secular arm.  The Society [of Jesus] avoided, as far as it could, giving its opinion upon an affair that was of such moment, and that must create such a sensation.  In the decision of the affair, whether wise or unwise, it was best for us not to interfere.  The authors were examined, and upon the advice of wise and learned men the definitorio resolved to give the sentence.  It was read to the criminals from the pulpit of the church of St. Augustine, on the nineteenth of September, 617, before all the people, who had congregated to witness a spectacle so extraordinary.  Immediately they took from him the cowl, and left them with only some short cassocks such as are worn by clergymen.  They delivered them to the bishop, who was already prepared for the degradation.  He immediately began to degrade them, and then delivered them over to the secular arm.  They were taken to jail by the strong guard of soldiers that had been in the church ever since the criminals had been removed from the prisons to hear the sentence.  But it was possible to execute this sentence against three only, because Fray Andres Encinas had escaped the night before, in company with a lay brother who was guarding him.  With chains and all, the lay brother removed him from the prison at twelve o’clock at night, and, placing him upon his back, carried him along an unfinished wall of the convent, with great danger to both of falling and killing themselves.  He took from him the chains and, together with another lay brother of their order, they jumped from the wall and fled in great haste.  On the twenty-second of September of the same year, 617, the secular tribunal pronounced the sentence of death upon the three.  They were taken from the jail amid a great retinue of religious of all orders, who were assisting, and of soldiers who were guarding the prisoners.  At ten o’clock in the morning they were hanged in the square before the largest assembly of people, I think, I have ever seen in my life.  They died with suitable preparation.  I am unwilling to omit the account of a very peculiar circumstance.  Twenty years ago they were hanging in Madrid that Augustinian friar because he wished to make a pastry-cook king of Portugal, and to marry him to Dona Ana de Austria, the mother of Fray Juan de Ocadiz.  She was watching the proceeding, and all at once she began to scream and weep.  When asked the cause of this she replied that she fancied she saw on the gallows her son, who was an Augustinian friar.  Followed by a large crowd they took the bodies of these three men who had been hanged, to the convent of San Agustin for interment, where they will remain with their provincial until God calls them to judgment.  The friars then very diligently searched for the one who had fled, in order to execute upon him the same sentence.  At first they did not find him.  And afterward, although they might have captured him, they did not, because they did not feel obliged to revive the painful remembrances and cause to all, and especially to his mother and the relatives whom he has here, the grief and distress that the first three deaths occasioned.