Note 204 — Chapter V · THE NINETEENTH CENTURY (continued 2)

Torquemada waged war upon freedom of thought in every form. In 1490 he caused several Hebrew Bibles to be publicly burned and some time after, more than six thousand volumes of oriental learning, on the imputation of Judaism, sorcery, or heresy, at the autos da fé of Salamanca, the very nursery of science. This may remind one of the similar sentence passed by Lope de Barrientos, another Dominican, about fifty years before, upon the books of the marquis of Villena. Fortunately for the dawning literature of Spain, Isabella did not, as was done by her successors, commit the censorship of the press to the judges of the Holy Office, notwithstanding such occasional assumption of power by the grand inquisitor.