had prayed eight thousand souls out of purgatory, thirty thousand at another time, then twenty-two thousand and finally all that were left. In general his relations with women are unfit for description, and he shrewdly had a revelation that all who gave him alms would be saved. His devotees were not confined to the ignorant, for he was received in the houses of the principal ladies of Seville and men of high distinction admitted him to their tables. He received less than his deserts when he was sentenced to a hundred lashes and life confinement in a convent or hospital, where he was to work for his board and to pray daily a third of the rosary.[156] In its persistent and fruitless efforts to stamp out this pestilence, the Inquisition was beginning to adopt severer treatment, as in the case of Sor Lorenza Murga of Simancas, a Franciscan tertiary, who for sixteen years enjoyed great reputation in Valladolid. She had ecstasies and revelations whenever wanted, and her little house was an object of pilgrimage, when she would throw herself into a trance at the request of any one. It was a profitable pursuit, for she rose from abject poverty to comfortable affluence. Her arrest, April 29, 1634, caused no little excitement, and it was whispered that she had been detected in keeping two lovers besides her confessor. In her audiences she persistently maintained the truth of her revelations, constantly adding fresh marvels, till the inquisitors tortured her smartly, when she confessed it to be all an imposture. Her career was cut short with two hundred lashes and exile for six years from all the places where she had lived.[157] The experienced inquisitor whom I have so often quoted tells us, about this time, that these impostors were very common; that there were rules for teaching them their trade and, as it was so prejudicial and so discreditable, they must be punished with all rigor. He mentions a case at Llerena, where the woman persisted in asserting the truth of her revelations and miracles, until she was tortured, when she confessed the fraud and was condemned to scourging and reclusion, at the discretion of the tribunal, with fasting on bread and water.[158] Yet one cannot help feeling sympathy for María Cotanilla, a poor blind crone, sentenced in 1676, by the Toledo tribunal, to a hundred lashes and to pass four years in a designated place, where she could support herself by beggary, reporting herself monthly to the commissioner.[159]