The rack is too well-known to need describing here, having in its time been used in all European countries. Cruel as it was, it was perhaps one of the least cruel engines of torture that have been employed. * * * * * It was required by law that any confession extracted under torture should afterwards be ratified by the prisoner. This was one of the prescriptions of Alfonso XI in the Partidas code. It recognizes that a man might be driven by pain to say that which is not true, and therefore it forbids the courts to accept as evidence what might be declared under torture. Therefore on one of the three days after the question had been applied--as soon, presumably, as the prisoner was sufficiently recovered to attend--the prisoner was brought once more into the audience-chamber. His confession, reduced to writing by the notary, was placed before him, and he was invited to sign it--the act being necessary to convert that confession into admissible evidence. If he signed, the proceedings now ran swiftly and uninterruptedly to their end. If he refused to sign, repudiating the statements made, the inquisitors proceeded upon the lines laid down by Torquemada in Article XV of his “Instructions” to meet the case. * * * * * Pegna warns inquisitors against delinquents who feign madness to avoid the torture. They should not, he says, delay on that account, for the torture may be the best means of ascertaining whether the madness is real or simulated.[114] Finally let it be added upon this gruesome subject that it was not only the accused who was liable to be put to the question. A witness suspected of falsehood, or one who had lapsed into contradictions in the course of his evidence, might be put to torture _in caput alienum_.[115] CHAPTER XIII THE JURISPRUDENCE OF THE HOLY OFFICE--THE SECULAR ARM The comparatively light sentences imposed upon those who came forward to abjure heresies which they were suspected of harbouring, and upon those who submitted to canonical purgation to cleanse them of “evil reputation,” have already been considered. It remains to be seen how the Holy Office dealt with _negativos_--_i.e._ those who persisted in refusal to confess a first offence of heresy or apostasy after their guilt had been established to the satisfaction of the court--and with _relapsos_--_i.e._ those who were convicted of having relapsed into error after once having been penanced and pardoned. Offenders in either of these two classes were to be abandoned to the secular arm--the ecclesiastical euphemism for death by fire. The same fate also awaited impenitent heretics and contumacious heretics. He who after having been convicted by sufficient witnesses persisted in denying his guilt should, says Eymeric, be abandoned to the secular arm upon the ground that he who denies a crime which has been proved against him is obviously impenitent.[116]