<P> The fight from within against the Inquisition was almost always clandestine . The first texts that questioned the Inquisition and praised the ideas of Voltaire or Montesquieu appeared in 1759 . After the suspension of pre-publication censorship on the part of the Council of Castile in 1785, the newspaper El Censor began the publication of protests against the activities of the Holy Office by means of a rationalist critique . Valentin de Foronda published Espíritu de los Mejores Diarios, a plea in favour of freedom of expression that was avidly read in the salons . Also, in the same vein, Manuel de Aguirre wrote On Toleration in El Censor, El Correo de los Ciegos and El Diario de Madrid . </P> <P> During the reign of Charles IV of Spain (1788--1808), in spite of the fears that the French Revolution provoked, several events accelerated the decline of the Inquisition . The state stopped being a mere social organizer and began to worry about the well - being of the public . As a result, the land - holding power of the Church was reconsidered, in the señoríos and more generally in the accumulated wealth that had prevented social progress . The power of the throne increased, under which Enlightenment thinkers found better protection for their ideas . Manuel Godoy and Antonio Alcalá Galiano were openly hostile to an institution whose only role had been reduced to censorship and was the very embodiment of the Spanish Black Legend, internationally, and was not suitable to the political interests of the moment: </P> <P> The Inquisition? Its old power no longer exists: the horrible authority that this bloodthirsty court had exerted in other times was reduced...the Holy Office had come to be a species of commission for book censorship, nothing more...</P> <P> The Inquisition was first abolished during the domination of Napoleon and the reign of Joseph Bonaparte (1808--1812). In 1813, the liberal deputies of the Cortes of Cádiz also obtained its abolition, largely as a result of the Holy Office's condemnation of the popular revolt against French invasion . But the Inquisition was reconstituted when Ferdinand VII recovered the throne on 1 July 1814 . Juan Antonio Llorente, who had been the Inquisition's general secretary in 1789, became a Bonapartist and published a critical history in 1817 from his French exile, based on his privileged access to its archives . </P>

Which option best describes events of the spanish inquisition