Under the reign of the fanatical Philip V., Don Melchior de Macanez, one of the most learned statesmen in Spain, having drawn up a report by order of the king, at a time when it was in agitation to suspend the remittances of money with which Spain then supplied Rome, was compelled to take refuge in France, in order to avoid being immured in the dungeons of the Inquisition. His property was in the meantime seized, and himself excommunicated. After an exile of ten years, during which he made numerous supplications to his faithless sovereign, he was at length recalled with the promise of pardon. But on his arrival in Spain he was arrested and confined in the Inquisition of Segovia, till the reign of Charles III. Luis de Leon, Professor of Scripture in the University of Salamanca, was apprehended and imprisoned in the Inquisition, for making a version of the Song of Solomon for his private use. For this heinous crime, he was condemned to solitary confinement for no less than five years. The professors of the Hebrew and Chaldean languages, and of Rhetoric and Greek, in the same University, were likewise arrested and imprisoned by the holy tribunal, for publishing works eminently calculated to improve the mind, and advance the literature of their country. The Inquisition, indeed, "has at all times evinced towards learned men the greatest enmity, and has driven many to the brink of the precipice through its absurd and violent conduct, or caused them to separate from the Roman Catholic Church, particularly when they have been animated by more than ordinary zeal. Aonius Palearius, whose singular merit, and disastrous end wrest from historians the most lively sentiments of compassion, may serve as an example of this fatal truth. His merit was universally acknowledged, not only on the score of philosophy, of which he was a professor in Milan, when he was arrested, and where he had besides published an estimable Latin poem, on the immortality of the soul, as well as several orations in the same language, but also as far as regards theology, which, notwithstanding he was a secular, and married, he possessed in an eminent degree. Many cardinals, and even Pope Paul IV., honoured him with their friendship; and Philip II. granted him certain privileges, and ordered a large salary to be assigned him for his subsistence. His zeal was particularly displayed in drawing up a charge, or, as he calls it, a declaration against the Roman Pontiffs, as corrupters of discipline, which he addressed to Charles V. and the three other Christian princes, in order to excite attention to this subject on the convocation of a general council, at that time agitated, and which ended in that of Trent. This paper was in the meantime deposited in the hands of his friends, in case he should previously die, or the Inquisition, which had already threatened him, should sacrifice him, as it afterwards did.[24]