trange that the spread of the Reformed religion should so
long have escaped the detection of the agents of the Holy Office. Yet it
is certain that the first notice which the Spanish inquisitors received
of the fact was from their brethren abroad. Some ecclesiastics in the
train of Philip, suspecting the heresy of several of their own
countrymen in the Netherlands, had them seized and sent to Spain, to be
examined by the Inquisition. On a closer investigation, it was found
that a correspondence had long been maintained between these persons and
their countrymen, of a similar persuasion with themselves, at home. Thus
the existence, though not the extent, of the Spanish Reformation was
made known.[435]

No sooner was the alarm sounded, than Paul the Fourth, quick to follow
up the scent of heresy in any quarter of his pontifical dominions,
issued a brief, in February, 1558, addressed to the Spanish
inquisitor-general. In this brief, his holiness enjoins it on the head
of the tribunal to spare no efforts to detect and exterminate the
growing evil; and he empowers that functionary to arraign and bring to
condign punishment all suspected of heresy, of whatever rank or
profession,--whether bishops or archbishops, nobles, kings, or emperors.
Paul the Fourth was fond of contemplating himself as seated in the chair
of the Innocents and the Gregories, and like them setting his pontifical
foot on the necks of princes. His natural arrogance was probably not
diminished by the concessions which Philip the Second had thought proper
to make to him at the close of the Roman war.

Philip, far from taking umbrage at the swelling tone of this apostolical
mandate, followed it up, in the same year, by a monstrous edict,
borrowed from one in the Netherlands, which condemned all who bought,
sold, or read prohibited works to be burned alive.

In the following January, Paul, to give greater efficacy to this edict,
published another bull, in which he commanded all confessors, under pain
of excommunication, to enjoin on their penitents to inform against all
persons, however nearly allied to them, who might be guilty of such
practices. To quicken the zeal of the informer, Philip, on his part,
revived a law fallen somewhat into disuse, by which the accuser was to
receive one fourth of the confiscated property of the convicted party.
And finally, a third bull from Paul allowed the inquisitors to withhold
a pardon from the recanting heretic, if any do