Fray Alonso might safely thus attack the children of Loyola in Spain, but he made a fatal error when his zeal induced him to carry the war into Portugal. In the following year, 1576, he addressed memorials to the Portuguese ecclesiastical authorities, ascribing to the Jesuits all the Illuminism that afflicted Spain; they taught, he said, that their contemplation of the Passion of Christ was rewarded with the highest spiritual gifts, including impeccability, with the corollary that carnal indulgence was no sin in the Illuminated, while in reality their visions and revelations were the work of demons, whom they controlled by their skill in sorcery. The Jesuits, however, by this time were a dominant power in Portugal; Cardinal Henry, the inquisitor-general, transmitted the memorials to the Spanish Inquisition, with a request for the condign punishment of the audacious fraile. It was no more than he had openly preached and repeatedly urged on the Suprema, but the time was fast approaching for the absorption of Portugal under the Castilian crown, and Cardinal Henry was to be propitiated. Fray Alonso was forced to retract, and was recluded in a convent, but this did not satisfy the Cardinal, who asked for his extradition, or that the matter be submitted to the Holy See, when the opportune death of the fraile put a happy end to the matter.[55] Yet, in Spain, Fray Alonso exerted a decisive influence on the relations of the Inquisition to mysticism and, before this unlucky outburst of zeal, he had the satisfaction of seeing the indifference of the Llerena tribunal excited to active work. In 1576, while preaching in that city, he said that he had heard of persons who, under an exterior of special sanctity, gave free rein to their appetites. On this, an imprudent devotee, named Mari Sanz, interrupted him, exclaiming "Padre, the lives of these people are better and their faith sounder than your own" and, when he reproved her, she declared that the Holy Spirit had moved her. This was a dangerous admission; she was arrested, and her confessions led to the seizure of so many accomplices that the tribunal was obliged to ask for assistance. An experienced inquisitor, Francisco de Soto, Bishop of Salamanca, was sent, who vigorously pushed the trials until he died, January 29, 1578, poisoned, as it was currently reported, by his physician, who was long detained in prison under the accusation. How little the sectaries imagined themselves to have erred is seen in the fact that one of them, a shoemaker named Juan Bernal, obeyed a revelation which directed him to appeal to Philip II, to tell him of the injustice perpetrated at Llerena and to ask him why he did not intervene and evoke the matter to himself--hardihood which earned for him six years of galley-service and two hundred lashes.