Acquittals being virtually unknown,[415] nearly every case brought before the Holy Office involved the sentence of one penalty or another. The word ‘penalty’ is not technically exact. Strictly speaking, the Inquisition was concerned not with crimes and punishments, but with spiritual errors and penances.[416] Thus, when the tribunal consigned some one to prison, its formula ran that the man in question shall betake himself to prison and there penance himself on a diet of bread and water. No confessor will regard the mere expression of contrition as sufficient in itself; nor will the genuine penitent be satisfied. Penance is the outward and visible sign of sincere repentance, and an earnest of future amendment of life. All the penalties inflicted by the Inquisition had this expiatory character.[417] Some of them were of quite a trivial description. The penitent ‘suspect’ might simply be enjoined to hear Mass on so many Sundays and festivals, or—if his commercial practice suggested unsoundness of doctrine on the subject of interest—to undertake not to exact usury in the future or to promise to restore ill-gotten gains.[418] But, as a rule, the penance was a much more serious matter. One of the most frequent was that of pilgrimages.[419] These were of various kinds. In the earlier days of the Inquisition the penitent[420] was often sent to Palestine on crusade against the infidel. But after the failure of St. Louis’ expedition and the fall of the Kingdom of Jerusalem, the crusade ceased to find a place among inquisitorial penances. Ordinary pilgrimages were classified as _greater_ or _less_. The former took the penitent out of his own country and involved long travelling; the latter were to shrines in his own country. Thus for a Frenchman Rome, the shrine of St. Thomas at Canterbury, Cologne, St. James of Compostella, Constantinople would come under the first category; Paris, Boulogne, Bordeaux, Vienne under the latter. The undertaking of the longer journeys might be a most severe imposition. The penitent had to abandon his work and set out upon travels which might well occupy many months and even years. He probably had to endure much real suffering, fatigue, and privation. In the case of the crusade, and probably in other pilgrimages as well, there was an element of personal danger. In the pilgrim’s absence what happened to his family and dependents? In many instances one supposes that on his return after a long absence he must have found his occupation gone. Those condemned to make pilgrimages received from the inquisitor letters which explained their itinerary and might give instructions as to certain additional penances they had to undergo, while they at the same time served as safe-conducts, of which there might be much need in localities where popular feeling was strong against heretics. Pilgrims were required to bring back with them written attestations, signed by the chaplains at shrines they