On December 10 900 persons were admitted to public reconciliation. They were self-delators from remote country districts who had responded to a recent edict of grace published in those districts.
The notary announced the forms of Judaizing of which each had been guilty and proclaimed it as their intention henceforth to live and die in the faith of Christ. He then read out the Articles of Faith, and they were required to say “I believe” after each, and lastly to make oath upon the Gospels and the crucifix never again to fall into the error of Judaism, to denounce any whom they knew to be Judaizers, and ever to favour and uphold the Holy Inquisition and the Holy Catholic faith.
The penance imposed was that they should be scourged in procession for seven Fridays, and thereafter on the first Friday of every month for a year. This in their own districts. In addition, they were required to come to Toledo and be scourged in procession on the Feast of St. Mary of August and on the Thursday of Holy Week. Two hundred of them were further ordered to wear a sanbenito over their ordinary garments for a year from that date, and never to appear in public without it under pain of being deemed impenitent and punished as relapsed.
Another 700 came to be reconciled on January 15, 1487, and yet another 1,200 on March 10. These last, Orozco says, were from the districts of Talavera, Madrid, and Guadalajara; and he adds that some amongst them were penanced to the extent of being condemned to wear the sanbenito for the remainder of their lives.
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.