organized tribunal, and the bishops were ready to perform its duties. When, in 1545, Las Casas, as Bishop of Chiapa, asked the royal Audiencia of Gracia á Dios to sustain him in his episcopal jurisdiction against his recalcitrant flock, he makes special reference to cases of the Inquisition as included in it and, soon after this, in Peru, Juan Matienzo says that the bishops exercised inquisitorial jurisdiction and that, when any attempt was made to appeal from them, they would elude it by claiming that they were acting as inquisitors.[391] That this was recognized at home is manifested by Prince Philip, in 1553, extending to the Indies the Concordia of Castile regulating the _fuero_ of familiars, as though there was a regularly organized Inquisition throughout the colonies.[392] In the auto of 1555, Gerónimo Venzon, an Italian, was reconciled for Lutheranism and it was followed by one in 1558, when María de Ocampo was reconciled for pact with the demon.[393] There was also an Englishman named Robert Thompson, condemned for Lutheranism to wear the sanbenito for three years, and a Genoese, Agostino Boacio, for the same crime, to perpetual prison and sanbenito. These two latter were shipped to Seville to perform their penance, but Boacio managed to escape at the Azores. In 1560 there were seven Lutherans reconciled, concerning whom we have no details; in 1561 a French Calvinist and a Greek schismatist and in 1562 two French Calvinists.[394] This shows that the episcopal Inquisition was by no means inert, and a sentence rendered by the Ordinary of Mexico, in 1568, indicates that its severity might cause the installation of the regular Holy Office to be regarded rather as a relief. A Flemish painter, Simon Pereyns, who had drifted to Mexico, in a talk with a brother artist, Francisco Morales, chanced to utter the common remark that simple fornication was not a sin and persisted in it after remonstrance. That the episcopal Inquisition was thoroughly established is indicated by his considering it prudent to denounce himself to the Officiality, which he did on September 10, 1568. In Spain this particular heresy, especially in _espontaneados_, was not severely treated, but the provisor, Esteban de Portillo, took it seriously and threw him in prison. During the trial Morales testified that Pereyns had said that he preferred to paint portraits rather than images, which he explained was because they paid better. This did not satisfy the provisor who proceeded to torture him when he endured, without further confession, three turns of the _cordeles_ and three jars of water trickled down his throat on a linen cloth. This ought to have earned his dismissal but, on December 4th, he was condemned to pay the costs of his trial and to give security that he would not leave the city until he should have painted a picture of Our Lady of Merced, as an altar-piece for the church. He complied and it was duly hung in the cathedral.[395]