Spain, though with less success than France, had long been struggling to emancipate itself from papal control, and it is a curious paradox that its most resolute assertion of political Jansenism arose from an attempt to discredit doctrinal Jansenism. Jesuit influence had gradually dominated the Inquisition and, as we have seen, Cardinal Noris was the special object of Jesuit hatred. When, in 1721, the Augustinian Manso published at Valladolid his "S. Augustinus de Virtutibus Infidelium," the work was condemned and suppressed in 1723, while virulent attacks on him by Jesuits, in both Latin and the vernacular, were allowed free circulation.[589] The culmination came when the Jesuit Padre Rábago, confessor of Fernando VI, controlled the weak and irresolute inquisitor-general Pérez de Prado y Cuesta, bringing about an anomalous condition in which the Inquisition defied the Holy See, the so-called Jansenists became the warmest defenders of papal authority, and the Jesuits asserted the supremacy of the regalías. When Prado y Cuesta assumed his office, in September, 1747, it was announced that the Suprema had a new Index Expurgatorius in an advanced state of preparation by the Jesuits Casani and Carrasco. The printing was nearly finished, when the 1744 edition of the _Bibliothèque Janseniste_ of the Jesuit Dominique de Colonia reached Madrid. This was substantially a polemical work, a catalogue of writers and books opposed to Jesuitism, and the Jesuits conceived the brilliant idea of printing it as an appendix to the Index, and thus suppressing at one blow all antagonistic literature. Some trifling omissions were made but, when the Index appeared, it contained Noris's _Historia Pelagiana_ and _Dissertatio_. There were many other equally orthodox books, but these became the storm-centre as they had been repeatedly and formally approved by the Holy See, after special examination. Appeal was made to Benedict XIV, who addressed, July 31, 1748, to Prado y Cuesta a brief in which he recited the investigations into Noris's books and pointed out that all questions concerning them had been finally settled by the solemn judgement of Rome, so that it was not lawful for the Spanish Inquisition to reopen the question, and much less to condemn the books. He could not patiently endure the injury thus without reason inflicted on Noris and he admonished Prado y Cuesta to find means to avert discord between Spain and Rome.[590]