The edict is a singular medley of politics and religion, illustrating the dual character of the Inquisition of the period and the enormous advantage to the Government of possessing control over the ecclesiastical establishment, whereby an attack on the civil power could be made to assume the appearance of an assault on the faith. All the heretical utterances, discredited nine years before by the action of the tribunal, are put forward as absolute facts. It is impiety that has led him to raise the standard of revolt and to seduce numbers of unhappy dupes to follow him. In the inability to reach him personally, he is summoned, under pain of excommunication, to appear for trial within thirty days, in default of which he will be prosecuted _in rebeldía_ to definitive sentence and burning in effigy if necessary. All who support him or have converse with him and all those who do not denounce those who favor his revolutionary projects are declared guilty of the crime of fautorship of heresy and subject to the penalties decreed for it by the canons. When to this are added the proclamations of excommunication issued against the insurgents by the Archbishop of Mexico and the bishops of the disturbed districts, it will be seen how powerful was the restraining influence exercised by the Church over a population trained to submission, and how intense were the passions that braved its anathema.[537] In fact, the hatred of the creoles and the Indians for the _Gachupines_, or Spaniards, was so bitter that four-fifths of the native clergy espoused the cause of the insurgents, in spite of the censures of the Church, and questions of faith became inextricably involved in the contest between the factions. To the loyalists, Hidalgo became a heretic or indeed a heresiarch, and the confessional was so largely used by them that the insurgents became guilty of a new heresy, by asserting that confession to a Gachupin priest was invalid. They found great comfort, moreover, through their belief in the protection of Our Lady of Guadalupe, who was universally revered, and especially by the Indians, as the sovereign patroness of Mexico. On the fateful 16th of September, when Hidalgo was marching on San Miguel el Grande at the head of his little band of insurgents, in passing through Atolonila, he chanced to take an image on linen of the Guadalupe Virgin and give it to one of his men to carry as a banner. It was adopted by the other bands as they rose and it became the standard of the insurrection, usually accompanied with an image of Fernando VII and of the eagle of Mexico, and the inscription “_Viva nuestra Señora de Guadalupe! Viva Fernando VII! Viva la America y muere el mal gobierno!_” Second in rank as a tutelary power of the insurrection was Our Lady of Puebla and against these the loyalists pitted a new-comer, Our Lady of los Remedios, who was denounced as a Gachupina by the natives. There is a subject of study for the student of