Six mortal hours, Orozco informs us, were consumed in that ghastly business,[142] for the Court of the Holy Office must in all things proceed with stately and pompous leisureliness, with that calm equanimity enjoined by the “Directorium”—simpliciter et de plano—lest by haste it should fall into the unpardonable offence of irregularity.
Not until noon did the proceedings conclude with the hurrying away to La Dehesa of the last of those twenty-five.
The inquisitors and their followers descended at length from their scaffold, and withdrew to the Casa Santa to rest them from these arduous labours of propagating Christianity.
There was more to be done upon the morrow—very important business, demanding an entirely different ceremonial, wherefore it had been set apart and allotted a day to itself.
The accused on this occasion were only two, but they were two clerics. One was the parish priest of Talavera; the other occupied the distinguished position of a royal chaplain. Both had been found guilty of Judaizing. They were conducted to the Auto in full canonicals, as if about to celebrate Mass, each carrying his veiled chalice. Led to the scaffold of the condemned, they found themselves confronted from the other scaffold not only by the inquisitors and their attendants and familiars, but further by the Bishop, who was attended by two Jeronymites—the Abbot of the Convent of St. Bernard and the Prior of the Convent of Sisla.
The notary of the Holy Office read out the crimes of the accused, and pronounced them cast out from the Church. Thereupon each was brought in turn before the Bishop, who proceeded to degrade him, since the law could not without sacrilege lay violent hands upon an ecclesiastic.
Beginning by depriving each of his chalice, the Bishop passed on to divest the priestly offender of his chasuble; stole, maniple, and alb were removed in succession, the Bishop pronouncing the prescribed formula for each stage of the degradation, and defacing the tonsure by clipping away a portion of the surrounding fringe of hair.
At last the doomed clerics stood stripped of all insignia of their office. And now the sanbenito—that chasuble of infamy—was flung upon the shoulders of each; their heads were crowned with the tragically grotesque coroza, a rope was put about each neck, and their hands were pinioned. The sentence was fulfilled at last by their being abandoned to the secular authorities, who seized them and bore them away to the stake.
On Sunday, October 16, a proclamation was read in the Cathedral, pronouncing several deceased persons to have been heretics, and setting forth that, although dead themselves, their reputations lived as those of Christians. Therefore it became necessary to publish their heresy, and their heirs were summoned to appear within twenty days and render to the inquisitors an account of their inheritances, from the enjoyment of which they were disqualified, since all property that had belonged to the deceased was, by virtue of Torquemada’s decree, confiscate to the royal treasury.