It seems that this should take place chiefly if the heretic at the first sitting of the court, or upon his first appearance before it, without awaiting the declaration of his offences, should announce his desire to confess and abjure; and such confession should be made before there is any publication of witnesses or of the matters urged by them against him. ARTICLE XII Should the prosecution of an accused have been conducted to the point of the publication of witnesses and their depositions, but should he then confess his faults and beg to be admitted to reconciliation, desiring formally to abjure his errors, the inquisitors shall receive him to the said reconciliation subject to perpetual imprisonment, to which they shall sentence him--save if in view of his contrition and other attendant circumstances the inquisitors should have cause to consider that the reconciliation of such a heretic is simulated; in such case they must declare him an impenitent heretic and abandon him to the secular arm: all of which is left to the conscience of the inquisitors. “Abandonment to the secular arm” is, as shall presently be considered, the ecclesiastical equivalent to a sentence of death by fire. The term “publication of witnesses” must not be accepted literally. What it really meant will become clear upon reading Article XVI, which was specially framed by Torquemada to modify and limit this time-honoured custom of civil and ecclesiastical courts. ARTICLE XIII If any of those who are reconciled during the period of grace or after its expiry should fail to confess all their own sins and all that they know of the sins of others, especially in grave cases, and should such omission arise not from forgetfulness but from malice, as may afterwards be proved by witnesses, since it is clear that the said reconciled have perjured themselves, and it must be presumed that their reconciliation was simulated, although they may have been absolved let them be proceeded against as impenitent heretics as soon as the said fiction and perjury are discovered. Similarly if any person reconciled at the time of the edict of grace or afterwards, shall boast himself in public in such a manner that this can be proved, saying that he did not commit the sins to which he confessed, he must be deemed impenitent and a simulated convert, and the inquisitors shall proceed against him as if he were not reconciled. ARTICLE XIV