In Belgium, Bavaria, and Portugal, the regulations of the Index were formally adopted under royal edicts. Spain adhered to the policy of leaving in the hands of the Spanish Inquisition the responsibility for the preparation, and for the enforcement of, the successive Indexes, and neither the Index of Trent nor any other issued under papal authority was ever accepted as binding within the Spanish dominions. The Ten Tridentine Rules were however adopted in the Spanish Indexes appearing after 1564. In France and in Germany (outside of Bavaria) the Index of Trent was confirmed and promulgated only by one or two provincial synods. It is evident that in these countries the Rules secured no general acceptance or authority. Reusch adduces as evidence that the Roman authorities held the Tridentine Index to be universal in its authority, certain instructions given in 1580 by Gregory XIII to Toletus. Toletus, who had been sent to Germany and the Low Countries as a papal representative, was empowered to absolve from excommunication and from other ecclesiastical penalties, believers who had for scholarly purposes retained or read books condemned as heretical, provided they would promise to abandon the pernicious practice. The decrees in regard to book-production issued during the succeeding twenty years by the provincial synods of Italy repeated in substance the regulations of Trent, with an occasional addition. In Milan for instance, in 1583, the synod ordered that printers and booksellers must, before securing permission to begin business, make a confession of faith to the bishops and take an oath to conduct their business according to the regulations of the Index. In a number of the dioceses of France, similar edicts were issued, but these made no reference to the papal Indexes. In 1566, King Henry II ordered (at the instance of the theological faculty of the Sorbonne) that no books prohibited by said faculty should be printed, owned, or read. Further, he authorised the Sorbonne to make personal examination of the stock of the booksellers. The supervision exercised by the Sorbonne over the production and distribution of books worked to the detriment of the book-trade of Paris, and to the advantage of the printers and dealers of Lyons, Montpellier, and other provincial centres, where it proved to be impracticable to enforce the regulations of the Paris theologians. It was also a factor in building up in Holland (which was practically free from censorship) the business of producing books for the students of Europe.