himself in his bed, and demanded the reason of the intrusion. An order for
his arrest was produced, and he was speedily conveyed to the dungeons of
the Inquisition at Valladolid. For seven long years he lingered there, and
was then summoned to Rome in 1566 by Pius V. and imprisoned for six years
in the Castle of St. Angelo. The successor of Pope Pius V., Gregory XIII.,
at length pronounced him guilty of false doctrine. His catechism was
condemned; he was compelled to abjure sixteen propositions, and besides
other penances he was confined for five years in a monastery. Broken down
by his eighteen years' imprisonment and by the hardships he had undergone,
he died sixteen days after his cruel sentence had been pronounced.
[Footnote: Cf. _The Church of Spain_, by Canon Meyrick. (National Churches
Series.)] On his deathbed he solemnly declared that he had never seriously
offended with regard to the Faith. The people were very indignant against
his persecutors, and on the day of his funeral all the shops were closed
as on a great festival. His body was honoured as that of a saint. His
captors doubtless regretted his death, inasmuch as the Pope is said to
have received a thousand gold pieces each month for sparing his life, and
Philip appropriated the revenues of his see for his own charitable
purposes, which happened at that time to be suppression of heresy in the
Netherlands by the usual means of rack and fire and burying alive helpless
victims.

A very fatal book was one entitled _Opus de anno primitivo ab exordia
mundi, ad annum Julianum accommodato, et de sacrorum temporum ratione.
Augustae-Vindelicorum_, 1621, _in folio magno_. It is a work of Jerome
Wecchiettus, a Florentine doctor of theology. The Inquisition attacked and
condemned the book to the flames, and its author to perpetual
imprisonment. Being absent from Rome he was comparatively safe, but
surprised the whole world by voluntarily submitting himself to his
persecutors, and surrendering himself to prison. This extraordinary