Don Ferdinand Valdes was the successor of Cardinal Loaisa in the archbishopric of Seville, and the office of inquisitor-general. At the time of his appointment he was bishop of Siguenza, and president of the royal Council of Castile, after having been successively a member of the grand College of St. Bartholomew de Salamanca, of the Council of Administration for the archbishopric of Toledo, for the Cardinal Ximenez de Cisneros, visitor of the Inquisition of Cuença and of the Royal Council of Navarre, a member of the Council of State, canon of the metropolitan church of Santiago de Galicia, counsellor of the Supreme Inquisition, bishop of Elna, Orensa, Oviedo and Leon, and president of the Royal Chancery of Valladolid. So many honours could not render him insensible to the mortification of not being a cardinal like his predecessors, and of seeing Bartholomew Carranza elevated to the see of Toledo. This was the true cause of his cruel persecution of Carranza. The Pope approved the nomination of Valdés in January, 1547, and he took possession of his office in the following month. Valdés displayed an almost sanguinary disposition during his administration. It led him to demand from the Pope the power of condemning Lutherans to be burnt, even though they had not relapsed, and had desired to be reconciled. I shall here make known the most illustrious of the victims sacrificed before the abdication of Charles V., as it is necessary to make a separate article for the events of that nature under the reign of Philip II. Among the condemned persons who appeared in the _auto-da-fé_ of Seville in 1552, was Juan Gil, a native of Olvera, in Aragon, and a canon in the metropolitan church of that city; he is better known by the name of Doctor _Egidius_. He was first condemned, as violently suspected, to abjure the Lutheran heresy, and to be subjected to a penance; but four years after his death, in 1556, he was condemned, and, as having relapsed, his body was disinterred, and burnt with his effigy; his memory was declared infamous, and his property confiscated, for having died as a Lutheran. Raymond Gonzales de Montes was his companion in prison, but succeeded in escaping, and was burnt in effigy. In a work written on the Spanish Inquisition, he has introduced several particulars relating to the life of _Juan Gil_. He informs us that Egidius studied theology at Alcala de Henares, and there obtained the title of Doctor. He acquired so great a reputation, that he was compared to Peter Lombard, to St. Thomas d'Aquinas, to John Scott, and other theologians of the greatest merit. His talents induced the chapter of Seville to offer him unanimously the office of preacher to the cathedral. Egidius had very little talent for preaching, and the canons soon repented of having appointed him.