.. the
delinquents were brought from all parts to be burned and punished
here ... The Inquisition building exists till this day (1647), and until
the coming of the Hollanders in 1625 many sambenitos could be seen in
the cathedral hung up behind the choir."
These "sambenitos" were sacks of coarse yellow cloth with a large red
cross on them, and figures of devils and instruments of torture among
the flames of hell. The delinquents, dressed in one of these sacks,
bareheaded and barefooted, were made to do penance, or, if condemned
to be burned, marched to the place of execution. It is said that in
San Juan they were not tied to a stake but enclosed in a hollow
plaster cast, against which the faggots were piled,[80] so that they
were roasted rather than burned to death. The place for burning the
sinners was outside the gate of the fort San Cristobal. Mr. M.F.
Juncos believes that the prisons were in the lower part of the
Dominican Convent, later the territorial audience and now the supreme
court, but Mr. Salvador Brau thinks that they occupied a plot of
ground in the angle formed by Cristo Street and the "Caleta" of San
Juan.
Of Nicolas Ramos, the last Bishop of Puerto Rico, who united the
functions of inquisitor with the duties of the episcopate, Canon
Vargas says: " ... He was very severe, burning and punishing, _as was
his duty_, some of the people whose cases came before him .
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