In the Auto of May 7 fourteen men and nine women were burnt. Amongst the former was a Canon of Toledo who was accused of horrible heresies, and who, writes Orozco, had confessed under torture to abominable subversions of the words of the Mass. Instead of the prescribed formula of the consecration, he had stated that he was in the habit of uttering the absurd and almost meaningless gibberish--“Sus Periquete, que mira la gente.” On the following day there was held a supplementary Auto, especially for the purpose of dealing with deceased and fugitive heretics, conducted with a ceremony of an unusual and singularly theatrical order, which is not so much typical--as are the other Autos described--of what was taking place throughout Spain, as indicative of a morbid inventiveness on the part of the Toledan inquisitors. On the scaffold usually occupied by the accused a sepulchral monument of wood had been erected and draped in black. As each accused was cited by the notary, the familiars opened the monument and drew out the effigy of the dead man dressed in the grave-clothes peculiar to the Jews. To this dummy of straw the detailed account of his crimes and the sentence of the court whereby he was condemned as a heretic were solemnly read out. When all the condemnations had thus been proclaimed, the effigies were flung into a bonfire that had been kindled in the square; and together with the effigies went the bones of the deceased, which had been exhumed to that end. After that the next Auto of importance was held on July 25, 1488, when twenty men and seventeen women were sent to the stake, with a supplementary Auto upon the morrow in which they burnt the effigies of over a hundred dead and fugitive heretics. And so it goes on, as recorded by the licentiate Sebastian Orozco, and cited by Llorente[143] and Fidel Fita.[144] From now onwards the burnings increase in number. Indeed, all edicts of grace having expired, and no new ones being permissible, sentencing to the flames--through the medium of the secular arm--and to perpetual imprisonment becomes the chief business of the Inquisition in Toledo and elsewhere. The _sanbenitos_ of the burnt were preserved in the churches of the parishes where they had lived. They were hung in these churches as banners won in battle are hung--trophies of victory over heresy. CHAPTER XVIII TORQUEMADA AND THE JEWS During that first year of the Inquisition’s establishment in Toledo, twenty-seven persons there convicted of Judaizing were burnt and 3,300 were penanced. And what was taking place in Toledo was taking place in every other important city in Spain.