The presidio continued as a punishment under the Restoration, but cases were so rare that there was question as to the reception of the convicts in their places of destination. In 1818, the Seville tribunal sentenced three persons--two for propositions and one for bigamy--to two years' service in Ceuta or Melilla, and it asked the Suprema to get the minister of war to issue orders to the governors to receive them. The Suprema replied that this was the business of the tribunal; it must do as on former occasions, and if necessary could write to the governors. The _forçats_ were duly received and, it is pleasant to add that, in six months, the Suprema humanely remitted the punishment in order that they might return and support their families. For this an order from the secretary of the Council of War was required and procured.[400]
For women, the equivalent of the galleys was service without pay in hospitals, houses of correction and similar institutions. Apparently these female convicts were not always regarded as desirable inmates and though, in the pre-revolutionary times, no opposition was ventured, under the Restoration there was sometimes difficulty in securing their admission. In 1819 the Seville tribunal appealed to the Suprema, representing that it had been unable thus to dispose of Juana de Luna, for the same reasons which it had experienced in the cases of Ana Barbero and Leonor Macias. The Inquisition inspired no such terror as of old, for the Suprema could suggest no means of overcoming the difficulty, and could only instruct the tribunal to devise some method of executing its sentences.[401]
It is not to the credit of the Roman Inquisition that it followed the example of the Spanish and included the galleys in its list of punishments. Carena, indeed, tells us that it was the most usual of all and was the customary penalty in a wide variety of offences.[402]
That reconciliation to the Church, which was represented as a loving mother, eager to welcome back to her bosom her erring children, should be regarded as a punishment, seems a contradiction in terms, yet so it was, and the Suprema did not hesitate to speak of those "who had been condemned to reconciliation."[403] It would not be easy to invent a more emphatic illustration of the perversion of the spirit of religion by persecuting fanaticism.