ABSTRACT
In the framework of the debate about the Spanish Enlightenment, this chapter takes up the discussion of the limits of Enlightenment and examines Inquisitorial efforts to avoid the circulation of certain French books and of opinions critical of the Church, the State, and religion. In the second half of the century censors better defined the idea of works of extreme danger, at the same time numerous readers exerted greater pressure to gain access to the “less dangerous” works. From the reform of 1768 on, at the behest of the Council of Castile, the Spanish Inquisition increased the granting of permits to read prohibited books, a practice that just a few years before it had attempted to abolish. However, the Inquisition never gave up the idea that no reader was safe from certain books that were as evil as they were persuasive. This chapter explores the presence of these texts and the weight that they had in generating differing and opposing opinions. It also offers some examples of the circulation of prohibited books and demonstrates the difficulty that the Inquisition had in determining the level of radicalism of readers.
