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[443] desiring to burn everyone; he soon became involved in bickering and recrimination with the
inquisitors Carpio and Gasca, of whom he complained bitterly; votes in discordia were frequent,
appeals to the Suprema were constant and the work was delayed. (62) It was not until September 24,
1559, that an auto could be celebrated. If all Old Castile had poured into Valladolid, so all Andalusia
manifested its religious zeal by crowding into Seville. Three days in advance the people began to
assemble, until the city could hold no more and they were obliged to sleep in the fields. The stagings
and scaffoldings were on the most extensive scale and a place was specially provided for the Duchess
of Bejar and her friends, who apparently desired the pleasure of seeing her kinsman, Juan Ponce de
Leon relaxed. (63) As was so often the case, the solemnities were somewhat marred by an unseemly
contest for precedence, between the civil and ecclesiastical authorities, which was renewed at the auto
of 1560 and was not settled for several years. (64)
The services of thirty-eight frailes and Jesuits were required to prepare for their doom those who were
to be relaxed. The most prominent of the victims was Don Juan Ponce de Leon, who had remained
hardened, during his two years of confinement, in the belief that a man of his rank would not be burnt.
He was an ardent Protestant; he had founded in his lands a sort of church, where worship was
conducted in secret; he had gone to the brasero where, raising his hands to heaven, he had wished to
God that he could be burnt there to ashes, with his wife and children, in defence of his faith, and he had
said that if he had an income of twenty thousand ducats he would spend it all in evangelizing Spain but,
when he learned his fate that night, he professed conversion; on the staging, he busied himself in urging
his fellow-convicts to abandon their errors, and he made an exemplary end with tears and repentance.
The next most conspicuous sufferer was the Licenciado Juan González, a famous preacher. He was of
Moorish descent and, when only twelve years old, had been penanced at Córdova for Moorish errors.
Throughout his trial he had steadily refused to incriminate others and, during the night, he answered the
padres' exhortations with the psalms of David. On the staging he talked heresy with his two sisters until
he was gagged and all three were burnt. The most interesting victim was María de Bohorques, aged 26,
natural daughter of Pero [444] García de Xeres, a prominent citizen of Seville. She was a disciple of
Cassiodoro de Reina, highly educated and thoroughly conversant with scripture, in both its literal and
spiritual senses. When the confessors entered her cell that night, she received them pleasantly and
expressed no surprise at their fateful message. It was in vain that relays of frailes sought her
conversion--Dominicans following Jesuits and Franciscans succeeding to Carmelites. She met all their
arguments with biblical texts, and was the only one of the condemned who defended her faith. Thus she
passed the night until summoned to the procession. On the staging Ponce de Leon sought to convert her
but she silenced him, saying that it was a time for meditation on the Savior. She treated the frailes who
surrounded her as troublesome intermeddlers but, at three o'clock, she yielded to their entreaties,
relapsing soon afterwards, however, to her errors, and she was burnt. Another prominent culprit was
Hernando de San Juan, master of the Doctrina Christiana for children in Seville. He was an obstinate
heretic, who resisted all efforts at conversion. After his sentence was read, the inquisitors asked
whether he persisted in his errors, when he emphatically answered in the affirmative. Thereupon he was
gagged, which he endured as though thanking God that it was given him to suffer for His sake. At
length, however, he was persuaded by the frailes to escape burning alive by conversion, but his
salvation, we are told, was uncertain as he had been impenitent until then. (65)
Altogether, at this auto, there were relaxed in person eighteen Lutherans, besides the effigy of the
fugitive Francisco de Zafra. Two of these were foreigners--Carlos de Brujas, a Fleming and Antonio
Bal die a Frenchman, master of the ship Unicornio. Evidently full use was made of the power to
execute repentant converts, but whether any persisted to the end and were burnt alive cannot be
gathered with certainty from any of the relations. The only guide we have is the general assertion of
Illescas that, in this and subsequent autos in Seville, there were forty or fifty Lutherans executed, of