Page:About Mexico - Past and Present.djvu/372

364 sounded in this region and shadow of death, it was soon silenced by the Inquisition, which had a dungeon-grave for every gospel inquirer, whether in Europe, in Asia or in America. God has not been without his witnesses in every age and in every country, but the names of few shine out to human eyes in the annals of the Church in Mexico. The historians of no Christian land were so silent with regard to the Reformation as were those of Spain. Yet thousands of whom the world knows little or nothing died there for the faith of Jesus. Among those who left only a name was Juan de Leon, who lived in Mexico and fled from that country to Spain, only to be arrested there by the Inquisition and burned at the stake in 1559, a heroic martyr for Christ.

Never were printing-presses watched more vigilantly than were those of Spain at that time. No book could be sold or read without an order from the Inquisition; a bookseller dared not open a bale of goods without its permission. The same rules were faithfully carried out in Mexico. Even one obnoxious passage in a whole edition of books was erased, and some volumes thus mutilated can to-day be seen in libraries there. Cardinal Ximenes, one of the chief promoters of the Holy Office, gave it as his opinion that "the Holy Scriptures should be confined to the three ancient languages which God with mystic import permitted to be inscribed over the head of his crucified Son." We do not find, therefore, any mention of Bible translation or Bible printing in Spanish America until 1831, when liberal principles began to assert themselves even in the Church of Rome by a new version of the entire Bible prepared by eight Mexican priests and published in the capital by Ribera in 1833. Before that time, however, a Spanish New