The first Index, in point of date, of the long series, was in fact issued not in Rome but in Paris, the second and third in Louvain, the fourth in Valladolid, etc. The several dates will be given in the schedules presented later. It is also noteworthy that, while the papal Indexes were of course in form binding on the entire Church and throughout all the States classed as Catholic, they were not actually put into force in the several States unless or until they had been accepted and confirmed by the respective rulers; and, as a fact, a number of the papal Indexes were never so accepted either in France or in Spain. The Church of Spain, acting through the Inquisition, undertook to carry on an independent system of literary censorship and of literary repression. The inquisitors condemned a number of works which do not appear in the Roman lists, and declined to condemn not a few books which had in Rome been classed as pernicious. A similar course was taken by the Gallican Church, whose censorship was carried on by commissions of ecclesiastics acting under the direct authority of the Crown. A necessary result of the condemnation of books by a number of authorities was a large measure of confusion in regard to the status of a number of books and of not a few authors. A faithful believer, who was fully prepared to accept in regard to literature the guidance of the authorities, may well have had cause for perplexity in finding condemned and prohibited by one pope the works of an author whose writings had received the special commendation of another, or in being prohibited in Madrid from reading books which were permitted or even recommended in Rome. In not a few instances, Indexes which had been issued in regular course with the papal sanction were themselves prohibited from being printed or promulgated in Spain, in France, in Germany, or even in places as near to the papal seat as Venice.