interested in Erasmian ideas, had strayed from orthodoxy. This is striking because both Charles I and Philip II were confessed admirers of Erasmus. The humanist Juan de Valdés, fled to Italy to escape anti-Erasmian factions that came to power in the court, and the preacher, Juan de Ávila spent close to a year in prison after he was questioned about his prayer practices. The first trials against Lutheran groups, as such, took place between 1558 and 1562, at the beginning of the reign of Philip II, against two communities of Protestants from the cities of Valladolid and Seville, numbering about 120. The trials signaled a notable intensification of the Inquisition's activities. A number of autos-da-fé were held, some of them presided over by members of the royal family, and around 100 executions took place. The autos-da-fé of the mid-century virtually put an end to Spanish Protestantism, which was, throughout, a small phenomenon to begin with. After 1562, though the trials continued, the repression was much reduced. About 200 Spaniards were accused of being Protestants in the last decades of the 16th century. Most of them were in no sense Protestants ... Irreligious sentiments, drunken mockery, anticlerical expressions, were all captiously classified by the inquisitors (or by those who denounced the cases) as "Lutheran." Disrespect to church images, and eating meat on forbidden days, were taken as signs of heresy... It is estimated that a dozen Spaniards were burned alive. Protestantism and Anglicanism were treated as a marker to identify agents of foreign powers and symptoms of political disloyalty as much as, if not more than a cause of prosecution in itself. Religion, patriotism, obedience to the king and personal beliefs were not seen as separate aspects of life until the end of the Modern Age. Spain especially had a long tradition of using self-identified religion as a political and cultural marker, and expression of loyalty to a specific overlord, more than as an accurate description of personal beliefs -here the common accusation of heretics they received from Rome. In that note, accusations or prosecutions due to beliefs held by enemy countries must be seen as political accusations regarding political treason more than as religious ones. Other times the accusation of Protestantism was considered as an equivalent of blasphemy, just a general way of addressing insubordination. Orthodox Christianity Even though the Inquisition had theoretical permission to investigate Orthodox "heretics", it almost