Note 743 — Chapter I

The Grand Inquisitors had always shown an instinctive desire to obtain jurisdiction over books, whether printed or manuscript. Torquemada, the fiercest, if not quite the first of them, burned at Seville, in 1490, a quantity of Hebrew Bibles and other manuscripts, on the ground that they were the work of Jews; and at Salamanca, subsequently, he destroyed, in the same way, six thousand volumes more, on the ground that they were books of magic and sorcery. But in all this he proceeded, not by virtue of his Inquisitorial office, but, as Barrientos had done forty years before, (see ante, p. 359,) by direct royal authority. Until 1521, therefore, the press remained in the hands of the Oidores, or judges of the higher courts, and other persons civil and ecclesiastical, who, from the first appearance of printing in the country, and certainly for above twenty years after that period, had granted, by special power from the sovereigns, whatever licenses were deemed necessary for the printing and circulation of books. Llorente, Hist. de l’Inquisition, Tom. I. pp. 281, 456. Mendez, Typographía, pp. 51, 331, 375.