_14._ _Examples of Spanish Prohibitions. 1559–1768._ The first of the Spanish Indexes, that of Valdes in 1551, contains but one or two Spanish titles, but the lists of 1559 and 1570 give evidence of fuller attention to Spanish authors. The books prohibited belonged for the most part not to heretical literature, but were those presenting, in translations of the Scriptures or in controversies on points of doctrine, matter that was not safe or not suitable for the knowledge of the general lay public. The Inquisition in Spain had, from the beginning, been more sharply opposed than were the Church authorities elsewhere, to the distribution to the lay public of literature, and particularly of literature in the vernacular, having to do with the doctrines of the Church, even when such books were sound in their own teachings and had been prepared to expose and to repress error. The inquisitors took the ground that it was wiser to keep the faithful in ignorance of the existence of errors. An example of this policy is the prohibition in the Index of Valdes in 1559 of the writings of Francisco de Borja, who was later enrolled with the saints, and of Juan de Avila, Luis de Granada, who have since been classed with the best of the ascetic writers and as “shining lights in God’s Church in Spain.”[192] In 1571, permission was refused by the Inquisition for the printing of a Spanish version of the Roman Catechism. Valdes prohibited all tracts, letters, and pamphlets, reports of sermons, etc., that had to do with the Scriptures or with the Sacraments. This prohibition included any reprints in the Spanish tongue of the Gospels or of extracts from the Gospels or of the Epistles of Paul. A prohibition initiated by Quiroga was continued through the following century, condemning “comedies, tragedies, and farces in which any reflection or ridicule was cast upon the Sacraments, the practice of church-going, the holy orders, or the Inquisition.” In 1581, the Index of Lisbon added to the above a prohibition of the presentation on the stage of any ecclesiastical characters or the performance of any sacramental acts. This latter ruled out, of course, the representation of marriage. In one of the later Indexes, the second part of _Don Quixote_ comes into the list of works to be expurgated, but the material condemned comprises but a single sentence: _Las obras de charidad que se hazen flaxamente, no tienen merito ni valen nada_.