The Spanish Inquisition generally made life hard for people who had observations to make against religion, tradition, etc. The Catholic Church had the first Encyclopedia (by D’Alambert and Diderot) in their list of banned books in 1759.
[I’m not a historian, low confidence:]
In his book A Culture of Growth, the influential economic historian Joel Mokyr claims that attempts to suppress intellectual activity in this period were somewhat toothless because they were rarely enforced consistently across countries. Intellectuals were thus ableto evade suppression by moving, sometimes capitalizing on the competing interests of different rulers. More broadly, the book made me think that state-led conservative forces—including the Inquisition—were much less of a big deal than I had previously believed, even though they of course had some impacts including in some well-known cases such as the one you cite or the execution of Giordano Bruno.
So I wonder whether the fact that, for whatever reason, the movement was geographically tied to Spain is a crucial part of the full explanation here.
[I’m not a historian, low confidence:]
In his book A Culture of Growth, the influential economic historian Joel Mokyr claims that attempts to suppress intellectual activity in this period were somewhat toothless because they were rarely enforced consistently across countries. Intellectuals were thus able to evade suppression by moving, sometimes capitalizing on the competing interests of different rulers. More broadly, the book made me think that state-led conservative forces—including the Inquisition—were much less of a big deal than I had previously believed, even though they of course had some impacts including in some well-known cases such as the one you cite or the execution of Giordano Bruno.
So I wonder whether the fact that, for whatever reason, the movement was geographically tied to Spain is a crucial part of the full explanation here.