In the year 1558 the terrible law of Philip II. was published, which decreed the punishments of death and confiscation for all those who should sell, buy, keep, or read, the books prohibited by the holy office; and, to ensure the execution of this sanguinary law, the index was printed, that the people might not allege ignorance in their defence. A bull of 1559 enjoins confessors to interrogate their penitents on this subject, and to remind them that they were obliged to denounce the guilty on pain of excommunication. A particular article subjects the confessors to the same punishment if they neglected this duty, even if their penitents were of the highest rank. This severe law was however mitigated in 1561, when the Cardinal of Alexandria, inquisitor-general of Rome, published a decree, announcing, in the name of Pius. IV., that some of the prohibitions of books had been withdrawn. This decree also granted permission to read and possess some books which had been suppressed only because they were written by heretics. Valdes, the inquisitor-general of Spain, immediately wrote to the inquisitors of the provinces, to suspend the execution of the edict, until he had received the orders of the king, to whom he had represented the danger arising from a measure which annulled the punishment of excommunication; but Valdes had another motive in the proceeding. In 1559, this inquisitor had published a printed catalogue of prohibited books, which was much more extended than that of 1558, and in which, according to the advice of Francis Sanchez, he had introduced all the works mentioned in the catalogues of Rome, Lisbon, Louvain, and those of Spain of an earlier date. He divided them into six classes. The first consisted of Latin books; the second of those written in Castilian; the third of those in the Teutonic language; the fourth of German books; the fifth of French; and the sixth of Portuguese. Valdes, in a note at the end of his index, gave notice that there were many books subject to the prohibition, not mentioned in the list, but that they would be added. He appointed the punishment of excommunication, and a penalty of two hundred ducats, for those persons who should read any of these books, and in this number were included some which were permitted to be read by the last edict of the Pope. Valdes had inserted in his catalogue some books which had not only been considered catholic, but were in the hands of everybody and full of true piety, particularly some works of Don Hernand de Talavera, the venerable Juan d'Avila, Bartholomew Carranza de Miranda, Archbishop of Toledo; Hernand de Villegas, Louis de Granada, a Dominican; and St. Francis Borgia.