this enumeration of penalties there is no allusion to fines, which, however, were by no means neglected. In 1579, for instance, the Bachiller Montesinos, in defending an adultress, put in an argument of cynical ingenuity to prove that she had committed no sin. This was transmitted to the Toledo tribunal, whose calificadores found in it four heretical propositions besides a citation from St. Paul amounting to heretical blasphemy. Montesinos threw himself on the mercy of the tribunal, wept and wrung his hands, protested that he must have been out of his senses, owing to old age, and offered every excuse that he could suggest. He escaped with abjuration _de levi_, six months' suspension from his functions as an advocate, and a fine of eight thousand maravedís. Many similar cases could be cited from the Toledo record, but two more will suffice. In 1582, the Bachiller Pablo Hernández denounced himself for having, in the heat of discussion, been led on to say that in canonizations the pope had to rely upon witnesses who might be false and therefore it was not necessary to believe that all so canonized were saints. He was sentenced to abjure _de levi_, to pay six thousand maravedís, and to have his sentence read in his parish church while he heard mass. From this he appealed to the Suprema, which remitted the humiliation in church, but thriftily increased the fine to twenty thousand maravedís. In 1604 the tribunal had a richer prize, in an old German named Giraldo Paris, a resident of Madrid who seems to have been a dabbler in alchemy. He was accused of saying that the Old Testament was a fable, that St. Job was an alchemist, the Christian faith was a matter of opinion and much more of the same kind. The evidence must have