262 THE INQUISITION. PART The most important actors in the scene were 1 the unfortunate convicts, who were now disgorged for the first time from the dungeons of the tribunal. They were clad in coarse woollen garments, styled san benitos, brought close round the neck and descending like a frock, down to the knees. ^^ These were of a yellow color, embroidered with a scarlet cross, and well garnished with figures of devils and flames of fire, which, typical of the heretic's destiny hereafter, served to make him more odious in the eyes of the superstitious mul- titude. ^° The greater part of the sufferers were condemned to be reconciled, the manifold meanings of which soft phrase have been already explained. Those who were to be relaxed, as it was called, were delivered over, as impenitent heretics, to the secular arm, in order to expiate their offence by the most painful of deaths, with the consciousness, still more painful, that they were to leave behind them names branded with infamy, and families involved in irretrievable ruin. ^ their marvellous rapidity. Para- rifice, or massacre ; — it is all of mo, De Origine Inquisilionis, lib. them. They reproach Montezuma 2, tit. 2, cap. 3. with sacrificina^ human captives to
- 3 San benito, according to Llo- the Gods. — What would he have
rente (tom. i. p. 127.), is a cor- said, had he witnessed an auto da ruption of saco bendito, being the fe ? " name given to the dresses worn 51 The government, at least, by penitents previously to the cannot be charged with remissness thirteenth century. in promoting this. I find two or- 50 Llorente, Hist, de I'lnquisi- dinances in the royal collection of tion, tom. i. chap. 9, art. 1(5. — fragmaticas, dated in September, Puigblanch, Inquisition Unmasked, 1501, (tiiere must be some error in vol. i. chap. 4. — Voltaire remarks the date of one of them,) inhibit- (Essai sur les Mffiurs, chap. 140.) ing, under pain of confiscation of that, " An Asiatic, arriving at ])roperty, such as had been rccon- Madrid on the day of an auto da cilnl, and their cliildren by the fe, would doubt whether it were a mother's side, and grandciiildren festival, religious celebration, sac- by the father's, from holding any
