Note 413 — Chapter VI · MEXICO.
Reading edition
Páramo, pp. 241-2.—Proceso contra Manuel Díaz, fol. 71 (MS. penes me).—Obregon, p. 344. The fourth sister of Carvajal was burnt for relapse in the auto of 1601 and a fifth was reconciled (Medina, pp. 131-133).
An incident of Carvajal’s trial illustrates the dread excited by the pitiless Peralta, who richly earned his archbishopric. After prolonged torture and confession, Carvajal endeavored to commit suicide and then asked for Lobo Guerrero to be sent for, to whom he explained that he had begged that Peralta should not be present “because the mere sight of him made his flesh creep, such was the terror with which his rigor inspired him.”—Adler, Trial of Jorje de Almeida (Publications of Am. Jewish Hist. Soc., IV, 42).
The complaints against Peralta accumulated until the Suprema was compelled to formulate a process against him in which the sumaria contained thirty-two charges, not only of arbitrary cruelty but of prostitution of his office for illicit gain (Medina, p. 216); but this, as we have seen, did not prevent his promotion to the archiepiscopate of La Plata.