The council, in consequence, decreed that those theologians in the university who had studied the Oriental languages, should be obliged, as well as other persons, to give up their Hebrew and Greek Bibles to the commissaries of the holy office, on pain of excommunication; that the proprietors of Greek, Arabic, and Hebrew books, not mentioned in the list, should not be molested; that the order concerning the books printed without the name of the author, related only to modern productions; that the request made by some persons to be allowed to keep _Pomponius Mela_, with the commentary of _Nadicano_, should be refused; that these books should be remitted to the council to be examined; that the order to seize all works containing errors should only be applied to modern books; and that the _Summa Armata_ of Durand, of Cajetan, Peter Lombard, Origen, Theophylact, Tertullian, Lactantius, Lucian, Aristotle, Plato, Seneca, and other authors of that class, should be allowed to circulate; that the council, being informed that several catalogues of prohibited books existed, would unite them, and compose one general catalogue.
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 IV., that some of the prohibitions of books had been withdrawn.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.