With all the power of the Franciscan Order and of the Spanish court to sustain her claims to sanctity, the canonization of such a personage would seem almost a matter of course, and it would doubtless have been effected if she had not reduced her revelations to writing. However they might suit the appetite of Spanish piety, nourished so long on mystic extravagance, they did not appeal to the sober judgement of the rest of the Catholic world. In spite of their divine inspiration, her _Letanía y nombres misteriosos de la Reina del Cielo_ and her _Mística Ciudad de Dios_ were condemned in Rome, and the decree as to the latter was posted on the doors of St. Peter's, August 4, 1681. The _Mística Ciudad_ was eminently popular in Spain and, at the instance of the Spanish court, its prohibition was suspended. The Inquisition took advantage of this, in 1686, to issue a decree permitting its circulation, at which the Congregation of the Index was naturally offended and, in 1692, the papal decree of condemnation appeared in the Appendix to the Index of Innocent XI, in spite of which the book was formally permitted by the Spanish Inquisition.[79] When, in 1695, a translation by Père Thomas Croset appeared in France, the Sorbonne, by decree of September 27, 1696, condemned it as containing propositions contrary to the rules of ecclesiastical modesty, and many fables and dreams from the Apocrypha, exposing Catholicism to the contempt of the heretics.[80] The Spanish court labored earnestly to obtain a renewal of the suspension and finally succeeded, so that the book was omitted from the 1716 Index of Clement XI. Then in 1729, the subject was again taken up, when, after a long debate, the book was permitted, though Dr. Eusebius Amort tells us that in Rome, in 1735, he was shown a decree of Benedict XIII renewing the prohibition and asserting that its withdrawal had been obtained fraudulently; still, the book has never since reappeared in the Index.[81] There was a similar struggle over the _Letanía_, which was still included in the 1716 Index of Clement XI and the first Index of Benedict XIV, in 1744, but has disappeared from all succeeding issues.[82] Less successful thus far has been the persistent effort to procure the canonization of Madre María, leading to a papal decree of April 27, 1773, forbidding all future proceedings in the case. Notwithstanding this, Leo XIII, on March 10, 1884, ordered the Congregation of Rites to consider in secret whether this prohibition could be removed. To suggest such a discussion is almost equivalent to prejudging it affirmatively but, before the decision was reached, chance led to the publication in the _Deutscher Merkur_ of December 29, 1889, of the whole secret history of the case, which has probably put an end, at least for the present, to the prospect of enrolling in the calendar of saints one whose revelations have been so repeatedly condemned as illusory or as emanating from Satan.