INFLUENCE
Thus the censorship of the Inquisition was all-embracing, from the most dangerous heresies of Luther and Calvin, the popularization of Scripture, the relations between Church and State and the liberalism of the modern era, down to the veriest trifles. It was an engine of immense power, constantly applied for the furtherance of Obscurantism, the repression of thought, the exclusion of foreign ideas, and the obstruction of progress. It was accompanied by a state censorship, based upon the law of 1558, perfected in innumerable successive regulations, of a character most vexatious and embarrassing to authorship, and this duplication of censors exercised a most deplorably depressing influence on literature and culture. Authorship was discouraged by the uncertainty whether works, on which perhaps years of labor had been spent, would secure a licence to print; the business of publication was rendered extra-hazardous by the fact that a book, printed with due licence from the state, might at any moment be prohibited by the Inquisition and the whole edition be seized and destroyed, while purchasers who had bought such a licensed book were liable to be deprived of it without compensation. Thus, between the state and the Inquisition, whether working in unison or at cross-purposes, the intellectual development which, in the sixteenth century, promised to render Spanish literature and learning the most illustrious in Europe, was stunted and starved into atrophy, the arts and sciences were neglected, commercial and industrial progress was rendered impossible, and the character which Spain acquired among the nations was tersely expressed in the current saying that Africa began at the Pyrenees.
APPENDIX.
STATISTICS OF OFFENCES AND PENALTIES.
(See [p. 93]).
It is manifestly impossible to compile the statistics of inquisitorial activity during the centuries of its existence and amid its numerous tribunals, but some fragmentary figures may serve to illustrate the comparative frequency of the offences with which it had to deal and the character of the punishments which it inflicted. As regards the latter it will be remembered that the sentences usually comprised several penalties.
Offences.
The following summary of cases acted upon by the tribunal of Toledo is condensed from the “Catálogo de los causas contra la fe seguidas ante el Tribunal del Santo Oficio de Toledo” (Madrid, 1903) prepared by Padre Fresca, S. J., and Don Miguel Gómez del Campillo, from the original records. As the earliest case is of 1483 (p. 192) and the latest of 1819 (p. 81) it would appear to cover the whole activity of the tribunal, but it is manifestly imperfect, in view of the masses of Judaizers reconciled and the effigies burnt of the dead and fugitives, in the early years of the organization (Vol. I, pp. 165-72, 183). In a minor degree this is also shown by comparison with tables below of portions of the period from other sources. These latter also have interest as indicating changes in the character of offences at successive periods.
The classification of Señor Gómez del Campillo is as follows:
| Bigamy | 188 | Insults to officials | 186 |
| Blasphemy | 755 | Personating priesthood | 33 |
| Fornication not a sin | 259 | Judaizers | 977 |
| Personating officials and forged licences | 48 | Prohibited books | 34 |
| Fautorship of heretics | 60 | Moriscos | 219 |
| Sorcery | 296 | Irreverence and scandalous speeches | 551 |
| Heresy—Illuminism | 39 | False witness | 34 |
| Anglicanism | 14 | Propositions, erroneous | 60 |
| Calvinism | 18 | scandalous | 63 |
| Lutheranism | 79 | heretical | 46 |
| Freemasonry | 3 | Marriage in Orders | 16 |
| General | 72 | Sacrilege | 74 |
| Deluded and deluders | 25 | Solicitation in confession | 105 |
| Impeding the Inquisition | 62 | Various | 43 |
| Violation of disabilities | 91 |