Hilgers, while admitting the influence of the Jesuits in the direction of State censorship in South Germany, denies that the results of their work were adverse to the development of literature (“sound literature”) or to intellectual activity. Hilgers writes: “It may at once be admitted that the Jesuit Fathers were, during the 16th century, active in securing in Austria, Bavaria, and other States a censorship of literature. The Holy Ignatius, Father of the Order, had from the beginning of his active work insisted upon the responsibility resting with the Church and with the active workers of the Church for preserving the faithful from the poison of literature.”[60] In 1550, and in the years following, Peter Canisius, at that time the head of the Order in Germany, took active measures for the enforcement throughout the empire of the regulations of the Index of Paul IV, and after the publication, in 1564, of the Index of Trent, the Jesuit Fathers in Germany had a large part in bringing about the enforcement of the regulations therein presented. Hilgers points out that, under Jesuit influence, there were issued in Bavaria during the years succeeding 1565 not only lists of books condemned and prohibited, but further lists of books commended for the reading of the faithful. These catalogues had been prepared by the Jesuit Fathers at the instance of Canisius and under the authority of Duke William V. They were distributed chiefly through the parish priests. Against the contention made by German historians that the influence of the Jesuits, particularly in South Germany, had served to restrict, and in certain instances practically to repress, literary production and publishing activity, Hilgers insists that in Germany, as throughout Europe, the influence of the Order had always been an intellectual influence; and that its efforts had furthered education and had advanced the interests of scholarly literature, of printing, and of publishing. He contends with some ingenuity that the elimination from literary production of activity in undesirable productions and the concentration of literary force in the channels in which such force could be directed to the best service of humanity, far from lessening intellectual or literary force, could but serve to strengthen this and to render it more effective.[61] During the first half of the 16th century, there may well have been ground for a censorship of literature in Germany in connection with the long series of lampoons and libellous tractates and volumes that came into print. Even leaders of thought such as Luther and Reuchlin, were tempted into language that became not only unscholarly, but coarsely abusive. The more earnestly the community interested itself in religious convictions, the more bitter became the expression of hate and scorn for other earnest believers who had arrived at different convictions.