Some curious circumstances respecting delation, prison life, and _autos da fe_ are here minutely recorded.] The crimes of which the second or Dominican Inquisition had taken cognizance were designated under the generic name of heresy.

Heretics were either patent by profession of some heterodox cult or doctrine; or they were suspected.

The suspected included witches, sorcerers, and blasphemers who invoked the devil's aid; Catholics abstaining from confession and absolution; harborers of avowed heretics; legal defenders of the cause of heretics; priests who gave Christian burial to heretics; magistrates who showed lukewarmness in pursuit of heretics; the corpses of dead heretics, and books that might be taxed with heretical opinions.
All ranks in the social hierarchy, except the Pope, his Legates and Nuncios, and the bishops, were amenable to this Inquisition.

The Inquisitors could only be arraigned and judged by their peers.

In order to bring the machinery of imprisonment, torture and final sentence into effect, it was needful that the credentials of the Inquisitor should be approved by the sovereign, and that his procedure should be recognized by the bishop.