the King's" and that was collapsing the Inquisition's tribunals. During the reign of Philip IV there were registered complaints of the Inquisitors about people who "Blasphemated, mostly in winter, just to be detained and fed inside the prison". Despite some popular accounts, modern historians state that torture was only ever used to confirm information or a confession, not for punitive reasons. Rafael Sabatinni states that among the methods of torture allowed, and common in other secular and ecclesiastical tribunals, were garrucha, toca and the potro, even though those claims contradict both the Inquisitorial law and the claims made by Kamen. The application of the garrucha, also known as the strappado, consisted of suspending the victim from the ceiling by the wrists, which are tied behind the back. Sometimes weights were tied to the ankles, with a series of lifts and drops, during which the arms and legs suffered violent pulls and were sometimes dislocated. The use of the toca (cloth), also called interrogatorio mejorado del agua (enhanced water interrogation), is better documented. It consisted of forcing the victim to ingest water poured from a jar so that they had the impression of drowning. The potro, the rack, in which the limbs were slowly pulled apart, was thought to be the instrument of torture used most frequently. The assertion that confessionem esse veram, non factam vi tormentorum (literally: '[a person's] confession is truth, not made by way of torture') sometimes follows a description of how, after torture had ended, the subject freely confessed to the offences. Thus confessions following torture were deemed to be made of the confessor's free will, and hence valid. Once the process concluded, the inquisidores met with a representative of the bishop and with the consultores (consultants), experts in theology or Canon Law (but not necessarily clergy themselves), which was called the consulta de fe (faith consultation/religion check). The case was voted and sentence pronounced, which had to be unanimous. In case of discrepancies, the Suprema had to be informed. Sentencing The results of the trial could be the following: Although quite rare in actual practice, the defendant could be acquitted. Inquisitors did not wish to terminate the proceedings. If they did, and new evidence turned up later, they would be forced into reopening and re-presenting the old evidence. The trial could be suspended, in which case the defendant, although under suspicion, went free (with the threat