Note 58 — Chapter I · SICILY.

Llorente, Historia crítica, cap. XVI, art. ii, n. 5. The date of this affair is not unimportant and has curiously been involved in doubt. As printed by Llorente, the letter of December 16, 1543, is duly signed Prince Philip and is doubtless correctly dated, as Terranova was governor in 1544 (Gervasii Siculæ Sanctiones, I, 295). It is somewhat remarkable that in the Simancas archives (Legajo 1465, fol. 60) there are two letters of Philip II on this affair, one dated from the Escorial, April 24, 1568, to the Sicilian inquisitors and the other to Terranova, dated from Madrid, April 29, 1568. The dates are evidently erroneous for in that year the Marquis of Pescara was viceroy (Gervasii, III, 121). Portocarrero also blunders in the date (op. cit., n. 105), placing the affair in 1608. La Mantia moreover says (p. 52) that a MS. copy of a letter of the inquisitors, April 10th, bears a later date. A letter of the Suprema to the inquisitors, prescribing the punishment, is dated December 15th, without indication of the year (Simancas, Lib. 78, fol. 372). It speaks of two familiars tortured, orders Terranova to hear mass in a monastery as a penitent and to pay the sufferers 200 ducats, to which the officials concerned in the affair were to add 100 more.