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An anonymous English writer of the time backs up the above account and demonstrates further how secrecy was used to instill fear:

An anonymous English writer of the time backs up the above account and demonstrates further how secrecy was used to instill fear:

<div style="width: 70%; margin: 0 15% 1em 15%; text-align: left; background-color: #DEE6ED; padding: 0.5em; border: solid 1px #6699CC;">"But if the accused doe not sufficientlie justifie himself, he is condemned to torture. And with his Curate he is constrained to goe, through a place verie hidious, to a room underground, where he findeth the Judges set. There is ye Executioner, covered with a long black linen robe verie straight like a sacke, having his head and face covered with a blacke hoode having but two holes before his eyes - this done to amaze the Patient, as if a devill came to punish his Misdeeds. If he confesse nothing, they sometimes martyre him more than two houres."<ref>''The Manner of the Spanish Inquisition'', Ms Tanner 99, [[Bodleian Library]]</ref></div>

<div style="width: 70%; margin: 0 15% 1em 15%; text-align: left; background-color: #DEE6ED; padding: 0.5em; border: solid 1px #6699CC;">"But if the accused doe not sufficientlie justifie himself, he is condemned to torture. And with his Curate he is constrained to goe, through a place verie hidious, to a room underground, where he findeth the Judges set. There is ye Executioner, covered with a long black linen robe verie straight like a sacke, having his head and face covered with a blacke hoode having but two holes before his eyes - this done to amaze the Patient, as if a devill came to punish his Misdeeds. If he confesse nothing, they sometimes martyre him more than two houres."<ref>''The Manner of the Spanish Inquisition'', Ms Tanner 99, [[Bodleian Library]]</ref></div>

 

The interrogation in the tribunal chamber might also be cut abruptly short by the ''fiscal'', saying that, in spite of his continued advice to tell the truth he felt that the prisoner was being reticent and that he would therefore ask that the prisoner be "questioned" - that is, tortured. Llorente describes that prisoners spent the entire trial in anxious expectation of the ''fiscal'' making this request. this further underlines the extent to which secrecy and fear were the main weapons of the Spanish Inquisition, perhaps even more than the torture itself.<ref>'''Llorente, D. Jean-Antoine''', ''Histoire Critique de l'Inquisition d'Espagne''. Paris: Treuttel et Wurtz (1818)</ref>

==[[Torture]]==

==[[Torture]]==