The Spanish writer Villanueva has endeavoured to show by extracts from religious authors whose writings were issued between 1550 and 1620, that there was a large body of educated opinion which favoured the study of the Scriptures. He finds such utterances from Carmelites, Franciscans, Benedictines, and even Dominicans. Lea points out, however, that, with the first quarter of the 17th century, the authorities of Villanueva come to an end. The generation which had witnessed the prohibition of the Scriptures had died out and the Scriptures themselves were forgotten in the intellectual gymnastics of casuistry. The work of the Inquisition had been accomplished among both priests and people.[18] Villanueva, himself a _calificador_ (councillor) of the Inquisition, writing in 1791, says that the people are now practically ignorant of the existence of the Scriptures and those who have knowledge of such existence regard the Scriptures with horror and detestation.[19] In the fifth of the series of the rules in the Index of 1790, the Inquisitor announces that the Church authorities have become sensible of the benefits to be secured from the perusal of the Scriptures and that they are prepared to repeat the declaration given in the Index of Benedict and to permit, under similar restrictions, the reading of the Bible in the vernacular. This Index repeats the condemnation first published in the preceding Index of 1747, and withdrawn under the protest of Pope Benedict, of the _History of Pelagianism_ by Cardinal Noris. The Protestants had little success in getting into Spain their great weapon of attack, a vernacular Bible, little I mean compared with their success in Italy. The Spanish Bible upon which they chiefly relied is the one of 1602 which was prepared by Cypriano de Valera, but which, in fact, is a second edition, much improved, of that of Cassiodoro de Reyna, printed in 1559, which in its turn used for the Old Testament the Jewish Bible in Spanish, printed at Ferrara in 1553. De Reyna was a native of Seville and had been educated at the university there. Becoming a heretic, he escaped from Spain about 1557 and went first to London and then to Basel, where, with the aid of the Senate, he published his Bible in 1559.