Its powers were so extensive that the clergy protested against them as {204} infringements of their rights.

In its first two years it pronounced five hundred sentences,--and what sentences! Even in that cruel age its punishments were frightful.

Burning alive was the commonest.

If the heretic recanted on the scaffold he was strangled before the fire was lit; if he refused to recant his tongue was cut out.

[Sidenote: June, 1551] Those who were merely suspected were cast into dungeons from which many never came out alive.