When the license of the ordinary had been obtained, it was referred to the Roman Congregation of the Index, who might withhold or grant their sanction.

So complicated was the machinery, and so vast the pressure upon the officials who were held responsible for the expurgation of every book imprinted or reprinted in all the Catholic presses, that even writers of conspicuous orthodoxy had to suffer grievous delays.

An archbishop writes to Cardinal Sirleto about a book which had been examined thrice, at Rome, at Venice and again at Rome, and had obtained the Pope's approval, and yet the license for reprinting it is never issued.[121] The censors were not paid; and in addition to being overworked and over-burdened with responsibility, they were rarely men of adequate learning.

In a letter from Bartolommeo de Valverde, chaplain to Philip II., under date 1584, we read plain-spoken complaints against these subordinates.[122] 'Unacquainted with literature, they discharge the function of condemning books they cannot understand.

Without knowledge of Greek or Hebrew, and animated by a prejudiced hostility against authors, they take the easy course of proscribing what they feel incapable of judging.