[Sidenote: _ENDURANCE WITHOUT CONFESSION_]
The authorities naturally are not wholly at one with regard to the practical applications of these principles--except that acquittal should rarely be granted and, in fact, while the records are full of cases in which torture was overcome, it is somewhat unusual to find the parties acquitted, or their cases even suspended. About 1600 a writer tells us that these cases are to be treated with some extraordinary penalty or with acquittal or suspension, according to the degree of suspicion that remains, but that Moriscos, however light the suspicion, must appear in an auto de fe and abjure _de vehementi_ and, if there has been evidence by single witnesses, they must be sent to the galleys for three years or more; with other culprits, if the suspicion is light, there may be acquittal or suspension, but suspension is the more usual. It all depends upon the degree in which the evidence has been purged by the torture.[83] As this degree was a matter purely conjectural, inquisitorial discretion was unlimited.
The rule as to Moriscos is borne out by the Valencia auto de fe of 1607, in which there appeared sixteen who had overcome the torture, most of whom were visited with imprisonment, scourging or fines.[84] With their expulsion in 1609-10, there was no further call for discrimination, and the general practice is expressed about 1640, by an experienced inquisitor, who tells us that, when there have been several single witnesses, the accused who overcomes the torture should be subjected to some severe extraordinary punishment, such as abjuring _de vehementi_, with confiscation of half his property, or a heavy fine--the latter being preferable as it is more easily collected and the culprit endures it better in order to preserve his credit.[85] That this reflects the current practice would appear from a Cuenca auto de fe, June 29, 1654. Don Andrés de Fonseca had been required to abjure _de vehementi_, at Valladolid in 1628; the evidence of his relapse was strong, but insufficient for conviction; he endured torture without confessing; then further evidence supervened and he was again tortured with the same ill-success; he appeared in the auto as a penitent, abjured _de levi_, with ten years' exile and a fine of five hundred ducats. Doña Theodora Paula had overcome the torture and had abjuration de lev, six years' exile and a fine of three hundred ducats. Doña Isabel de Miranda had been unsuccessfully tortured and was sentenced to two years' exile and three hundred ducats. So, after fruitless torture, Doña Isabel Henríquez had the same punishment, and Manuel Lorenzo Madureyra was sentenced to abjuration _de vehementi_, ten years' exile and five hundred ducats fine.[86] It is to the credit of the Valladolid tribunal that, in 1624, it showed itself more lenient and suspended six cases in which torture proved fruitless, inflicting no punishment except six years of exile on María Pérez, who was charged with false-witness.[87]