Page:History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella the Catholic Vol. I.djvu/396

252 THE INQUISITION. PART Stances, some of them purely accidental in their nature, others the result of early habit, which might well have continued after a sincere conversion to Christianity, and all of them trivial, on which capi- tal accusations were to be alleged, and even satis- factorily established. ^^ Thesanguin- Thc inouisitors, adoptins; the wily and tortuous aiy proceed- . ^ . . ^^i i i • i i ings of the policy of the ancient tribunal, proceeded with a de- inquisitors. 1 J ' i. spatch, which shows that they could have paid little deference even to this affectation of legal form. On the sixth day of January, six convicts suffered at the stake. Seventeen more were executed in March, and a still greater number in the month following; and by the 4th of November in the same year, no less than two hundred and ninety-eight individ- uals had been sacrificed in the aiitos dafe of Seville. Besides these, the mouldering remains of many, who had been tried and convicted after their death, were torn up from their graves, with a hyena-like ferocity, which has disgraced no other court, Chris- tian or Pagan, and condemned to the common funeral pile. This was prepared on a spacious stone scaffold, erected in the suburbs of the city, with the statues of four prophets attached to the corners, to which the unhappy sufferers were bound for the sacrifice, and which the worthy Curate of Los Palacios celebrates with much complacency as the spot, " where heretics were burnt, and ought to burn as long as any can be found." ^^ 34 Llorente, Hist, de I'lnquisi- MS., cap. 44. — Llorente, Hist, de tion, torn. i. pp. 153-159. rinqnisilion, torn. i. p. 160. — li. 35 ]5crnaldez, Reyes Catolicos, Marineo, Cosas Memorables, fol.