The rage of the barbarians was especially directed against the priests, who had so often poured forth anathemas against the religion which the Moslems loved, and who, as their spiritual directors, had so often called them to account for offences against the religion which they abhorred. At Coadba the priest was stretched out before a brazier of live coals until his feet, which had been smeared with pitch and oil, were burned to a cinder. His two sisters were compelled to witness the agonies of their brother, which were still further heightened by the brutal treatment which he saw them endure from their tormentors.[46] Fire was employed as a common mode of torture, by way of retaliation, it may be, for similar sufferings inflicted on the Infidel by the Inquisition. Sometimes the punishments seemed to be contrived so as to form a fiendish parody on the exercises of the Roman Catholic religion. In the town of Filix the pastor was made to take his seat before the altar, with his two sacristans, one on either side of him. The bell was rung, as if to call the people together to worship. The sacristans were each provided with a roll containing the names of the congregation, which they were required to call over, as usual, before the services, in order to see that no one was absent. As each Morisco answered to his name, he passed before the priest, and dealt him a blow with his fist, or the women plucked his beard and hair, accompanying the act with some bitter taunt expressive of their mortal hate. When every one had thus had the opportunity of gratifying his personal grudge against his ancient pastor, the executioner stepped forward, armed with a razor, with which he scored the face of the ecclesiastic in the detested form of the cross, and then, beginning with the fingers, deliberately proceeded to sever each of the joints of his wretched victim![47] But it is unnecessary to shock the reader with more of these loathsome details, enough of which have already been given, not merely to prove the vindictive temper of the Morisco, but to suggest the inference that it could only have been a long course of cruelty and oppression that stimulated him to such an awful exhibition of it.[48] The whole number of Christians who, in the course of a week, thus perished in these massacres--if we are to receive the accounts of Castilian writers--was not less than three thousand![49] Considering the social relations which must to some extent have been established between those who had lived so long in the neighbourhood of one another, it might be thought that, on some occasions, sympathy would have been shown for the sufferers, or that some protecting arm would have been stretched out to save a friend or a companion from the general doom. But the nearest approach to such an act of humanity was given by a Morisco, who plunged his sword in the body of a Spaniard in order to save him from the lingering death that otherwise would await him.[50]