Don Pedro Guisa, Baron de Casteli, in Sardinia, was prosecuted and condemned for the same crime of bigamy; but having learnt what had happened to the two brothers Minuta, he had recourse to entreaties and humiliations, to appease the inquisitor-general and obtain a commutation of his punishment. CHAPTER XXV. OF THE LEARNED MEN WHO HAVE BEEN PERSECUTED BY THE INQUISITION. Among the many evils which the Inquisition has inflicted on Spain, the obstacles which it opposes to the progress of the arts and sciences, and literature, are not the least deplorable. The partisans of the holy office have never allowed this, yet it is a certain truth. The apologists, of whom I speak, maintain, that the Inquisition only opposes the invasion of heretical opinions, and leaves those who do not attack the doctrines of the faith in perfect liberty,--consequently, that it does not influence the arts and sciences. If this pretension was just, there are many excellent works which might be read, and which are only prohibited because they contain doctrines opposed to the opinions of the scholastic theologians. St. Augustine was certainly a very zealous partisan of religion in its greatest purity, yet he made a great distinction between a dogmatic proposition and one not defined. He acknowledged that in the second case a Catholic was free to maintain the argument for, or against, according to the dictates of his reason. St. Augustine did not suppose that the freedom of opinion would be opposed by such theological censures as the qualifiers of the holy office have established in modern times. They have had great influence on the prohibition of books, and even on the condemnation of their authors. They are employed against the first, on pretence that they contain propositions _favourable to heresy, ill sounding, savouring of heresy, fomenting heresy, or tending to heresy_; against the authors, in declaring them suspected of having adopted heresy in their hearts. In the present time the qualifiers have extended the prohibitions, by saying that the books contained propositions _offensive to persons of high rank, seditious, tending to disturb public tranquillity, contrary to the government of the state, and opposed to the obedience which has been taught by Jesus Christ and his apostles_. These censures are generally passed by scholastic theologians. The work of _Filangieri_, entitled _The Science of Legislation_, was censured by Fray Joseph de Cardenas, a Capuchin, who thought himself competent to do it, though he had only read the first volume of the Spanish translation, which contained only half of that of the original.