The abundant harvest thus provided for the early Inquisition may be estimated from the statement by a contemporary that, at the Toledo auto de fe of July 25, 1485, there were burned the effigies of more than four hundred dead and as many in that of May 25, 1490. The ceremony was impressive. A great monument, covered with black, was erected in front of the staging occupied by the inquisitors. The sentence of each culprit was read and, as his name was called, the monument was opened and an effigy, arrayed in Jewish grave-clothes, was brought out and condemned as a heretic. Then a great fire was built in the centre of the plaza, and all the effigies were consumed, together with the disinterred bones. After this their names were announced in the cathedral, with a summons to the heirs to appear, within twenty days, and render an account of their inheritances which belonged to the king.[220] We might suspect these figures of exaggeration were there not other evidences of the magnitude of the work in progress and of the informal haste with which it was conducted. In 1484, at Ciudad Real, a single proclamation to the children and heirs, to appear and defend the deceased, contains the names of sixty-one dead persons on trial and a single sentence condemns forty-two, with a common enumeration of the Judaizing practices asserted to be proved against them. In none of these cases did the children and heirs put in an appearance to defend the memory and fame of the dead.[221]
These reckless and indecent proceedings were based on the Instructions of 1484, which evidently reflect the current practice in ordering the prosecution of those who had been dead even for thirty or forty years, and their property with its fruits to be taken from whomsoever is found in possession, although a MS. copy contains a clause, omitted in the printed editions, exempting from confiscation property held in good faith by good Catholics, for fifty years or more.[222] In view of the activity at Ciudad Real and Toledo, it seems somewhat superfluous that Torquemada, in his supplementary Instructions of 1485, deemed it necessary to warn the tribunals that the prosecution of the living should not cause them to neglect the dead, so that their bodies may be disinterred and burnt and their property be seized by the fisc.[223] How far back the retroactive energy of the tribunals extended may be gathered from the case of Fernan Sánchez who had been converted about 1416, had lived as a Christian until his death in 1456, and who yet was disinterred and burnt and his estate confiscated by the tribunal of Cuenca and Sigüenza, probably about 1525.[224]