Page:History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella the Catholic Vol. I.djvu/397

253 THE INQUISITION. 253 Many of the convicts were persons estimable for chapter learning and probity ; and, among these, three cler- '- — gymen are named, together with other individuals filling judicial or high municipal stations. The sword of justice was observed, in particular, to strike at the wealthy, the least pardonable offenders in times of proscription. The plague which desolated Seville this year, sweeping off fifteen thousand inhabitants, as if in token of the wrath of Heaven at these enormities, did not palsy for a moment the arm of the Inquisi- tion, which, adjourning to Aracena, continued as in- defatigable as before. A similar persecution went forward in other parts of the province of Andalusia ; so that within the same year, 1481, the number of the sufferers was computed at two thousand burnt alive, a still greater number in effigy, and seventeen thousand reconciled ; a term which must not be un- derstood by the reader to signify any thing like a pardoij or amnesty, but only the commutation of a capital sentence for inferior penalties, as fines, civil incapacity, very generally total confiscation of property, and not unfrequently imprisonment for life.^« 164. — The language of Bernaldez ment of fanaticism continued to as applied to the four statues of the disgrace Seville till 1810, when it quemadero,^' en que osquema.va.n," was removed in order to make is so equivocal, that it has led to room for the construction of a some doubts whether he meant to battery against the French, assert that the persons to be burnt 36 L. Marineo, Cosas Memora- were enclosed in the statues, or bles, fol. 164. — Bernaldez, Reyes fastened to them. Llorente's sub- Catolicos, MS.,cap. 44. — Mariana, sequent examination has led him lib. 24, cap. 17. — Llorente, Hist, to discard the first horrible suppo- de I'lnquisition, ubi supra. — L. sition, which realized the fabled Marineo diffuses the 2,000 capital cruelty of Phalaris. — This monu- executions over several years. He