The superior and more impartial tribunal of Madrid quashed the sentence, and Luis de León was not questioned on the rack. It ordered (7th December, 1576) that Fray Luis de León should be acquitted and admonished in the Court of the Holy Office to be careful in future how he treated of matters so dangerous as those implicated in the trial. The sentence pronounced runs as follows: “We find, in accordance with the decrees and on the merits of the said suit, that it is our duty to absolve and we do absolve the said Fray Luis de León from the burden of this trial.” He requested and obtained a declaration that he had been acquitted without penance or stain whatsoever, and was free to exercise all his duties in the University. Luis de León’s health had never been robust, and the hardships of his imprisonment broke it completely. That he survived is probably due to his fortitude and mystic faith. In a dedication to Cardinal Quiroga, he says: “When I was on trial, owing to the intrigues of certain of my enemies, and was branded as suspicious in the faith, and was cut off not only from the conversation but from the intercourse and very sight of men, and was buried in a prison for five years, in the midst of all this I felt a peace and joyfulness of spirit which I often miss now that I am restored to the light of day and to my friends.” These years spent in prison were not passed in idleness. Besides the business of his defence, he wrote several of his poems during this time and his long treatise “Los Nombres de Cristo.” Many know his short poem beginning, “Here falsehood and wrong kept me imprisoned,” and ending with the line so often quoted in Spanish literature, “ni envidiado ni envidioso.” And we may refer to this time of his imprisonment such passages as “No pinta el prado aquí la primavera”-- “Here with the spring the meadows are not gay Nor the clouds golden in the rising sun; No nightingale pours forth its plaintive lay: But here the night is sleepless, and the day Is full of tears and unconsoling sorrow, And the sad present has a sadder morrow....” Or the beautiful poem beginning “Virgen que el sol más pura”-- “Virgin purer than the sun, Glory of mortals, of the heavens light, Whose pity is not less than thy great might,...” Without the enforced leisure of these years we cannot doubt that his “Nombres de Cristo” would never have been written, and Spanish prose would have lacked one of its most luminous and brilliant jewels.