The destruction of books classed as pernicious appears to have been, during the 15th century, within the province of any person of position and influence.[106] In 1490, Torquemada burned, under order of Ferdinand and Isabella, a number of Hebrew Bibles, and, later, he made at Salamanca an _auto-da-fé_ of more than six thousand volumes described as books of magic or as infected with Jewish errors. Ximenes, while yet merely Archbishop, burned in the public square of Granada no less than five thousand Arabic books, many of them splendidly ornamented and illuminated. The only books spared from the collection were those on the subject of medicine, which were deposited in the University of Alcala.[107] In 1502, Ferdinand and Isabella enacted an elaborate law, which is referred to as the first of the kind in Europe, establishing a general censorship of the press. In this law, were laid down the principles on which were based nearly all subsequent enactments. To Spain thus belongs the honour of organising the system which was to exercise an influence so incomputable on the development of human intelligence. “The Spanish people strove earnestly for the maintenance of the faith but it understood by this not the reform of methods of life and the correction of immorality, but the extirpation of heresy.”[108] “The uncompromising character of the Spanish temperament, which pursued its object regardless of consequences, saw at once what was elsewhere only perceived by degrees, that any endeavours to set bounds to the multiplying products of the press could be successful only under a thorough system of minute surveillance.”[109] It was ordered that no book should be printed or imported or exposed for sale without examination and license. In some places, this duty was imposed upon judges of the royal courts and in others on the archbishops or bishops. The examiners, men of good repute and learning, were to be appointed by these authorities and were to be adequately paid for their work. After a work in manuscript had been licensed for printing, the printed sheets were to be carefully compared with the original to insure that no alteration had been made on the press. Any book printed or imported or offered for sale without such license was to be seized and burned and the printer or vendor was declared incapable of longer carrying on the business.[110] In this first enactment, no reference is made to the Inquisition as having any concern either with the investigation of books for heresies or with the punishment of delinquents; but the Inquisition had not long to wait before its jurisdiction over literature was established on an impregnable basis.