[480] Censorship of the press was not the least effective function of the Inquisition in arresting the development of the Spanish intellect. That it should suppress the utterance of heresy in print as well as in speech would appear to be inevitable, and yet no such power was included in the commissions of the earlier inquisitors-general, nor at first was this regarded as one of its duties. It is true that, as early as 1490, it burnt a large number of Hebrew Bibles and other Jewish books and, soon afterwards in Salamanca, it consigned to the flames in an auto some six thousand volumes of works on Judaism and sorcery. ⁽¹⁾ We have seen also that Ximenes in Granada burnt a mass of Moorish MSS., but these were extra-judicial acts, which there was none to call in question. In the Instructions issued by Torquemada and his immediate successors, there is no reference to censorship as an inquisitorial duty and, in the earliest manual, printed in Valencia in 1494, the only allusion to it is the prescription, derived from the canon law, that any one obtaining possession of an heretical book is bound, within eight days, to burn it or to deliver it to the bishop or inquisitor. ⁽²⁾
 
In fact, the matter was not regarded as pertaining especially to the Inquisition. The earliest provision for censorship, called forth by the development of the art of printing, is a faculty granted, March 17, 1479, by Sixtus IV to the rector and dean of the University of Cologne, to proceed with censures against the printers, sellers and readers of heretical books. ⁽³⁾ Alexander VI, in 1501, assumed it to be an episcopal function, when he called on the German bishops to keep a vigilant watch on the press. ⁽⁴⁾ So Ferdinand and Isabella, in 1502, when they promulgated the earliest law regulating the issue of books, made no mention of the Inquisition. [481] This law formed the basis of all subsequent legislation, and its uncompromising character foreshadowed the relations that were henceforth to exist between the government and the intelligence of Spain. No book was to be printed, imported or exposed for sale without preliminary examination and licence. In Valladolid this duty was imposed on the president judges of the royal courts; in Toledo, Seville and Granada on the archbishops, in Burgos on the bishop, and in Salamanca and Zamora on the Bishop of Salamanca, who were to act through examiners, paid by a moderate salary, not oppressive to booksellers and printers. When a MS. had been thus licensed, it was, after printing, to be carefully compared with the sheets to see that no changes had been made. Any book printed or imported and offered for sale, without such licence, was to be seized and publicly burnt; the printer or vendor was incapacitated from continuing in business and was fined in twice the amount received for any copies that he might have sold. ⁽⁵⁾ That the censorship thus created was enforced with more or less regularity may be inferred from a remark of Chancellor Gattinara, in 1527, reassuring Erasmus against expected attacks--that nothing was permitted to be published in Spain without careful previous examination, and he fervently wished that an equally wholesome rule could be established in Germany. ⁽⁶⁾
 
The motive for this sharp and comprehensive legislation can only be conjectured. Before the Reformation there was little demand for the services of the censor. The Church was worldly; its supremacy in all matters of faith and discipline seemed to be so immutably established that it regarded with good-natured indifference abstract speculations such as those of Marsiglio Ficino, Pomponazzi and Agustino Nifo, and concrete ridicule like that of Sebastian Brandt, Thomas Murner and Erasmus. It was otherwise when the Lutheran revolt threatened the overthrow of Latin Christianity and spread with such rapidity that no man could foretell its limits. We have seen that, as early as 1521, Rome called upon Spain to prevent the introduction and dissemination of Lutheran writings, and that Cardinal Adrian promptly assumed that it was the function of the Inquisition to do so. There is no trace of any delegation of such faculty, from either the Holy See or the civil power, but his action was not likely to be called [482] in question, and the civil authorities were under oath to obey the mandates of the inquisitors, where the faith was concerned. Accordingly, his decree of April, 1521, is couched in the most absolute terms; the books in question had been prohibited by the inquisitors and spiritual judges, wherefore the tribunals were instructed to order, under heavy censures and civil penalties, that no one should possess or sell them, whether in Latin or Romance, but should, within three days after notice, bring them to the Inquisition to be publicly burnt; the edict was to be published in a sermon of faith and, after publication, any one possessing or selling them, or knowing that others possessed them and not denouncing the offenders, was to suffer the penalties announced by the inquisitors, while all ecclesiastical and secular authorities were ordered to render whatever aid might be necessary. ⁽⁷⁾
 
Thus, at a bound, the Inquisition claimed and exercised the power of enforcing the prohibition of condemned books. The next step--that of condemning books--would seem to have been taken, in 1525, in an order to the vicar of Alcalá de Henares to seize all copies of a certain book of expositions of the Psalter. ⁽⁸⁾ Then followed, in 1530 and 1531, various edicts showing the activity of the Inquisition in exploiting its new field of action. The heretics were printing their works under assumed names, or adding heretic commentaries to authorized books, for the detection of which the utmost vigilance of the tribunals was invoked; a clause was to be added to the Edict of Faith requiring the denunciation of all such works; the tribunals were to send executory letters to all towns demanding the surrender of Luther's writings, and discreet persons were to be appointed to investigate the book-shops in search of this evil literature. When, in 1535, the tribunal of Valencia admitted that it had neglected to do this it was commanded to make the appointments forthwith and to have all condemned books seized. ⁽⁹⁾
 
The Inquisition had assumed and was exercising authority to condemn books, to seize those in circulation and to punish their possessors, although it had no formal authority for any of these acts. It seems to have felt that the punishment of offenders, at least, required papal faculties and, when Inquisitor-general Tavera, in 1539, succeeded Manrique, a clause was inserted in his [483] commission empowering him and his successors to proceed against those who owned or read heretical books. ⁽¹⁰⁾ The authority of the Holy Office was thus complete with regard to books after they were printed, but as to the equally important function of granting licences to print, its policy at first varied somewhat. The law of 1502 had confided this duty explicitly to judges and bishops, but, in 1527, the Inquisition invaded this by granting licences for Antonio de Obregon's translations of some of St. Bernard's and San Vicente de Ferrer's works. Even individual inquisitors seem to have arrogated to themselves power to grant licences for, in 1530, the Suprema forbade them to do so, but it assumed for itself entire control over the matter, in 1536, by issuing orders that no book should be printed without a preliminary examination by the Holy Office. ⁽¹¹⁾ Reflection, and possibly experience, however, showed that this assumption of power carried with it a responsibility that occasionally might prove embarrassing, for books which it thus approved might subsequently, in the growing sensitiveness of orthodoxy, be condemned, and a carta acordada of 1550 definitely prohibited all such licences, adding that the Suprema did not grant them. ⁽¹²⁾ It was wiser that preliminary approval and subsequent judgement should be in different hands, and this was provided for in an edict of Charles V and Prince Philip, in 1554, confining to the Royal Council the duty of issuing licences, after careful examination of the MSS. submitted, which, in the case of all important works, were to be retained for comparison with the printed sheets. ⁽¹³⁾ Yet the Inquisition retained the right to stop the printing of any book denounced to it as heretical, and it seems for awhile to have occasionally issued licences, for a carta acordada of 1575 alludes to the approval of books and their licensing by inquisitors. ⁽¹⁴⁾ This was probably the end of it, and the Inquisition tacitly declined to risk its reputation for infallibility by approving books in advance, which it might subsequently have to condemn. 
 
The Inquisition thus restricted itself to the duty of condemnation. [484] The prohibition might be total and the book be wholly suppressed, or partial, in which case its circulation was suspended donec corrigatur--until it should be expurgated of passages regarded as erroneous, misleading or offensive. For this duty it provided no machinery and did not profess to take the initiative. In the Edicts of Faith, it was made the duty of everyone to denounce whatever was contrary to the faith, and there were plenty of acute theologians and captious critics to whom it was an agreeable task to call attention to any word or sentence or proposition to which exception could be taken. The book was then submitted to calificadores, and their verdict, whether for suppression or expurgation, was submitted to the Suprema, or the book itself might be sent there for examination; in any case the decision rested with it and was communicated to the tribunals by an edict, which was read in all the churches and affixed to their portals, so that no one could plead ignorance. All who possessed the inculpated book were summoned, within a limited time, to surrender it for suppression, if it were prohibited, or for expurgation if objectionable passages were to be blotted out, and this under penalty of excommunication and fine, with threat of prosecution for persistent disobedience. ⁽¹⁵⁾ Everything thus centred in the Suprema, whose action was required in even the most trivial matters, and its correspondence on these affairs was incessant. As condemnations and expurgations multiplied, it became impossible to trust the records of the tribunals or the memory of the faithful. Some authentic list or catalogue was required to aid inquisitors in their work, and to warn booksellers and readers, and thus gradually was developed the Index Librorum Prohibitorum or Expurgandorum, which has become one of the most efficient of instrumentalities for repressing the human intellect and aiding the forces of reaction. Henry VIII has the credit of setting the example, in a brief list of prohibited books, issued in 1526, although in the same year Charles V published in the Netherlands a plakaat naming half a dozen authors whose books were to be burnt. The earliest allusion that I have met to such a catalogue in Spain occurs in a letter of September, [485] 1540, from the Suprema to Loazes, then Inquisitor of Barcelona, complaining of the inefficiency of the efforts to prevent the importation of prohibited books, which the Germans were using every means to disseminate, while merchants and booksellers felt no fear of the penalties imposed by the Inquisition. Greater activity and heavier punishment were necessary, for which instructions were enclosed, with a list of prohibited and suspected books, to which Loazes was to add his suggestions. ⁽¹⁶⁾
 
This was merely for use within the Inquisition. The first formal printed Index was compiled, in 1546, by the University of Louvain. A copy of this was sent, in 1547, to Inquisitor-general Valdés, at Seville, who forwarded it to the Suprema. This had it printed, with an Appendix containing the books prohibited in Spain, and sent it out, September 1st, to the tribunals, with some MS. additions of later prohibitions. ⁽¹⁷⁾ This is the earliest Spanish Index, hitherto unknown, which has left no other trace, and it serves to mark the commencement of another duty undertaken by the Suprema, that of examining books for the purpose, without awaiting denunciations, for, in 1545 there is an order to pay Dr. Alvaro de Moscoso forty ducats for labor of this kind. ⁽¹⁸⁾ Then, in 1550, the University of Louvain issued an enlarged list and this, by order of Charles V, was reprinted and circulated by the Inquisition in 1551, with its own additions, constituting what has been reckoned as the first Spanish Index. ⁽¹⁹⁾
 
The energies of the Suprema were now turned to the Scriptures. Vast numbers of Latin Bibles had been circulated, correct as to the text, but rendered insidiously dangerous by heretical notes and commentaries. Many of these were contained in the Index of 1551, and diligent search was made for others at Salamanca and Alcalá, and their errors were scrupulously noted. The results of these labors were communicated to the tribunals, with orders to examine all the Bibles seized under the Index of 1551; if among them were found editions not in the list enclosed, they were to be scrupulously examined by learned men and be sent to the Suprema, which would then determine what was to be done with the great accumulation of corrupt Bibles in the land. It concluded not to [486] order a wholesale destruction and, in 1554, it issued the first Expurgatory Index, devoted to the Scriptures, specifying the edition and the passages to be borrado or blotted out; this was sent to the tribunals with orders for its publication everywhere. All the Bibles seized and all that might be brought in were to be expurgated and returned to their owners, with a certificate. After the expiration of the term of grace allowed, the most strenuous efforts were to be made to ascertain whether any prohibited or unexpurgated Bibles remained in the hands of individuals or institutions, the owners of which were to be punished with the utmost rigor. ⁽²⁰⁾
 
It was evidently the books conveyed by Julian Hernández that furnished a fresh list sent to the tribunals, October 22, 1557, of works described as printed in Venice and brought from Flanders and Germany by a Spaniard to Seville. Edicts concerning them were to be published everywhere, the book-shops were to be sedulously searched and any one found in possession of them was to be punished with the greatest severity. This was followed, September 2, 1558, by an additional list of books ordered to be burnt. ⁽²¹⁾ The Suprema was thus obtaining material for an independent Index. Paul IV had caused one to be compiled in 1557, which was printed and suppressed, to appear, in 1559, in an authentic form. ⁽²²⁾ The Spanish Inquisition, however, already asserted its independence of the Roman Holy Office in these matters; the excitement over the Lutherans of Valladolid and Seville suggested a comprehensive prohibition of heretic books; Valdés procured from the pope the necessary delegation of power and, in 1559, the first indigenous Index appeared. It was distributed to the tribunals with instructions that all books contained in it were to be called in; those of heretic authors were to be publicly burnt in the autos, and the rest carefully stored, making lists of them and of their owners, which were to be sent to the Suprema for its action. Books on the humanities and Catholic books with heretic notes, if the latter could be effaced, were to be returned to the owners; all anonymous books and books without imprint of place and printer and all books printed abroad since 1519 were to be seized and examined and, if found suspicious, were to be detained. The [487] general clause in the Index, covering all books savoring of heresy, was explained to mean that everything not contained in it that was heretical or suspect was to be seized, and whenever there was doubt the Suprema was to be consulted. ⁽²³⁾
 
The preparation of the Index had been a work of no little labor and perplexity. Among others, the learned Doctor Francisco Sancho had for some years been employed by the Suprema in examining and seizing books and, early in 1559, he wrote that he had a large number in his possession and that, in the course of his duties many doubts had arisen, which he set forth in a series of questions. One of these suggests the difficulty of censorship applied to a theology undergoing reconstruction at the Council of Trent, but which was assumed to have been unalterable from the beginning. Sancho calls attention to the clause in the edicts forbidding all books containing any thing against the faith and the Church and its observances. There are many books, he continues, containing such errors, as those of Richard of Armagh, Durandus, Caietano, the Master of Sentences, Origen, Theophylact, Tertullian, Lactantius, Lucian, Aristotle, Plato, Seneca and others, much used both in and out of the schools, and it is doubted whether they can be permitted under condition of noting the errors. The Suprema shrank from the absurdity of suppressing the works of the most eminent medieval theologians and the leading classics, and it graciously allowed their circulation until further orders. ⁽²⁴⁾
 
The issue of the Index was followed by a vigorous search through all the book-shops and libraries of Spain. Examiners or revisors were appointed everywhere, with instructions to scrutinize all collections of books, whether in shops, monasteries, universities and private libraries, to detect not only those named in the Index but all others containing suspicious matter. All owners of books were commanded to submit them for examination, under penalty of excommunication and two hundred ducats. Not only the prohibited books but all regarded as suspicious were to be sent, together with information as to their owners, to the Suprema, which would do justice in the premises. ⁽²⁵⁾
 
The examination of all the books accumulated in Spain was a [488] formidable undertaking, but it was attempted to the discomfiture of all men of culture and learning, and the raising of innumerable questions which gave ample occupation to the Suprema. A specimen of this is found in the report of Fray Pedro de Quintanilla of Valladolid, concerning books in his hands belonging to Bartolomé de Robles, a prominent bookseller. Most of these, he says, are of Erasmus, such as the Adagia, Paraphrases and Anotaciones which are not prohibited, and he thinks may be returned to the owner, to which the response is that books of Erasmus not in the Index may be returned. Then there is Conrad Gesner de Piscibus et de Avibus, containing only the painted bird and fish, which he thinks may be returned, which is assented to. Then there is a book called Petrus Galatinus, containing a tract "De Arte Cabalistica;" if this were removed, some who have examined it say that the rest is good, to which the reply was to take out the cabalistic tract and return the book. Then there are other books, which have prologues or annotations by heretics, and he thinks that, if the names of such authors were blotted out, the books might be returned, as to which he was told to specify the books. ⁽²⁶⁾ We can readily conceive the exasperation caused by this laborious and meddlesome trifling, and its repressive influence on the studies of the learned.
 
All this was in furtherance of a savage pragmática evidently motived by the Lutheran scare. It was issued September 7, 1558, by the Infanta Juana in the name of Philip II, and shows that the civil power cooperated with the Inquisition, while providing an effective machinery for a state censorship. It recited that, in spite of the law of 1502 and the labors of inquisitors and bishops, there were many heretical works in circulation, and that foreign heretics were making great efforts thus to disseminate their doctrines, while there were also many useless and immoral books, so that the Córtes had petitioned for a remedy. It was therefore ordered, under penalty of death and confiscation, that no bookseller or other person should sell or keep any book condemned by the Inquisition, and all such books should be publicly burnt. The Index of prohibited books must be printed and every bookseller [489] must keep a copy exposed, where the public could consult it. No books in Romance printed abroad, even in the kingdoms of Aragon, were to be imported, under the same terrible penalty, unless they had a printed licence from the Royal Council, but books in Romance previously printed abroad, and not prohibited by the Inquisition, were to be presented to the local magistrates, who were to send lists of them to the Royal Council for decision, pending which they were not to be kept for sale under pain of confiscation and exile. Moreover, a general inspection was ordered of all books in the kingdom; those in book-shops and private libraries by the bishops, in conjunction with royal officials and universities, and those in religious houses by the superiors of the Orders. Everything regarded as suspicious or immoral was to be sequestrated, until judgement should be passed upon it by the Royal Council, and this was to be repeated annually.
 
Existing and foreign books being thus provided for, a stringent censorship of the press was organized. Death and confiscation were decreed for any one who should give out for printing a book without first submitting it to the Royal Council for examination when, if found unobjectionable, a licence would be issued. To prevent alterations, every page of the MS. must be signed by a secretary of the royal chamber, who must rubricate every correction and state at the end the number of pages and corrections. After printing, the MS. must be returned with one or two printed copies for comparison. Every book must have in front the licence, the tassa or price at which it was sold, the privilege, if there was one, and the names of author, printer and place of publication. New editions were subject to the same regulations, but legal documents and official papers of the Inquisition and the Cruzada Indulgence were excepted. Even writing was subjected to the same restrictions as printing, for death and confiscation were threatened for all who should own or exhibit to others a MS. on any religious subject without submitting it to the Council, which should either license it or destroy it. This ferocious law was confirmed, in 1627, by Philip IV and remained unrepealed until the Revolution, its enforcement being rigorously enjoined by Carlos IV, in 1804. ⁽²⁷⁾ That any one suffered death for its violation is [490] unlikely, and inquisitorial trials of theologians show that they accumulated masses of papers on religious subjects without thought of submitting them to the Royal Council, but the impediments which it threw in the way of authorship were rigidly enforced and cooperated with the Inquisition in exercising a most repressive influence on the intellectual progress of Spain.
 
It was not difficult to secure from the papacy its aid in rendering this censorship effective. The Suprema, in its letter of September 9, 1558, to Paul IV respecting the Lutheran development, called attention to the negligence of confessors in requiring their penitents to surrender prohibited books and to denounce offenders, and Paul, in a brief of January 5, 1559, commanded all confessors in the Spanish dominions to enquire of penitents whether they owned or read such works, or knew of any one owning or printing or selling them, when absolution was to be refused, unless the books were surrendered or the culprits denounced. For obedience to this, on the part of confessors, remission of sins was promised, while negligence was threatened with fines, deprivation of functions and benefice and disability for reinstatement, penalties which were discretional with the inquisitor-general. ⁽²⁸⁾
 
Thus papal, royal and inquisitorial powers were concentrated in the effort to purify the land of heretical literature. By the Edicts of Faith and by the confessional the whole population was enlisted as spies and informers on those who contravened the [491] prohibitions, which rapidly succeeded each other in the inquisitorial edicts, and all readers of books were required to denounce any passages which might seem to them suspicious or offensive. It is probably to this latter source that are attributable most of the incredibly trivial expurgations with which the later Indexes are burdened. How it sometimes fared with authors, indubitably orthodox but careless in expression, is exemplified in the case of the Maestro Fray Hernando de Santiago who, in 1597, published at Salamanca, of course after the preliminary censorship, his Consideraciones sobre todos los Domingos y Fiestas de la Quaresma. It was denounced to the Inquisition as containing some heretical propositions and many that were erroneous and scandalous. The Toledo tribunal summoned him and after examination voted to suspend his case with a reprimand and order to be more reticent in his sermons and to write no more scandalous books, which was an admission that the work contained nothing especially objectionable. The Suprema, however, set the vote aside and ordered his trial to be vigorously pushed and all his papers to be seized. A struggle, prolonged until 1602, ensued over an infinite number of expressions to which the calificadores took exception, resulting in his being severely reprimanded in the presence of representatives of all the religious Orders, with banishment from Castile and suspension from preaching for three years, the first year of which was to be passed in reclusion in the monastery of Cuenca as a penitent. From his book were to be expurgated all the passages noted as objectionable by the calificadores, and the list of these as printed in the Indexes is formidable in length rather than in quality, for captious criticism had wreaked itself on the minutest points. It was justified in correcting "Assur King of Persia" to "Assur King of Assyria;" possibly also in altering "the day when Peter renounced Christ" to "denied Christ," but only slavish adulation could require that "the day when a tyrant king" should be changed to "tyrant captain." Still, the indomitable maestro was not silenced, for in the following year, 1603, he issued another book, Consideraciones sobre los Evangelios de los Santos, for which he escaped prosecution, though his book likewise found its way into the Index, with, however, a smaller array of expurgations. ⁽²⁹⁾
 
Inquisitorial censorship, it will thus be seen, by no means confined itself to suppressing the works of foreign heretics, for which [492] it was primarily instituted. Had it done so, it would have exercised a sufficiently benumbing influence on Spanish intelligence, for it excluded many works because of their authors rather than of their contents and it never was able to settle definitely the troublesome questions arising from works of high scientific and intellectual merit, in which the authorship or an occasional passage might offend the hyper-sensitiveness so zealously cultivated. This was sufficiently restrictive on culture, not only in itself but in the obstruction which, as we shall see, it imposed on the introduction of all books from abroad, but even more unfortunate in its influence was the censorship extended over the whole field of native literature, interposing barriers on authorship seeking publicity, and exposing even the most orthodox writers to the danger of seeing their works suppressed, or to the humiliation of having them disfigured with blotted passages in which the perverse ingenuity of some theological expert might detect possible danger to the unwary.
 
Yet, to do the Spanish Inquisition justice, in this it was more considerate than the Roman censorship. In 1564 appeared the Index of Pius IV, known as the Tridentine Index. This is the basis of all succeeding Roman Indexes, which are strictly of prohibited books--that is, all books, to which exception of any kind could be taken, were prohibited, whether their errors were systematic or only occasional. No indication was given as to what were the objectionable points, although the author, by humble supplication to the Congregation of the Index, might obtain information and reprint his book with corrections, at the risk of its being again prohibited. ⁽³⁰⁾ The Spanish Inquisition was more laborious, for it prepared Expurgatory Indexes, in which, when books were not absolutely prohibited, the objectionable passages were designated and, when these were borrado, or blotted out, the book could be circulated.
 
Working thus on different lines, there was little harmony between Spain and the Holy See. In fact, as we shall have occasion [493] to observe, the Inquisition asserted entire independence of the Roman censorship, disregarding its prohibitions and issuing its own without reference to Rome. This commenced early, as is shown in some curiously contradictory utterances, in 1568, respecting the Tridentine Index. February 7th, a carta acordada orders the observance of the Spanish Index of 1559; then another, of June 14th, recites that the Tridentine Index is not observed and that persons are using books prohibited in it, wherefore inquisitors are to order it to be obeyed and to tell preachers to urge this from their pulpits; finally a third carta, a fortnight later, on June 29th, practically revokes this by commanding that the Index of 1559 is the only one to be followed. ⁽³¹⁾
 
What between the activity of the press, the widening knowledge of heretical literature, and the increasing sensitiveness of criticism, the work promised to be endless and preparations were soon under way for the preparation of a new Index. The labor proved to be no light one. The tribunals, the prelates and the universities were called upon for information; as this was received it was sent to Maestro Francisco Sancho, who selected from the University of Salamanca a junta to frame from these materials the new Index. Then Sancho left Salamanca and recommended as his successor his assistant Doctor Diego de Vera. The Suprema grew impatient and, in a letter of December 6, 1572, it charged the theologians of the university with the prosecution of the work; in view of its importance and the urgency of speedy completion, it was to be preferred to all other business and was to be pushed forward unremittingly. ⁽³²⁾ They doubtless labored conscientiously and disputed zealously, but the result was still far off. In 1574 we hear that the Index was expected to be completed shortly; in 1575, the Licenciado Velarde, in charge of the matter, was urged to complete it; in 1578 it was so far advanced that it was submitted to the Universities for their revision and in 1579 they were asked for their opinions on the general rules drawn up to accompany it. ⁽³³⁾ Still there was delay, for the outcome of this careful and prolonged labor was a vast increase over previous indexes, appearing in two volumes, known as the Indexes of Quiroga, the inquisitor-general. The first was an Index of prohibited books, issued in 1583, consisting mostly of the names of authors all of whose works were [494] forbidden. This was followed, in 1584, by an Expurgatory Index-- the first of its kind--giving the expurgations necessary to render current the works enumerated. A carta acordada of October 16th contained directions for the enforcement of its prescriptions. Although it had been published in the principal towns, it was to be published again, on a Sunday or feast-day, after convoking the people by proclamation, when it was to be read after the sermon in the same way as the Edict of Faith. The preacher was to announce that all persons having prohibited books were to deliver them at once to the tribunal, or to a person designated in each town; those having books to be expurgated could do so in their own houses, but within six months must submit them to the said persons for approval and signing, without which they would not be considered as expurgated. Obedience seems to have been slack; on June 13, 1585, the time limit was extended for four months; then successive prorogations followed and, in 1587, a further delay was accorded until the end of 1588. ⁽³⁴⁾
 
The business was as interminable as the labors of the Danaïdes. Already, in 1586, the theological faculties of Salamanca, Alcalá and Valladolid were informed that omissions had been reported, and they were asked to assemble and consider what should be done. In 1594 we hear of preparations on foot for another Index and Doctor Neroni, Abbot of Alcalá was instructed to form a junta of doctors and masters competent for the work. ⁽³⁵⁾ Progress, however, was interrupted by the strife which arose between the Dominicans and the Jesuits over the propositions of Molina and the insoluble questions connected with sufficing and efficacious grace. The correspondence on the subject was continuous and voluminous; all the theologians of Spain, who were numerous and highly vocal, were involved in a prodigious uproar which monopolized the energies of the censorship. Even the Inquisition was powerless to restore peace between the raging factions and, in 1598, the strictest orders were sent to all the universities, forbidding debate or discussion on the subject and any allusion to it in lectures. Yet the tempest continued to growl and even in 1612 we find an edict concerning it. ⁽³⁶⁾
 
[495] Still the work was making progress, with enormous labor. We happen to learn that, in 1596, the tribunal of Murcia was instructed to confide to Dr. Arce and his brother the expurgation of Theodore Zwinger's Theatrum Vitae Humantae, an enormous work, in eight folio volumes, published in Basle in 1565. How long they were engaged upon the task may be inferred from the fact that, in 1610, the tribunal was ordered to give to Padre Arce the copy of the book on which he had labored, and the result appears in thirty-eight pages of the Index, occupied by his expurgations. ⁽³⁷⁾ In 1605 we find commissions granted to sundry calificadores to take from the book-shops whatever books they needed for examination. A junta was formed, probably in 1608, the members of which received the liberal salary of a ducat a day and, in 1610, lists of books were sent to all the tribunals, with instructions to submit them to learned men for consideration. ⁽³⁸⁾ The expenditure was large for it was not until 1612 that the new Index, known by the name of Sandoval y Rojas, the inquisitor-general, saw the light. It was both a prohibitory and an expurgatory Index in one stout volume.
 
The next Index was issued under the authority of Inquisitor-general Zapata, in 1632, forming a large folio. Then, in 1640, another appeared in a still larger volume, known as the Index of Sotomayor. Sixty-seven years elapsed before the publication of another, in 1707, under Inquisitor-general Vidal Marín. Its preparation had been entrusted to Antonio Alvárez de la Puente and Fernando Gallego Calderon, the latter of whom died and the work was carried to completion by the former. It contained not only the list of Sotomayor and the works condemned or expurgated during the interval, but many others discovered by the industry of the compilers or by the revisors appointed by the various tribunals, under orders of May 31, 1706, to examine all book-shops and libraries. ⁽³⁹⁾ It occupied two folios of rather smaller size than the single one of its predecessor. The next Index was issued in 1747, under Inquisitor-general Prado y Cuesta, in one [496] large folio. Its preparation had been committed to two Jesuits, without supervision, who abused their position by gratifying the interests of the Society of Jesus through including a large number of authors who had never been condemned, giving rise to a long debate, of which more hereafter. ⁽⁴⁰⁾
 
Although this Index was thoroughly discredited, it was not until 1782 that the Suprema invited proposals for a new one. A memorial, apparently by a member of that body, in response to this, pointed out the inconvenience of the previous issues, with their constant growth, rendering them costly and difficult to consult. The writer suggested the Roman Index of Benedict XIV as a model--all the works to be gathered into one alphabet; the long lists of expurgations to be replaced with the Roman donec corrigatur and a reference to the edict denouncing them. Allusion was made to the many intricate and delicate questions involved, largely owing to the irreconcileable pretensions of the Roman and Spanish Inquisitions, and to the conflict between the royal prerogative and the papal claims. Thus he says that the Roman condemnations were not to be regarded unless they emanate from the Congregation of the Index (not the Roman Inquisition) or a papal brief, and even the Congregation prohibited many books meriting no theological censure, because they were adverse to the assumptions of the curia. Then there was the difficulty of preserving an impartial balance between the rights of the crown and the power of the Church, and of determining the numerous questions presented by many books--the circumspection necessary to distinguish between rights and claims, between exterior and interior discipline, and between discipline and dogma. In fact, the construction of an Index involved much beyond the mere definitions of theology, for it affected the large issues of national policy as well as the multitudinous interests of whole classes of society and religious organizations. As the writer said, the task was too great for any one man, however wise and learned; it could only be performed by a carefully selected junta. ⁽⁴¹⁾ Most of these suggestions were adopted in the Indice Ultimo, which appeared in 1790, in a moderate-sized volume, easy of reference, although the absence of expurgations deprived the possessors of books requiring correction of the facilities afforded by the ponderous tomes of the older Indexes.
 
[497]During the long intervals between the successive issues, the tribunals were expected to compile for themselves lists of the books condemned in the frequent edicts sent to them. In 1781 we find the Valencia tribunal taken to task for not knowing that a French translation of Robinson Crusoe had been prohibited by decree of January 16, 1756, and it was told that, if it had not kept such a list, it must seek for one in some tribunal that had done so. ⁽⁴²⁾ Booksellers likewise were expected to note all new prohibitions in the copies of the Indexes which they were required to keep, and a decree of 1627 instructed the tribunal to furnish to them copies of all edicts as they appeared, so that they could not plead ignorance and escape punishment. ⁽⁴³⁾
 
As regards the performance of expurgation, so long as the published Index was merely prohibitive, it was necessary for the owner to deliver the book to the tribunal or to a commissioner to have the objectionable passages blotted out and some documents of 1563 and 1568 show this to be the practice. ⁽⁴⁴⁾ When the expurgatory Index of Quiroga appeared, in 1584, we have seen that owners were empowered to do this and that they were negligent, which perhaps explains why the privilege was subsequently withdrawn. It was difficult to enforce obedience and the duty was troublesome, leading to the expedient of licensing professional expurgators, who were authorized to do the work and give certificates of its due performance, with the condition that, when working in libraries, if they found prohibited books, they would seize and deliver them to the nearest commissioner. ⁽⁴⁵⁾ When books were delivered to the tribunals for expurgation, the habitual delays must have been exasperating. In 1688 we find Don Juan de la Torre, whose patience was exhausted, obtaining from the Suprema a letter to the Valencia tribunal ordering it to expurgate a book of his and deliver it to him. ⁽⁴⁶⁾
 
We can scarce wonder that owners were negligent, as a remedy for which a carta acordada of October 5, 1712, ordered the tribunals to state in their edicts that the expurgations were on record there, and all owners were to send their books to have the offending [498] passages blotted out by persons deputed for the purpose. ⁽⁴⁷⁾ Then, in 1790, the owner was again permitted to do it on condition of presenting the book within two months to show that it had been done, but, as the Indice Ultimo gave no indication of the expurgations required, it was left for the owner to discover them. ⁽⁴⁸⁾ No matter what plan was adopted, expurgation rendered the ownership of books a source of anxiety and trouble, and exercised a deterrent influence on the diffusion of culture, for there was no class of literature, whether fiction, poetry, history, devotion, statecraft, law or science, as well as theology, in which some lynx-eyed critic could not discover a phrase or sentiment which called for revision. Edicts were continually being issued prescribing the expurgation of individual books, sometimes thirty or forty years after their publication, and frequently on the most trivial grounds, and the lover of literature or science had to be constantly on the watch to escape the penalties of neglect.
 
The process of expurgation was the application with a brush of a coat of printing ink to the peccant word or passage, so as to render it perfectly illegible. When the Mexican tribunal took a notion to condemn all engraved portraits of the saintly Juan de Palafox, Bishop of Puebla, the face was thus daubed over with ink so as to render the features indistinguishable. When, in a book, the length of the offending passage made this too troublesome, the ruder process was adopted of tearing out the pages, regardless of the innocent matter thus removed and destroying the connection of the parts thus sundered. ⁽⁴⁹⁾ Literature was of small account to the butchers of books.
 
Booksellers and book-buyers were subjected to constant investigation conducted in the rudest manner, the influence of which could not fail to be most depressing. The examination of bookshops and public and private libraries, which we have seen attempted as early as 1530 and resolutely prosecuted in 1559, was a settled policy and was pushed with especial vigor after the issue [499] of every new Index, but it was not limited to those times. The correspondence of the Suprema is full of letters and instructions showing the unremitting vigilance with which the work was carried on. In 1600 the tribunals of Valencia, Barcelona and Murcia were ordered to send to the Suprema the books of the Constable of Castile--a work of some duration for, in 1602, there is still a box of them on the way. Then the Seville tribunal was instructed to examine the books of Fray Diego Davila and forward those which Montoya had indicated. Then the Murcia tribunal was told to send to Doctor Montoya the books of Don Juan de Hoces. In 1602 the books of the confessor to the queen were ordered to be sent to the Suprema. All these were private collectors, whose tastes or zeal for learning subjected them to these vexations and humiliations, to the unlimited detention of their cherished books, to loss from carelessness or pilfering and to the irreparable damage of artistic bindings. The mere possession of books rendered the owner an object of suspicion and investigation. If this was the case with private collectors of all ranks, we can readily appreciate the endless troubles and ruinous prosecutions to which booksellers were exposed. In this same year 1600, the Suprema advised the Toledo tribunal that Doctor Juan Martínez had been examining the book-shops of Madrid, resulting in the statement enclosed, as to which it was to do justice--the customary formula in prosecutions. ⁽⁵⁰⁾
 
This is merely an indication of the continuous warfare waged against culture and learning, from which no one was safe. In 1627 a decree commanded booksellers, under penalty of forty ducats and excommunication, to report all prohibited books and those requiring expurgation, which they might meet in private libraries. ⁽⁵¹⁾ In 1618, the Seville tribunal was ordered to seize all the Hebrew books that had belonged to Arias Montano. ⁽⁵²⁾ Even the royal library of the Escorial was subjected to the most humiliating regulations. When the Index of 1612 appeared, the Geronimite Prior of San Lorenzo petitioned the Suprema, stating the wish of the king that the prohibited books should not be removed or expurgated, as it was distinct from the convent library, and the only keys to it were held by him and the chief librarian. Thereupon [500] the inquisitor-general sent Fray Francisco de Jesus to examine and report the arrangements of the library, after which, on November 12, 1613, it decreed as follows. All books which are literary and not religious or offensive, by authors of the first class (those of whom all the works were condemned), are to be separated, marked and have a prefatory note that the author is condemned, but permission is given for them to remain where they can be read by the prior, the chief librarian and the professors of the college. All books by such authors, treating of religion and cognate matters, such as chronologies, sacred histories and histories of the popes, seeing that the king does not wish them removed, shall be stored in a separate room, always locked as in an archive, and no one shall read them save the prior and chief librarian, by special licence of the inquisitor-general and Suprema; there shall be two keys (locks) one kept by the chief librarian and the other by the Suprema, and two lists shall be made of them, one kept in the locked room and the other by the Suprema. With these shall also be placed two MSS. by heresiarchs from the MS. department. Rabbinical books and Bibles in Romance can remain, but shall be put in a separate case and be marked as prohibited, but they can be read as hitherto, by the prior, chief librarian and professors. The fraile in charge of the pharmacy of the convent, but he alone, can read books on medicine by authors of the first class, for distillation of quintessences and other matters of importance. ⁽⁵³⁾ A quarantine against the deadliest infection could scarce have been more carefully devised.
 
There was a slight relaxation in this when, in 1616, Inquisitor-general Sandoval was at the Escorial and extended to all the professors of the college the privilege of reading books of the first class on religion. After the Zapata Index of 1632 appeared, the question again came up and Inquisitor-general Sotomayor confirmed the arrangement of 1613. ⁽⁵⁴⁾ On the publication of his Index, in 1640, the frailes of San Lorenzo petitioned the Suprema that the library, as belonging to the king, should not be expurgated [501] under the new Index. To this the Suprema replied in a consulta to the king, November 16, 1641, arguing that, as the library was the greatest in the world and belonged to the king, it was especially important that it should set the example of containing nothing contrary to Catholic doctrine. Still, there might be a secluded place, in which all books by heretic writers and of evil doctrine could be set aside, and the key of it be kept by the inquisitor-general, on condition that the library should furnish to the Suprema whatever books it might need. ⁽⁵⁵⁾ There can be little doubt that some such arrangement was reached.
 
The vigilant supervision over book-shops and libraries was unrelaxing, and the depressing influence which it exercised on the book-trade and on culture in general can be estimated from the regulations accompanying the Index of Vidal Marin, in 1707. The tribunals were authorized to appoint an unlimited number of Revisores de Libros, empowered, at such times as suited them, to examine the public libraries and auctions and book-shops. The revisor was to require from booksellers inventories of stock and to see that these were complete; he was to order sent to his house or to that of another revisor, all prohibited books and those requiring examination, and report the result to the tribunal; he was to expurgate and certify with his signature all books requiring expurgation. He was to report all omissions or contraventions by booksellers of the rules of the Index, and for this his inspections must be frequent. He was to familiarize himself with these inventories and also with those which the booksellers were obliged to render to the tribunal at the beginning of each year, with details of all sales made during the year, so that he should become thoroughly informed and the booksellers be deterred from committing their customary frauds. All this was to be done at the expense of the owners of the books or, in the case of public libraries, of the town. As this was expected to produce much dissatisfaction, any "licentious" talk against the Index was to be reported for due punishment. ⁽⁵⁶⁾
 
The expected dissatisfaction was not lacking. The powers granted to the revisors gave so large an opportunity for oppression and extortion that the position was eagerly sought. Commissions were recklessly multiplied, until the number of these literary spies [502] and blackmailers aroused general complaint. Nor was this a mere temporary abuse, for a letter of the Suprema, October 5, 1712, calls attention to the excessive number of appointees and the evils thence arising, for the palliation of which it proposed to issue an edict. ⁽⁵⁷⁾
 
This inspection of public and private libraries and of bookshops continued till the suppression of the Inquisition. We find, June 25, 1817, the Seville tribual sending to that of Madrid a list of books belonging to Juan Gualberto González, royal fiscal in the Council of Indies and, on August 18th, the fiscal sends to an unnamed tribunal the translation for which it had asked of a list of books belonging to the Marquis of Narros, the linguistic attainments of the inspectors having apparently been insufficient. In the financial distress of the Inquisition, the work seems now to be performed by officials of the tribunals, doubtless eager to do anything that would bring in fees, for, in 1819, we have the report of the secretary of the Valencia tribunal that, in the inspection of the book-shop of Pedro Juan Hallen, he had found a sermon in Italian, which he seized as suspicious and which was duly submitted to calificadores. ⁽⁵⁸⁾
 
Death afforded an opportunity not neglected of expurgating private libraries. When the owner died, the Inquisition stepped in to investigate and control the disposition of his books. In 1651, it would seem that all books had to pass through its hands for, in the case of Don Alonso de la Torre, the Suprema orders the Valencia tribunal to forward to it the packages delivered by the heirs, the prohibited ones separate from those approved. ⁽⁵⁹⁾ The instructions of 1707 apparently limit this interference to cases of sale, for they provide that when, on account of death or other cause, a library is sold, the booksellers must furnish the revisor with á list of all books and their prices, so that prohibited or suspected ones may be surrendered, for which the booksellers can take receipts. ⁽⁶⁰⁾ In 1748 the case of Doctor Teodoro Tomás, canon of the cathedral of Valencia, indicates that the executors had to render to the tribunal a detailed statement under oath of the disposition made of all books and papers. The prohibited books were [503] given to the Dominican convent, which had a licence enabling it to hold them, and the rest were sold to Juan Bautista Malet and Manuel Cortés, booksellers. The papers were also accounted for-- those pertaining to cathedral affairs were delivered to the chapter, those which seemed useless were burnt and the servants sold some to an apothecary. ⁽⁶¹⁾
 
In this case the necessary preliminary of submitting an inventory to a revisor had evidently been complied with. When this was omitted the resultant trouble is exemplified in the library of Gregorio Mayans y Siscar, the most eminent man of letters of his day, who died in 1781. His library was large and valuable, and his widow sought to make the most of it for his children. She was a pious woman but through ignorance did not observe the requisite formalities. She sold a large portion to the Augustinian convent, which had a licence to hold prohibited books, and when she learned that this was unlawful she made great efforts to get it back; the Augustinians resisted but were finally obliged to submit. Then she applied to the Suprema for a licence to sell the prohibited books, which was referred to the Valencia tribunal. It replied, November 8, 1803, that the Augustinian provincial had exhibited the licence, and had been told that the convent had a right to hold them, but the widow had no right to sell them. The inquisitor sympathized with her, but pointed out that to grant her request would open the door to fictitious transactions, and he recommended that at most she should be allowed to sell those which the Augustinians had bought, for there were others. The library was large; it had taken long to make an inventory and still longer to find a revisor to go over it and note the prohibited books. This, however, had at last been accomplished, and the widow had been furnished with two lists--one of prohibited books to be surrendered to the Inquisition, and the other of those which must be expurgated before she could sell them. The Suprema, before deciding, required to see a list of the prohibited books sold to the Augustinians, which was duly furnished, and we may hope that, in the end, the widow was able to dispose of her husband's books, although the proceeds must have been wofully diminished by the fees and expenses and the confiscation of those prohibited. ⁽⁶²⁾ There was scant encouragement in Spain for scholars to accumulate the means of study and research.
 
[504] While this case was dragging along, irrepressible zeal in pursuit of prohibited books threatened a foreign complication. Leonhardt Schuck, the Dutch consul at Alicante, died, leaving the French vice-consul as his executor. The house and effects were duly sealed with the royal seal during the execution of certain legal formalities, but the commissioner of the Inquisition called on the governor to remove the seal and deliver the keys to him, so that he might inventory the books, papers and prints, for he was informed that there were prohibited articles of all three kinds. The governor refused until he could consult the king, when the commissioner at night broke the seal, made his way in, compiled an inventory and replaced the seal as best he could. The Dutch ambassador complained to Carlos IV, and the minister Urquijo, who was unfriendly to the Inquisition, took occasion to issue a carta orden of October 11, 1799, severely rebuking it for this and other similar occurrences, which had contributed greatly to increase its evil reputation abroad. ⁽⁶³⁾
 
This supervision over the libraries of the dead continued under the Restoration. In 1815 orders were sent to all commissioners to see that no books belonging to estates were sold at auction until exact lists were submitted to the tribunal and its permission was obtained and, in 1817, when Fray Raymundo García, prior of the convent of Montesa at Onda, died, the Valencia tribunal had his library examined with the result of finding quite a number of prohibited books, mostly of a Jansenist character. ⁽⁶⁴⁾ Despite the ceaseless vigilance of the Inquisition, the seekers after forbidden literature took the risk of gratifying their longings.

This forbidden literature was necessarily foreign. Under the preliminary restrictions on printing, which weighed with such deadly pressure on authorship, and under such vigilance as that which prompted the Suprema, in 1602, to order the tribunals to instruct their commissioners to seize all new books, or those of new authors or new editions, and report about them without delivering them to any one, ⁽⁶⁵⁾ it was impossible that native works of dangerous tendency could reach the public, and censorship was confined to theological subtilties or to trivialties. The only real [505] danger to be guarded against came from abroad, and the Inquisition's most effective service to obscurantism was rendered in the quarantine which it established to preserve the nation from the infection of new ideas. To this were directed the unremitting energies of the state, which found in the Holy Office its most useful instrument. We have seen above how early it took the alarm in 1521. In 1532 the Royal Council adopted the heroic measure of prohibiting the importation and sale of all recently printed books ⁽⁶⁶⁾--a measure which, if enforced, would have cut off Spain from all foreign literature, without preventing the introduction of heretical books concealed in packages of other merchandise. If not speedily repealed, it at least soon became obsolete, and the function of guarding the land from the importation of heretical matter naturally fell into the hands of the Inquisition, which alone possessed the authority and the ability to decide between what was innocent and what was obnoxious. This function consisted of two duties--that of separating the wheat from the tares in books regularly imported through the custom-houses, and in the suppression of smuggling.
 
Precisely at what time the Inquisition undertook these duties it would be impossible to say, but its activity and organization of the work would seem to date from the Lutheran scare of 1557 and 1558. In a letter of May 12, 1558, from the Suprema to Charles V, it declares that all the inquisitors had been instructed to use the greatest vigilance at the sea-ports and along the French frontier, but such was the audacity of the heretics that this did not suffice, as was proved by the number of books daily seized in spite of the most rigorous punishment. ⁽⁶⁷⁾ So, in its report of September 9th to the pope, it stated that to prevent the importation of heretic books, inquisitors with their officials had been established along the coasts and in the places of greatest trade, which was a falsehood for the purpose of obtaining papal sanction for despoiling the Church, since no new tribunals were established, though the existing ones were urged to special vigilance. How this was exercised is detailed in a letter of October 25th from the Seville inquisitors, in response to an exhortation to diligence. They declare that all possible care was taken; instructions had been given for the visiting of all ships on arrival; no merchandise of any kind [506] could be discharged or opened without the presence of a commissioner, who saw that there were no books in the packages or, if there were, they were sent to the tribunal. All packages for Seville were sealed and not opened save in the presence of their inspector, to see whether there were books enclosed. All books arriving were delivered to the tribunal and examined, when those found to be prohibited or suspicious were detained; it had not come to their knowledge that any one had received and distributed books without this previous examination. ⁽⁶⁸⁾
 
This shows that already the system had been established, which continued with little modification to the end. All packages of books were carefully inspected, those prohibited or subject to expurgation, and the new and unknown ones regarded as suspicious were removed and sent to the tribunal to await its decision, which usually inferred consultation with the Suprema and indefinite delay. Every package of merchandise, moreover--box, bale or barrel--was opened in presence of the commissioner in search of concealed books. Thus the whole importing commerce of Spain passed through the hands of the Inquisition, whose officials employed in the business were unpaid, except by the fees which they could exact from merchants, leading to interminable squabbles, insufferable delays and grievous impediments to the commercial activity of the nation.
 
The trade in books suffered especially. It evidently was regarded as a thing to be restricted as far as possible, and was subject to any caprice of the authorities. In the sixteenth century orders were sometimes sent to special ports to forward all packages of books unopened and finally this was adopted as a universal rule, the whole foreign book-trade thus passing through the hands of the Suprema. A carta acordada of June 17, 1666, complains of the inobservance of these instructions, which must be obeyed by the commissioners at all the ports; the carriers must be bound under a penalty to return, within a fixed time, the receipt of the secretary of the Suprema, and a separate letter of advice must inform the Suprema who he is and at what tavern in Madrid he is accustomed to lodge. ⁽⁶⁹⁾ No trade could be profitably carried on which was subject to such vexatious and costly interference, [507] while the Suprema was constantly scolding the tribunals for their negligence.
 
How their ignorant scrupulousness affected trade may be guessed by an incident occurring at Barcelona in 1666. A bookseller of that city imported a number of copies of a book just printed in Lyons--a Pharmacopoeia Medico-Chemica, by Johannes Schoderius, M.D., Physician in ordinary to the Republic of Frankfurt a/M. In the Index of 1640, the inquisitors found, among authors of the first class, the name of Joan. Schroderus, qualified as " Philosophus et Theologus German. Luther. August. Confess.," all of whose works were condemned. They seized the Pharmacopoeias and reported to the Suprema, which ordered a copy forwarded. It was duly submitted to calificadores and five months afterwards the tribunal was notified that the books might be delivered to the owner. ⁽⁷⁰⁾
 
The internal traffic in books was trammelled by the closest supervision. In 1645 the Valencia tribunal was instructed to issue no licences to take books to Castile without a formal order from the Suprema. ⁽⁷¹⁾ While their departure was thus closely scrutinized, a second inspection was required on their arrival, as appears from a petition, in 1665, of Juan Antonio Bonet, bookseller of Madrid, representing that, in 1663, he had forwarded to Miguel Paysso, a bookseller of Barcelona, certain books, among which the Barcelona tribunal found and seized a copy of the works of Quevedo, in two volumes, which he prays to be released, as it was printed in Madrid, where it enjoyed free circulation. ⁽⁷²⁾
 
It was the same with exports. In 1573 the books of some frailes going to the Canaries require a special order from the Suprema to commissioners in Seville, Granada, Córdova and Badajoz to pass them if there were none prohibited among them. ⁽⁷³⁾ The instructions of 1707 provide that, when books are to be exported, lists of them are to be submitted to the revisers that they may retain any that are prohibited or are unknown to them and thus require examination. ⁽⁷⁴⁾ A transaction in 1788 shows that a special permit was required for each shipment of books to the colonies, and a royal order of August 8, 1807, prescribed that the examination [508] should be made conjointly by the commissioners of the Inquisition, the royal revisor and a delegate of the juez de imprentas. ⁽⁷⁵⁾ Even books in transit were subject to the watchful eye of the Inquisition, as we learn when, in 1560, some that had belonged to Cardinal Pole were shipped through Spain to Venice and were diligently investigated. ⁽⁷⁶⁾ Books in fact were regarded with almost an insane fear, as the most dangerous of all articles of commerce, and the more thoroughly that Spain could be prevented from knowing what men were thinking and doing in foreign lands, the safer it was for society.
 
The regulations adopted for importations were well adapted to protect the Spanish intellect from such dangers. The requirement of sending all packages to the Suprema unopened seems to have been abandoned, but other obstacles were sufficiently onerous. All books, with which the commissioner of the Inquisition was not acquainted, had to be submitted to calificadores or sent to the Suprema for decision. As foreign books, especially the new ones, came under this category, the consequent delays and the risk of prohibition exposed the importing bookseller to hardships rendering trade almost impracticable. Thus, in 1772, Fierre Crozier, a bookseller of Valencia, imported a copy of the Essais de Morale of Pierre Nicole. It had to be referred to the Suprema, which, by letter of August 29th, ordered it to be examined and reported upon. After the lapse of four years we find Crozier still begging the tribunal to decide whether it will be permitted, as well as copies of the Discours de Fleuri and the Histoire de la Bible of Royaumont. If prohibited, he asks permission to sell them to some one who holds a licence or to return them to France. ⁽⁷⁷⁾ How much longer he had to wait we can only conjecture. These impediments to importation were aggravated by a regulation of the Royal Council, in 1784, requiring a licence before a new foreign book could be exposed for sale and, out of the small number on which the dealer could venture to try the market, he had, when applying for a licence, to give two copies and to pay the examining censor a real per sheet for reading it, with the prospect that if the licence was obtained, the Inquisition might subsequently prohibit it. ⁽⁷⁸⁾
 
[509] The books seized were detained by the tribunals, and their fate is revealed in a letter from that of Valencia, July 28, 1798, in answer to orders from the Suprema to return to Don Josef Joaquín de Soria a copy of the Lettres Provinciales in four languages, and to send to Madrid, under seal, the books brought from Holland (some ten years before) by Don Pedro Antonio Casas. The tribunal explained at much length its inability to comply. The practice of entering the name of the owner in books seized is recent. The accumulation of prohibited books is large, and the room in which most of them are stored is so hot and so infested with book-worms that in a fortnight a book is pierced through and through. If those of Casas were placed there or left in their boxes there would not be a leaf remaining. Besides, a bookseller was formerly employed to come monthly and dust them, and he carried away all that he wanted, as appeared in his prosecution on that charge in 1789. This explains why only a portion of Casas's books can be found; as to Soria's Lettres Provinciales, two copies of that edition have been found, but each has a different owner's name. ⁽⁷⁹⁾ Verily, the Inquisition was the grave-yard of books.
 
The outbreak of the French Revolution brought fresh activity and redoubled watchfulness for the exclusion of dangerous literature. Politics and religion were inextricably intermingled, and the revolutionary propaganda was as much dreaded as the religious had been in the sixteenth century. In 1792, the Suprema ordered all the tribunals to be especially zealous in preventing the introduction of the books, which the French were industriously disseminating for the purpose of exciting rebellion and imperilling religion and the monarchy. With this it circulated a royal order commanding special examination of books and papers from foreign parts. Wherever there was a custom-house, there were two revisers appointed, one royal and the other inquisitorial, who were to examine together all books and papers arriving. These were to be divided into three parts; those allowed currency and unknown works on history and science, which could be delivered to the owners; those included in the Index, to be retained by the inquisitorial revisor, and those unknown and suspected, to be kept by the royal revisor, until the king's pleasure could be ascertained. Thus the forces of the State and the Inquisition were marshalled together in defence of the faith and of the crown; unfortunately [510] they did not always work harmoniously for, in 1805 these instructions were reissued with urgent appeals for cordial cooperation. ⁽⁸⁰⁾ It would be useless to follow in detail the numerous exhortations to vigilance in the succeeding years. In spite of precautions, foreign ideas drifted through the custom-houses and embodied themselves in the Constitution of 1812 and, when the reaction came under the Restoration, the supervision of importations was confided exclusively to the Inquisition. In 1816 a question arose as to the functions of the subdelegado de Imprentas and the revisor Real, when Fernando VII decided that it pertained alone to the tribunals to decide what books should pass through the customhouses, and that their permission was necessary. ⁽⁸¹⁾

If these efforts to control the legitimate importation of books exercised an unfortunate influence on the intellectual development of Spain, its commercial interests suffered likewise from the precautions adopted to prevent the smuggling of the dreaded literature. These were known as the Visitas de Navios, which rendered the ports of Spain an object of dislike to all merchantmen, whether of native or foreign origin. Their systematization is attributable to the Protestant scare of 1558, when no means were deemed too radical which should serve to defeat the propagandist energy ascribed to the Spanish refugees and their heretical allies.
 
When a vessel cast anchor, before it could break cargo, it was visited by the representatives of various jurisdictions--health, war and customs. Subsequently health and war were combined, under the name of almirantazgo and there was added a visit from the commissioner of the Inquisition, with his notary and alguazil. As these officials were unsalaried, they claimed to be paid for their time and for the expense of a carriage and boat, by fees exacted of the vessel. Then, after inspecting the crew and passengers and examining any books belonging to them, a guard was stationed to prevent the surreptitious landing of books. When the cargo was discharged, the commissioner opened and inspected every package and, if it was a bale of books, of course each one had to be compared with the Index. For all this [511] additional fees were charged, constituting a tax, not alone on the book-trade but on commerce in general, deeply resented by all the commercial interests, nor was the opposition lessened by the arbitrary methods habitual with all the officials of the Inquisition. Complaints of abuses became loud and numerous from all the seaports while, on the other hand, the frequent reports of heretical machinations led to constant exhortations from the Suprema for increased vigilance.
 
Some feeble attempts were made to check abuses. In 1602 there was a prohibition that visiting officials should require to have meals served, should place guards, or insist on having salutes fired; in 1606 it was forbidden for commissioners to take with them notaries or familiars who were merchants, and who thus learned the nature of the cargo and had opportunities to buy or to sell; but no attention was paid to these reforms. ⁽⁸²⁾ Then, in 1607, a royal cédula provided that commissioners should levy no fees for visiting ships, and this was repeated in 1610, but these commands were disobeyed on the plea that they passed through the Council of Castile and not through the Suprema, wherefore, as the latter said, the commissioners were bound to obey them but not to execute them. ⁽⁸³⁾
 
The royal attention was finally called to the injurious effect of the system on Spanish commerce and, in January, 1632, a cédula was sent to the corregidores of the sea-ports, in which the king stated that he had been informed that the continual vexations inflicted on those who came to trade at Spanish ports, arising from the abuses practised by the numerous officials visiting their ships at their arrival and departure, had not only been the cause of the decline of commerce but of its total destruction, for every vessel was visited by so many jurisdictions that the extortions and impositions were great and had much increased of late. He was therefore obliged to enquire what proper methods could be adopted to encourage trade on the part of both natives and foreigners, without abolishing the necessary visits and precautions. There followed a list of searching questions as to the number of visits, officials, fees, methods, etc., with a request for suggestions. Although directed nominally to the abuses of all the jurisdictions, [512] the Inquisition evidently was especially aimed at, for copies of the cédula were sent by the Suprema to all the tribunals of the crown of Castile. ⁽⁸⁴⁾
 
A junta was assembled to frame a reform on the basis of the information thus obtained. It sat until the end of 1633 but, if it reached any conclusions, they left no trace on legislation or practice. The only paper laid before it that I have met is a complaint from Don Pedro de Barreda, customs inspector of Guipuzcoa, of the excesses committed by officials of the Inquisition, under pretext of visiting the vessels coming to the ports of his district. ⁽⁸⁵⁾ The probability is that, as so frequently the case in Spanish administration, the junta did nothing but submit to the king long consultas representing the conflicting views of the individual members, and that the king by that time had lost his interest in the matter and cast them aside without reading.
 
As was inevitable, the aggressiveness of the officials led to frequent quarrels. In 1616 there was one in Sardinia, in which the inquisitor excommunicated the Governor of Sasser, when the viceroy retaliated with a decree banishing the inquisitor. It was published with trumpet and cymbals and so frightened the inquisitorial people that the consultors did not dare to assemble and the familiars took to the mountains. The affair was referred to the Council of Aragon and the Suprema, which effected a truce by annulling the acts on both sides. ⁽⁸⁶⁾ That the junta of 1633 brought no harmony is seen in a similar outbreak arising from the same cause in 1634, between the viceroy of Majorca and the tribunal, which had to be carried up to the king. ⁽⁸⁷⁾ In 1635, the royal secretary addressed the Suprema, stating that a squadron was being organized for service on the coast of Guipuzcoa and that, to avoid the extortions and vexations of the commissioner at San Sebastian, the king desired that the head chaplain of the squadron should be appointed as commissioner, so that he could perform the duty of visiting the ships and prizes when they entered port. To this the Suprema returned an emphatic protest; such visits were essential and not to be omitted; the cause of complaint was not the extortions of the commissioners but their [513] zealous discharge of their duties. As there is no endorsement on this consulta, the king apparently did not press the matter. ⁽⁸⁸⁾
 
Perhaps the bitterest struggle was that carried on by Bilbao for more than a hundred years. As one of the busiest ports of Spain, it naturally recalcitrated against the burdens laid upon its trade. The system had scarce been fairly organized when, in 1560, complaints already came to the Suprema of extortionate and illegal fees. Bartolomé de Robles, a bookseller of Alcalá, represented that he had imported through Bilbao forty bales of books, which were forwarded in one lot by ten muleteers; they had all been duly examined and sealed, the commissioner charging one real for each seal and then, in place of giving one certificate for the lot, he made out forty certificates at four reales apiece. The Suprema forwarded this to the tribunal of Calahorra (Logroño), with a table of fees, commanding that all exorbitant charges should be returned to it for distribution to the parties aggrieved. ⁽⁸⁹⁾ It was not alone the booksellers, but merchants in general, who suffered from the opening of their packages and the fees charged on each, and the shipmasters exposed to the extortions attendant upon the visits. The mercantile community of Bilbao was well organized, having a Casa de Contratacion to regulate commerce, with a Fiel or executive officer, a Prior and Consuls. They made their grievances heard and a compromise was reached with the tribunal, in 1561, which was not observed; it was the same with another agreement made in 1567 and yet another in 1576, under which all fees were abolished. To enforce this the Contratacion brought suit, resulting in an agreement in 1577, confirmed by the Suprema, by which the commissioner received fifty ducats a year in lieu of all fees, except two reales on each package of books, the examination of which was admitted to be laborious. ⁽⁹⁰⁾ Trouble soon recommenced; in spite of repeated exhortation to moderation by the Suprema, fees were levied on every package and cask of merchandise. The royal cédula of 1607 abolishing fees was published February 18th, but received no attention and, in 1609, Bilbao sent a strong remonstrance to the king, to which the Logroño tribunal replied, asserting it to be false; the labor was great; it always had been and must be paid by fees, which [514] were always the subject of contention, especially at Bilbao where there were a prior and consuls to defend the merchants. ⁽⁹¹⁾ Then came the royal cédula of 1610, again abolishing fees, which received no more attention than the previous one.
 
In February, 1612, the Suprema wrote to Logroño that great complaints continued to come to the king, especially from Bilbao, and it suggested that an increase in the fifty ducats might be obtained in lieu of fees. Acting on this, a formal agreement was signed in July and confirmed by the Suprema, raising the annual payment to two thousand reales, the two reales on book packages being retained. It is not likely that this was observed by the commissioner for, in 1616, at the request of the merchants and shipmasters, a return was made to the fee system and a definite scale was agreed upon. This scale, however, did not long content the commissioner for, in 1631, the complaints reaching the Suprema led it to make an investigation, in which its fiscal admitted that the excessive fees and vexations were leading shipmasters to abandon those ports, especially Bilbao; the fees exacted were fifty per cent, greater than the agreed scale; vessels bringing fish were compelled in addition to give so many fish out of each barrel, and the delays were damaging. At the same time the existing commissioner, Pedro de Villareal, was highly commended. He had merely accepted conditions as he found them established by his predecessors; his term of service extended from 1625 to 1662 and was subsequently looked back upon as a halcyon time of peace. ⁽⁹²⁾
 
This came to an end, in 1663, with the appointment of a new commissioner, the Licentiate Domingo de Leguina, whose excessive exactions and arbitrary methods excited the bitterest dissatisfaction. One thing which was the subject of especial complaint was that, in place of examining merchandise in the warehouses of the consignees, he insisted on opening the packages on the quay, cutting the cords and scattering the contents, which were thus subjected to theft and to the vicissitudes of the weather; he even bored holes in casks of tar and explored the interior with a stick in the search for hidden books. Commerce on a large scale could scarce be conducted under such conditions, the prosperity of the port was seriously threatened, passions on both sides were enkindled [515] and a controversy of the fiercest kind raged for years. The Señorio of Biscay took sides with the merchants and represented forcibly to the queen-regent the absurdity of ruining commerce and risking complications with foreign nations on the pretext of preventing the smuggling of prohibited books, considering the risks attendant on the attempt and the lack of purchasers for them if successful, in a community so ardent for the faith. ⁽⁹³⁾
 
Both sides resorted to extreme measures. The Contratacion in 1667 ordered the merchants not to pay fees; the tribunal, with the approval of the Suprema, ordered Leguina to collect them; he seized goods and sold them by auction; he prosecuted some of the merchants and compromised with them for money; the English and Dutch ambassadors intervened with protests against the disregard of treaty stipulations; the queen-regent annulled the decree of the Contratacion forbidding the payment of fees, and against this the Señorío of Biscay, in a solemn assembly, November 7, 1668, protested, as a violation of the fueros, and adopted a decree prohibiting their payment; if attempts should be made to collect them it would resist and, if other remedies failed, a Junta General would be assembled to determine on further measures. Meanwhile, any secular official assisting Leguina was declared to be disabled for insaculation in the choice by lot for public office. This decree was published in Bilbao to sound of drum and fife, with general popular rejoicing, and Leguina could find no official to assist him in his work, even his notary being disqualified for an office to which he aspired. Then the Council of Castile intervened May 15, 1669, with an order to Leguina to levy no fees for visiting ships, an action probably induced by a forcible protest from the Earl of Sandwich, the English ambassador, in which the exactions of the commissioner were represented as infractions of the treaties of 1665 and 1667. ⁽⁹⁴⁾
 
The serious character of the questions thus raised made an impression on the court and led to a royal decree of July 19, 1669, informing the Suprema that the vexations and excessive dues levied by Leguina on the commerce of Bilbao had aroused such hatred that means must be taken to avoid greater evils, by removing the officials and replacing them with others who would perform their duties without arousing complaints. An immediate answer [516] was required to this, but the Suprema waited until December 23d and then replied in a long consulta, insisting that Leguina had been right from the beginning; that all laws or regulations infringing the immunities of the Inquisition were invalid, and the mere attempt subjected its authors to punishment. As the Suprema was immovable, an attack was made directly on Leguina by a royal letter and provision of the Royal Council, January 22, 1670, ordering him to collect no fees for visiting ships and to make his visits as his predecessors had done. When this was served upon him he made an unseemly reply and stopped the commerce of the port until there were eighteen ships waiting to discharge their cargoes. To overcome this, a solemn mandate in the name of the king and queen-regent was addressed to him, February 14th, reciting his misdeeds and ordering him to quit the kingdom or to present himself at court under penalty of twenty thousand maravedís. When this was served upon him by a notary, on February 23d, he reverently placed it on his head and said he respected it as the act of his king, but the next day he served upon the notary his declinatoria (denial of jurisdiction), stating that he was simply the servant of the Suprema and of the Logroño tribunal, in which capacity he had complied with the obligations of his office, and the Suprema had never brought a charge against him, wherefore he supplicated the king to inform himself from the Suprema as to the matters contained in these royal provisions, which had been obtained surreptitiously, and to recognize the justice of his reply and of his proceedings. ⁽⁹⁵⁾ The authority of the Suprema evidently was superior to that of the king.
 
Thus baffled, the queen-regent turned again to the Suprema, with a decree of April 1, 1670, in which she rehearsed the agreements of 1561, 1567 and 1576 as providing that no fees were to be levied; the visits must be made in the former fashion, so as to give no occasion of complaints of the violation of treaties, and Leguina must be removed. To this the Suprema replied, April 24th, insisting on the necessity of the visits; the resistance of Bilbao had proved contagious; the other ports were refusing to pay fees, and this would extend to the whole monarchy; the labor had to be paid for and the Inquisition had no funds for salaries. It further explained that, in view of the hostility felt for Leguina, the Logroño tribunal had replaced him, on January 3d, by Joan [517] de Zabala, who had found himself unable to act, everybody being terrorized and refusing to assist him, so Leguina had resumed his duties. Then, on February 14th the Council of State had intervened and allowed the eighteen waiting ships to discharge their cargoes without examination, which was an invasion of the jurisdiction of the Inquisition and consequently null. At the end of February Leguina had been replaced by Don Iñigo Zubiaur who had been well received by the merchants--a fallacious welcome for soon afterwards it was learned that Zubiaur, though he reduced the fees, could get no assistance; his life was threatened and he asked to be relieved on June 20th. ⁽⁹⁶⁾
 
It would be a weariness to follow in further detail these obscure quarrels which were carried on with equal tenacity by both sides. A new commissioner, Pedro de Irazagarria Butron, was succeeded by Miguel de Jarabeytía, who were as little successful as their predecessors. At length, on May 26, 1680, the king sent to the Suprema a protest from the Dutch ambassador as to the detention of vessels and damage to goods for the purpose of extorting illegal fees. This was followed, June 26th, by another from the ambassador of France, claiming that French vessels should be exempted, and that only packages of books should be examined. Then, on September 4th the king transmitted one from the English ambassador, and accompanied it by a sharp message to the effect that at the moment it was especially desirable to avoid giving just cause of offence to England, and that a prompt remedy must be applied. It was not until October 22d that the Suprema replied, insisting upon the enforcement of the visits; more books entered the port of Bilbao than all the other ports of the kingdom combined, and since these troubles began the visits had been so impeded that immense numbers of books of evil doctrine were filling all the public and private libraries. ⁽⁹⁷⁾ The Suprema was willing to embroil Spain with half of Europe rather than to spend a few hundred ducats in salaries, and equally reckless was its assertion as to the commerce in books at Bilbao. When, in 1648, it had called for reports on the visitas de navios from all the northern ports, Commissioner Villareal stated that no books had come to Bilbao for eight years. At none of the other ports was there any allusion made to books, except at San Sebastian, where it was added that [518] they rarely came. ⁽⁹⁸⁾ When we recall the forty bales imported in one lot through Bilbao for Robles of Alcalá, in 1561, we can estimate the success of the Inquisition, during the interval, in securing the intellectual isolation of Spain and the flimsiness of the pretext on which was based this prolonged struggle.
 
Still the struggle went on, stimulated by fresh protests from the English and French ambassadors and met by the Suprema with vociferous assertions of the masses of heretical literature introduced into Spain. At length, on June 12,1681, the corregidor of Bilbao, Don Juan González de Leon, a member of the Royal Council and judge in the Chancellery of Valladolid, in conjunction with the General Deputies of the Señorío, issued a proclamation imposing a fine of fifty ducats on all shipmasters, merchants and others who should pay the fees, thus uniting the royal and provincial authorities in resistance to the Inquisition. The Suprema met this, July 17th, by ordering Jarabeytía to collect the fees, in which if necessary he was to employ excommunication and collect evidence to prosecute those who impeded the Inquisition. This was a declaration of war, but it was accompanied with secret instructions that he was not to seize goods but to keep a record for future use, and that he was to lose no opportunity of reaching a compromise with the Contratacion, which could take the shape, as formerly suggested, of a lump sum in payment on every ship according to its tonnage. ⁽⁹⁹⁾ Here the documents at my disposal come to an end, but there can be little doubt that, on some such basis, a compromise was reached, as the Contratacion had shown a willingness to pay a handsome sum in gross, in the confidence apparently, that when the stimulus of fees for each package was removed, the examinations would be nominal and the commissioners would render their office a sinecure.
 
Barcelona was more fortunate than Bilbao. The opposition of the viceroy and the intervention of the Banco Regio prevailed against the efforts of the tribunal. In 1819 it reported that there was no trace of commissioners ever having visited ships, except when there were Jews on board, and that a letter of 1677 showed that visits were net made because shipmasters would not pay the fees. ⁽¹⁰⁰⁾ Elsewhere, abuses were rife. At Cádiz, among [519] seafaring men, the Santo Oficio was generally known as the Santo Ladronicio, although there and in Málaga a judicious system of bribery was established, which removed most of the impediments of commerce, together with the obstacles to the importation of prohibited books. ⁽¹⁰¹⁾ I have met with complaints about Valencia, Alicante and other ports and, in view of the prevalence of official venality, it may be assumed that at least many commissioners used their virtually irresponsible power for profit either by omitting supervision or rendering it unduly onerous.
 
In 1705 an elaborate digest of all previous instructions was sent to the tribunals with orders to impress upon their commissioners the necessity of constant vigilance to prevent the introduction of prohibited books; not only were bales, hogsheads, casks, packages and especially packs of playing cards to be examined, but the chests and beds of the sailors, yet the utmost tact and dexterity were to be employed, so as to avoid exciting the repugnance felt for these visits. If any controversy arose, the commissioners were not to proceed judicially but the matter was to be referred directly to the Suprema. ⁽¹⁰²⁾ In 1742 and 1764, there were royal orders issued prescribing rules and fees, which have interest only as showing the control acquired by the crown over the Inquisition.
 
In 1801, the Suprema called upon the tribunals for information as to details and fees, the answer to which from Valencia indicates the purely financial view of the matter entertained by the officials. Since the royal orders of 1742 and 1764, it said, and for many years previous, no visits had been made, because the fee for large vessels was eight reales and four for small ones, while it was necessary to hire a carriage from the city to the Grao and a boat to the ship, so the cost was greater than the gain. In Denia the visits had been performed anciently, but for many years they had been abandoned. ⁽¹⁰³⁾
 
In fact, it had for the most part become simply an impost levied for the benefit of the Inquisition on ships from foreign parts. The suppression of the Inquisition by the Córtes of Cádiz, in 1813, was followed by a decree stating that at almost all the sea-ports of Spain there was collected for the Inquisition a fee known as [520] derecho de Inquisicion on all foreign vessels or those from foreign parts, and that in some places there was further levied on all packages of books and merchandise another fee for registration-- all of which the Córtes now suppressed. ⁽¹⁰⁴⁾
 
With the revival of the Inquisition under the Restoration, the visitas de navios were naturally resumed, whenever the opposition of shipmasters and foreign consuls permitted. Desiring to reorganize the system, the Suprema, June 17, 1816, called for information, the responses to which show that, at the ports of the northern coasts, for the most part, it was maintained as far as practicable, while on the Mediterranean shore, except in Majorca and Velez Málaga, it was in a thoroughly demoralized condition. No visits were made to the ships. Where they could, commissioners collected fees from vessels arriving from foreign ports, but consuls raised objections and, when subsequently the Suprema ordered the commissioner of Cádiz to enforce payment, he could not persuade the consuls to assent, as they simply referred him to their ambassadors. The matter slumbered until, in January, 1819, the Minister of Marine addressed to the inquisitor-general a complaint from the Hydrographic Office that it had been obliged to pay to a commissioner eight reales for examining two cases containing articles for it. This opened the way, and the Suprema laid before the king a long consulta, urging a reorganization of the system and presenting an elaborate series of regulations for his consideration, as the matter was of immense importance to religion and the state. The scheme resuscitated all the old details in the most rigorous form; indeed, as regards books, it provided that the packages should be sealed with sealing-wax, the duties were to be paid and the packages forwarded to the Suprema by some confidential person. ⁽¹⁰⁵⁾ No more effective plan could have been devised for preserving Spain from the contagion of foreign ideas and, even without this, the other provisions gave to the Inquisition the power of embarrassing largely the whole foreign commerce of the land. The scheme is of interest as revealing the aims of the Inquisition on the brink of its extinction. How it was regarded by the court we have no means of knowing for, before it could be acted upon, the Revolution of 1820 put an end to the active existence of the Holy Office.
 
[521] The restrictions which censorship imposed on learning and culture were slightly relieved by the licences which were granted to possess or to read prohibited books. In the struggle with heresy, its confutation required that some persons should be allowed to read the works in which it was taught, and it became customary to grant the privilege to those whose firmness in the faith could be trusted. The bull in Caena Domini of Paul III, in 1536, excommunicates all who read Lutheran books without papal licence, showing that already licences were issued and that the power was reserved to the pope. This power was valuable, and the officials of the curia, to whom it was confided, were subject to temptations which, in that age of venality, were not likely to be resisted. Inquisitors, moreover, assumed that this was included in their delegated apostolical faculties and undertook to issue licences, leading to a multiplication of privileged persons which nullified to some extent the prohibitory edicts. To remedy this, in 1547, the Suprema revoked all such licences and forbade their future issue by the tribunals, a provision which had to be repeated in 1549 and 1551. ⁽¹⁰⁶⁾ This still left the papal licences in the hands of those possessing them, but these were similarly annulled, in 1550, by Julius III, in a brief, from which we learn that papal legates also issued them. ⁽¹⁰⁷⁾
 
They speedily multiplied again, and the Suprema took advantage of the Lutheran excitement of 1558 to procure their withdrawal. In its report of September 9th of that year to Paid IV, it represented that many prelates and frailes kept prohibited books, in spite of edicts and censures, refusing to surrender them on the plea that they held papal licences; in view of the danger thence arising to the faith, the pope was asked for a brief revoking all such licences, ordering their surrender under heavy penalties and authorizing rigorous prosecution of transgressors. ⁽¹⁰⁸⁾ Paul did more than merely respond to this petition. By a brief of December 21st, he revoked all papal licences and then, by another of January 4, 1559, he committed the execution of this to Inquisitor-general Valdés, who printed it in his Index of that year. ⁽¹⁰⁹⁾
 
These briefs granted to the Spanish Inquisition no power to [522] issue licences. So jealously was this reserved to the Holy See that, in 1574, Gregory XIII gave a special licence to Inquisitor-general Quiroga, with a faculty to extend it to members of the Suprema, in order to enable them to decide cases of heresy. ⁽¹¹⁰⁾ This caution contrasts strangely with the favors shown to the Society of Jesus. Pius V, while yet inquisitor-general, granted to the Jesuit General faculty to issue licences; this was confirmed, vivae vocis oráculo, by Gregory XIII and, to establish it more firmly, he was asked to embody it in a brief which he did, January 9, 1575, moreover releasing them from any censures or other penalty, by whomsoever inflicted, in so far as necessary to render the concession effective. Under this the Jesuits claimed to be independent of the edicts of the Spanish Inquisition, but it asserted its jurisdiction. In 1584 we find Padre Mariana applying for and obtaining a licence, through the Toledo tribunal, to read certain specified books--a licence which was withdrawn the same year. Still more aggressive was its action when, in 1587, it learned that some books had been received by the Jesuit Provincial, and the Suprema sent lists of them to the tribunals of Saragossa, Seville and Valladolid, with orders to examine them and detain such as they deemed proper. This assertion of control was repeated in 1602, when the Murcia tribunal was instructed to examine certain books belonging to the Jesuits and to return them if found unobjectionable. ⁽¹¹¹⁾
 
The earliest formal grant of power to the Spanish Inquisition to issue licences would appear to have been made by Paul V early in the seventeenth century, ⁽¹¹²⁾ but it had been exercised long before. The Index of Quiroga, issued in 1583, in its preliminary rules 3, 4, 5 and 8, assumes that inquisitors can grant written licences, but this power was held subject to the inquisitor-general and Suprema for, in the orders accompanying the distribution of the Index, consultation with them was prescribed as a necessary preliminary. ⁽¹¹³⁾ From some examples of the period it would seem that only special and not general licences were granted, and that much circumspection was used with regard to them. Even Philip [523] IV had no general licence until, about 1640, he wrote to Inquisitor-general Sotomayor that he had been amusing his leisure with Guicciardini's History, until he was told that it was prohibited. He therefore asked for a licence to read it and other prohibited books not treating of matters of faith, for he would not accept a licence to read them. ⁽¹¹⁴⁾ A curious partial licence was one granted in 1614, to Padre Gullo Sabell (William Saville?) to read Catholic books in the English tongue--apparently the language sufficed to render them prohibited. ⁽¹¹⁵⁾
 
The tendency of the Spanish Inquisition to assert its independence of Rome in matters of censorship was especially manifested with regard to licences. When in 1622, Gregory XV and, in 1631, Urban VIII, revoked all licences, the Suprema declared that it was not the papal intention to interfere with the licences granted by the inquisitor-general, and that they remained in force. ⁽¹¹⁶⁾ The next step was to invalidate all papal licences and accordingly, January 18, 1627, the Suprema presented a consulta to Philip IV, representing that many persons in Spain obtained them, and supplicating him to order his ambassador to urge the pope not to grant them, adding that meanwhile it was deemed necessary to issue an edict annulling them. Philip was not prepared to sanction so flagrant an assault on papal authority, and replied that he would ask the pope to transmit them through the inquisitor-general, but that, until the answer was received, no innovation must be attempted. Urban took advantage of the request to assert his supreme authority in a manner for which the Suprema had not bargained, for he annulled all licences, both papal and those issued by the inquisitor-general, the only exception being the one held by the inquisitor-general himself. As all the bishops in Spain were ordered to publish this brief, the Inquisition could not suppress it, however humiliating it was. Cardinal Zapata accordingly published it, February 21, 1628, requiring the surrender of all licences within twenty days, under heavy penalties, and when he issued his Index of 1632 he included in it the brief and his edict. ⁽¹¹⁷⁾
 
Urban pursued his victory by instructing Cardinal Mellini to [524] write, December 6, 1628, to Zapata defining his authority to be that of granting licences to learned persons who furnished security that they wished to combat heresy, but the licences were to be limited in time, and to require the recipients to show to the Inquisition what they wrote. ⁽¹¹⁸⁾ This however was a failure, for no attention seems to have been paid to the prescribed limitations. The Inquisition continued its independent course and finally carried its point, to a certain degree, by instructing the tribunals that, if papal licences were presented to them, they were not to be admitted, but were to be forwarded to the inquisitor-general for his action. ⁽¹¹⁹⁾
 
Towards the close of the eighteenth century, Llorente tells us that licences were difficult to obtain. When an application was made, the inquisitor-general instituted secret inquiries as to the character of the applicant and, if the result was favorable, he was required to state his object and the nature of the works that he desired to consult; if the licence was granted, it was limited to a specified number of books in a definite branch of literature; permission to keep them was rarely granted, and all licences excepted works directed against Catholicism, such as the writings of modern philosophers. ⁽¹²⁰⁾ Doubtless this strictness may be true of certain times, but the practice varied according to the temper of the inquisitor-general or Suprema. There sometimes was great laxity, if we may believe the reasons alleged, in 1747, by Prado y Cuesta, for revoking all licences, for he says that on investigation he had found that they were not sought by men of learning, but by the frivolous of both sexes to gratify idle curiosity; many persons merely made a verbal request to read a single book and extended the permission to cover all that they wanted, while others, seeing that ignorant people were licensed, thought that the privilege was general and availed themselves of it without asking. ⁽¹²¹⁾ Licences, moreover, were by no means so restricted in character as Llorente asserts. Some issued by Inquisitors-general Bonifaz and Beltran cover all prohibited books, except Machiavelli, Sarpi's Council of Trent, works assailing the Catholic religion and obscenities, ⁽¹²²⁾ and we have seen that religious houses generally and even [525] occasionally individuals held licences enabling them to purchase from estates considerable miscellaneous lots of prohibited books, the possession of which, by deceased scholars, shows that they too must have enjoyed similar privileges.
 
From the very numerous applications for licences made about this time it appears that they were customarily addressed to the Suprema, which referred them to the appropriate tribunal for report as to the age, the learning and the judgement of the applicant. Under the Restoration this inquiry was extended to his moral and political conduct, showing that discrimination was made in favor of those whose conservative tendencies were approved. ⁽¹²³⁾
 
 We have seen the ferocious penalties of death and confiscation provided in the law of 1558 for unauthorized printing. With these the Inquisition had nothing to do, as its censorship was concerned only with books after publication, and its treatment of those who violated its rules was much more moderate. With its jurisdiction over them it allowed no interference, even from Rome, for, about 1565, it suppressed a papal jubilee indulgence, because it contained faculties of absolution for keeping prohibited books. ⁽¹²⁴⁾ In the Index of 1559, the penalties threatened for reading, possessing, buying or selling prohibited books were excommunication latae sententae ipso facto, two hundred ducats and a menace of prosecution for suspicion of heresy and disobedience. ⁽¹²⁵⁾ In the special edicts prohibiting individual books, there appears to be no established formula. Sometimes the penalty threatened is excommunication and two hundred ducats, sometimes excommunication and punishment at discretion, sometimes excommunication, fine and punishment at discretion. ⁽¹²⁶⁾
 
This discretion manifested itself in a great variety of penalties, moderate and severe, both as regards readers and booksellers, though the latter appear commonly to be the more harshly visited. A rehabilitation granted, September 28, 1647, to Luis Sanaren, bookseller of Saragossa, infers that he had been reconciled and [526] deprived of his civil rights. ⁽¹²⁷⁾ Miguel Rodríguez, a bookseller of Madrid, for importing and selling prohibited books, was sentenced, August 1, 1763, to reprimand, absolution ad cautelam, certain spiritual penances, all costs of trial and banishment from Madrid for six years, of which the first three were to be spent in an African presidio. This of course meant his utter ruin. ⁽¹²⁸⁾ At Logroño, in 1645, Fray Tomas de Nieva, for teaching in his professorial chair from a prohibited book, was condemned to grave reprimand before his colleagues, to retract certain propositions, to four years' reclusion, and to perpetual deprivation of teaching and of voting and being voted for. ⁽¹²⁹⁾ On the other hand, in 1803, Don Jacobo María de Parga y Puga, for the inveterate habit of reading prohibited books, knowing them to be prohibited, in contempt for many years of the authority of the Inquisition, was sentenced by the Madrid tribunal to fifteen days' spiritual exercises and to a private reprimand in the apartments of the inquisitor. ⁽¹³⁰⁾ So, in 1816, the Suprema, acting on a sumaria, and without subjecting the delinquents to a trial, sent to the Santiago tribunal a sentence on Juan Romero for reading prohibited books and on Josef Manuel García for selling and recommending them; they were to present themselves before the nearest commissioner, who was to reprimand and warn them that for a repetition of the offence they would not be treated with the same benignity. ⁽¹³¹⁾
 
Cases of infraction, until a comparatively recent period, are not frequent. After the excitement of the Reformation was suppressed, intellectual activity in Spain seems to have been reduced to such torpor that the forbidden fruit was little sought. In the Toledo record from 1575 to 1610 there is not a single case, nor is there one in the same record from 1648 to 1794. ⁽¹³²⁾ In the disturbance of thought, preceding and during the revolutionary epoch, prosecutions become more frequent, although still not as numerous as might be expected from the importance claimed by the Inquisition for its services. From 1780 until 1820, in the whole of Spain, [527] the total aggregate amounts only to three hundred and five. During this period, from 1808 to 1815, inclusive, the Inquisition was virtually dormant, having only five cases in all, which would leave, for the remaining years, an average slightly under nine. The crowding of a hundred and one cases into the six years, 1801 to 1806, reflects the urgency with which the government of Carlos IV was endeavoring to restrict the press, and that there were twenty in 1819 is significant of the agitation leading to the revolution of January, 1820. ⁽¹³³⁾ The slenderness of the whole record is the measure of the success which attended the combined action of the state and of the Inquisition in benumbing for nearly three centuries the Spanish intellect.
 
 Although censorship was instituted for the suppression of heresy and for keeping heretical books and propositions from the people, it developed its utility in many directions, more or less connected with its primary object. It was inevitable that it should wage incessant warfare with the countless editions of the Bible with Protestant notes and commentaries, and we have seen how industriously Valdés prepared for his expurgatory Index of the Scriptures in 1554. It was, however, the vernacular versions that caused the greatest anxiety. Prior to the Reformation there was practically no restriction on the circulation of the Bible in the vulgar tongue. It is true that, in the early thirteenth century, the struggle with the Waldenses and the Cathari, who possessed versions of their own, led to prohibitions by Innocent III, in 1199, and by Jaime I of Aragon in 1234, while the Council of Toulouse, in 1229, prohibited the possession by laymen of any portion of the Bible, even in Latin, as well as of the Breviary and Hours of the Virgin in the vernacular, because they contained extracts. The decree of Pope Innocent became embodied in the Corpus Juris and thus remained familiar to canon lawyers; it was adduced in the Repertorium Inquisitorum of 1494, but only in a kind of obiter dictum, showing that at that time it was regarded as of no practical moment. ⁽¹³⁴⁾ Yet from the thirteenth to the sixteenth [528] century there was no proscription of vernacular Bibles. The temporary causes which had led to their prohibition had passed away, and many translations were made, especially in Germany. One in Catalan, by Bonifacio Ferrer, brother of San Vicente Ferrer, was printed in Valencia, in 1478, under the editorship of the Inquisitor Jaime Borell. ⁽¹³⁵⁾
 
It was natural that the use made of the Bible by the Reformers should cause the revival of these obsolete prohibitions. Even before the compilation of the Indexes, we find Inquisitor-general Tavera granting to the Duchess of Soma, wife of the Admiral of Naples, a licence to keep and read a Bible in Italian, but the permission is limited to one year, showing how carefully it was guarded. ⁽¹³⁶⁾ It was therefore a matter of course that the Index of 1551 should contain a prohibition of the Bible in Spanish or any other vulgar tongue. ⁽¹³⁷⁾ This zeal was intensified by the versions which the Spanish refugees--Francisco de Enzinas, Juan Pérez, Cipriano de Valera and Cassiodoro de Reina--perfected and strove to introduce into Spain, but the prohibition was not confined to these. It extended to all fragments and extracts, however orthodox the rendering, as though to keep the unlearned ignorant of the existence of the Bible, or at least to make them understand that it was a wholly forbidden book. The Index of 1559 condemns twenty-two editions of the Hours of the Virgin in Romance, together with all others containing similar superstitions, but the real objection was the passages of Scripture contained in them, and, in 1573, all Hours in Romance were forbidden, as the Council of Toulouse had done in 1229. ⁽¹³⁸⁾ The extreme care with which the public was guarded from the Bible is seen in the 1583 Index of Quiroga, which, in forbidding all portions of Scripture in Romance, only excepts the fragments embodied in the canon of the mass, and the texts which Catholic writers may cite and explain, [529] provided they are not printed alone but are in sermons and other works of edification. ⁽¹³⁹⁾ So unreasoning was this jealousy that, according to Azpilcueta, there were earnest men who desired to suppress vernacular versions of the Creed, the Paternoster, the Ave Maria and the Salve Regina, a zeal which found practical expression, in 1674, when the Inquisition prohibited a work entitled Exercicios de Devocion because it contained translations of the Miserere, the Magnificat, the Te Deum and the Athanasian Symbol. ⁽¹⁴⁰⁾ The people were to be kept in such profound ignorance that the Sotomayor Index of 1640 prohibits, not only the vernacular Bible and all its parts, but even summaries and compendiums of it and, as though to render it hateful, in the Edicts of Faith, it was classed with the Koran and other Mahometan books, the possession of which was to be denounced to the Inquisition. ⁽¹⁴¹⁾ It had to watch not only over its Spanish flock, but over its converts in the Indies, when it found that the English Society for the Propagation of the Gospel had caused versions to be made in the Indian tongues and was circulating them in America. This unexpected missionary work called for fresh exertion and, in 1710, we find Clement XI congratulating Inquisitor-general Ibañez on his efforts and urging him to persistent watchfulness. ⁽¹⁴²⁾
 
This treatment of the Bible seems to have piqued the curiosity of the intelligent for, in 1747, Inquisitor-general Prado y Cuesta complains of the inordinate desire of many persons to have it in the vernacular, but, among the mass of the people it produced the impression desired. In 1791, Villanueva tells us that they, who once sought it, now regard it with horror and detestation; many care nothing for it and more are ignorant of its very existence. ⁽¹⁴³⁾ Yet, within a decade of Prado's utterance, the policy of the Church changed. Although, in 1713, Clement XI, in the bull Unigenitus, had condemned the use of the Bible by the laity as a Jansenist error, yet, only forty-four years later, the Congregation of the Index, in 1757, conceded the use of vernacular versions, if approved by the Holy See and accompanied with orthodox [530] comments. ⁽¹⁴⁴⁾ This was followed, in 1771, by a version of the Acts of the Apostles by Catenacci, dedicated to Clement XIV and, in 1778, by the brief In tanta librorum, in which Pius VI approved of a translation of the whole Bible by Archbishop Martini. ⁽¹⁴⁵⁾ The Spanish Inquisition promptly followed the papal example. In 1782, Inquisitor-general Beltran issued a decree reciting that ample cause had existed for exceeding the Tridentine rule, but these causes had ceased and, in view of the usefulness of the sacred text, the Spanish rule was modified to conform to that of Trent, to the decree of the Congregation of 1757 and to the brief of 1778. ⁽¹⁴⁶⁾ In 1783 the Suprema ordered that the French version of Le Maître de Saci should be freely allowed ⁽¹⁴⁷⁾ and, in 1790, there apppeared in Valencia a complete Spanish translation by Scio de San Miguel, which was speedily and repeatedly reprinted. No such evils have followed as were dreaded for two centuries, showing how much wiser would have been the policy of meeting the heretic Scriptures with an orthodox version, fortified with appropriate comments.
 
The same jealousy of admitting the vulgar to too great a familiarity with spiritual things showed itself with regard to works of devotion and edification. In 1570 a consulta of the Suprema to the inquisitor-general recommended that the catechism should not be printed in Romance. ⁽¹⁴⁸⁾ In the Preface to the Index of 1583, the prohibition of works by men of the highest Christian repute, such as Fisher of Rochester, Thomas More, Gerónimo Osorio, Francisco de Borja, Luis de Granada, Juan de Avila and others is explained, partly by books having been falsely attributed to them, partly by occasional incautious passages, and partly by their not being fitted for circulation in the vulgar tongue. The case of the Obras del Cristiano of St. Francisco de Borja is illustrative. In the Index of 1559 it is simply prohibited. After his death, in 1572, as General of the Society