THE BOOK PRODUCTION OF EUROPE AS AFFECTED BY
CENSORSHIP
1. General. 2. The Universities. 3. Italy. 4. Spain. 5. France.
6. Germany. 7. The Netherlands. 8. England. 9. The _Index
Generalis_ of Thomas James, 1627.
=1. General.=--Four men, Columbus, Luther, Copernicus, and Gutenberg,
stand at the dividing line of the Middle Ages, and serve as boundary
stones marking the entrance of mankind into the higher and finer epoch
of its development.[88] It would be difficult to say which one of the
four has made the larger contribution to this development or has done
the most to lift up the spirit of mankind and to open for man the
doors to the new realms that were awaiting him. The Genoese discoverer
opens new regions to our knowledge and imagination, leads Europe from
the narrow restrictions of the Middle Ages out into the vast space
of Western oceans, and, in adding to the material realm controlled
by civilisation, widens still more largely the range of its thought,
and fancy. The reformer of Wittenberg, in breaking the bonds that had
chained the spirits of his fellow-men and in securing for them again
their rights as individual Christians, conquers for them a spiritual
realm and brings them into direct relations with their Creator. The
great astronomer shatters, through his discoveries, the fixed and
petty conceptions of the universe that had ruled the minds of mankind,
and in bringing to men fresh light on the nature and extent of created
things, widens at the same time their whole understanding of themselves
and of duty. The citizen of Mayence may claim to have unchained
intelligence and given to it wings. He utilised lead no longer as a
death-bringing ball, but in the form of life-quickening letters which
were to bring before thousands of minds the teachings of the world’s
thinkers. Each one of the four had his part in bringing to the world
light, knowledge, and development.
Before the beginning of the Reformation, the business of printing
books, which had originated among Germans, had secured in the so-called
Latin countries, Italy, France, and Spain, larger development than
in the German lands. It is certainly the case that, irrespective
of the facilities afforded by the printing-press, the intellectual
development in Italy was, during the 15th and the first portion of
the 16th century, far in advance of Germany and for that matter of
the rest of Europe. If the Reformation was not in itself an important
factor in the transfer of the centre of literary activity, this period
certainly coincided with such transfer. After 1518, the centres of
literary production and intellectual activities are to be sought rather
in Germany and in Holland than in Italy or Spain. France, on the other
hand, appears to have been able, while accepting a rather burdensome
measure of censorship, to have retained an important intellectual
position, the influence of which is, of course, most closely associated
with the university of Paris.
During the years immediately following the invention of printing,
the Church gave to the new art a cordial welcome. The scholarly
ecclesiastics were among the first to recognise the service that could
be rendered by the printers in multiplying for general distribution
the books of doctrine and of devotion. The Church felt secure in its
hold upon the minds of the people and for three quarters of a century,
at least, there was no apprehension that the people could be diverted
from their allegiance to the true Faith. Many of the monasteries
made space for printing-presses, while others placed funds at the
disposal of printers who were needing co-operation. It was not only in
the scholarly circles of the Church that the new art secured prompt
recognition. The Brothers of Common Life, who for a century or more
had taken upon themselves the work of teaching the people and who
had utilised in this work manuscript copies of books of devotion,
were among the first to make use of the printing-press in the work
of education for the distribution of their books of devotion. Within
eighteen years after the production of Gutenberg’s Bible, the Brothers
had printing-presses at work in Deventer (Holland) and in a number of
their monasteries in North Germany. In Strasburg, Magdeburg, Nuremberg,
and elsewhere before 1470, the monasteries of the Carthusians had
established printing-presses.
The work of publishing material for popular circulation begins
practically with the Reformation. It was with the great popular demand
for instruction and information which had been developed through the
work of the reformers, that there came to the people at large the
realisation of the value to them of the invention of Gutenberg, and
an understanding of its importance for the work of educating and of
organising the people and for the securing the right of individual
thought production against the oppression of Church and State. The
system of censorship, ecclesiastical and political, a system which was
to do much to hamper the development of literature and of publishing,
dates in substance from the Reformation.
The effect of the censorship of the Church on the activities of
publishers and on the production of books varied very materially, even
in those States in which the regulations of the Church were, in form
at least, accepted as authoritative. The States in which, during the
16th and 17th centuries, the work of the printer-publishers came into
conflict, in one way or another, with the censorship edicts, and in
which literary production and activity were influenced by censorship
policy, were: Italy, France, South Germany, North Germany, Switzerland,
England, Spain, the Spanish Netherlands, and Holland.
In Italy, the edicts of the Roman Inquisition and of the Congregation
of the Index having to do with the prohibition or the expurgation of
books were of course, at least in form, binding equally upon all the
States and cities in which printing-presses were at work. As a fact,
however, at no time, not even after the labours of the Council of
Trent, did it prove practicable to secure any uniformity of procedure
or of result in the enforcement of the censorship decrees throughout
the territory of the Italian peninsula. The printers of Rome were under
obligation to take immediate action in regard to the cancellation
or withdrawal from sale of books condemned. Outside of Rome, or at
least outside of the States of the Church, periods of from thirty to
ninety days were allowed within which the printers were expected to
secure knowledge of the prohibitory edicts. The Church authorities
assumed that these edicts were binding throughout the entire Catholic
world, but, outside of Italy, the printers, booksellers, or readers
were not under obligation to have knowledge of the prohibitions until
the edicts had been published by the local bishops or the local
inquisitors. It was the case that from time to time the local bishops
were not in sympathetic accord with the literary policy of Rome, and
delayed indefinitely, or declined altogether, to make publication of
the edicts. In certain of the Italian cities, of which Venice is the
most noteworthy example, the civil authorities took the ground that no
regulations concerning printing and bookselling could be considered
as in force unless and until such regulations had been confirmed
by the civil authorities. The Church claimed not only the right to
prohibit pernicious literature, but to authorise and to protect for
sale throughout the world the works which secured its approval. The
papal privileges conceded, in form at least, to the printers to whom
they were issued, exclusive control not only within the States of
the Church, but in all the States of the world that acknowledged the
authority of the Church. There was, however, practically no machinery
for enforcing the authority of the papal privileges. The material
advantage belonging to such a privilege was that it carried with it
the assurance of the approval of the Church concerning the character
of the book. It constituted, namely, evidence that the book had
secured the approval of the Church censors and (with an occasional
exception) it preserved the book from interference on the part of local
ecclesiastical censors, whose prejudices were usually more bitter and
whose ignorant dread of heretical scholarship was greater than was the
case with the censors appointed directly by the Congregation. The
fact that, during the 16th and 17th centuries, Latin was the official
language of scholarship and nearly universal as the language of
literature, and that the great majority of publications of importance
came into print in Latin, served to maintain a certain universality
of learning, of literature, and of science and to build up a body of
scholars who belonged not to any one State, least of all possible to
the “country of origin,” but to Europe as a whole, to the world of
literature and learning. The detail of smallest importance that occurs
in thinking of the career of a Casaubon, Scaliger, or an Erasmus
is the place of his birth. This universality of language furthered
also, however, during the same centuries, the operations of the
ecclesiastical censors and the enforcement of the policy of censorship.
When there came to be a development of national literatures brought
into print in the national languages, the difficulties of a standard of
censorship and of a general enforcement of such standard, even through
the States recognising the authority of the Church, became very much
greater. It is evident, in fact, from the fragmentary additions of the
lists of the later Indexes that the examiners, acting on behalf of the
Congregation or of the Inquisition, had very little familiarity with
literature that came into print in language other than Latin or Italian.
The art of printing was one which evidently could not long be
restricted to any one locality. It was speedily carried from Mayence to
other communities in which literary interests or educational facilities
could be furthered by its use.
In 1462, on the 28th of October, Archbishop Adolph of Nassau captured
the city of Mayence and gave it over to his soldiers for plunder. The
typesetters and printers, with all the other artisans whose work
depended upon the commerce of the city, were driven to flight and it
appeared for the moment as if the newly instituted printing business
had been crushed. The result of the scattering of the printers was,
however, the introduction of the new art into a number of other
centres where the influences were favourable for its development. The
typesetters of Mayence, driven from their printing offices by the
heavy hand of the Church, journeyed throughout the world and proceeded
to give to many communities the means of education and enlightenment
through which the great revolt against the Church was finally
instituted.
An important influence in securing for the work of the early
printer-publishers of Germany a greater freedom from restriction than
was enjoyed by their contemporaries in France was the fact that, in
Germany, the beginning of printing, or at least its development,
took place, not in a university centre but in a commercial town and
was from the outset carried on not by scholars but by workers of the
people. This brought the whole business of the production and the
distribution of books in Germany into closer relations with the mass
of the people than was the case in France. The direct association with
the university of the first printers in France (who were themselves the
immediate successors of the official university scribes) brought the
printing-press under the direct control of the university and rendered
easy the establishment by the university authorities, and particularly
by the theologians, of a continued censorship.
Hegel, in his _Philosophy of History_, refers to the renewed interest
in the writings of the ancients which was brought about through the
service of the printing-press. He points out, further, that the Church
felt at the outset no anxiety concerning the influence of the pagan
literature and that the ecclesiastical authorities evidently had no
understanding of the new elements of suggestion and enquiry that this
literature was introducing into the minds of men. It may be considered
as one of the fortunate circumstances attending the introduction of the
art of printing that the popes of the time were largely men of liberal
education and intellectual tastes, while one or two, such as Nicholas
V, Julius II, and Leo X, had a keen personal interest in literature
and were themselves creators of books. The fact that Leo X was a
luxury-loving, free-thinking prince rather than a devoted Christian
leader or teacher, may very probably have been a favourable influence
for the enlightenment and development of his own generation and of the
generations that were to come. An earnest and narrow-minded head of the
Church could, during the first years of the 16th century, have retarded
not a little the development of the work of producing books for the
community at large.
It was a number of years before the dread of the use of the
printing-press for the spread of heretical doctrines, and of a
consequent undermining of the authority of the Church, assumed such
proportions in the minds of the popes in Rome and with the bishops
elsewhere as to cause the influence of the Church to be used against
the interests of the world of literature. As a result of this early
acceptance by the Church of the printing-press as a useful ally and
servant, the first Italian presses were supported by bishops and
cardinals in the work of producing classics for scholarly readers,
while at the other extremity of the Church organisation, and at a
distance of a thousand miles or more from Rome, the Brothers of Common
Life in the Low Countries were using their presses for the distribution
of cheap books among the people. Many citations could be made of the
approval with which the scholarly ecclesiastics of the time regarded
the new art. Felix Fabri, prior of the Dominican monastery in Ulm, says
in his _Historia Suevorum_, issued in the year 1459, that “no art
that the world has known can be considered so useful, so much to be
esteemed, indeed so divine as that which has now, through the Grace
of God, been discovered in Mayence.” Johannes Rauchler,[89] the first
rector of the Tübingen School, rejoices that through the new art so
many authors can now be brought within the reach of students in Latin,
Greek, and Hebrew, authors who are witnesses for the Christian faith,
and the service of whose writings to the Church and to the world is so
great that he can but consider “this art as a gift directly from God
himself.”
The favourable relations between the Church and the printers were
checked by the Humanistic movement, which, a generation or more
before the Reformation, began to bring into question the authority
of the Church and the infallibility of the Papacy. The influence of
the Humanistic teachers was so largely furthered by the co-operation
of the printers that the jealousy and dread of the ecclesiastical
authorities were promptly aroused, and they began to utter fulminations
against the wicked and ignorant men who were using the art of printing
for misleading the community and for the circulation of error.
Ecclesiastics who had at first favoured the widest possible circulation
of the Scriptures, now contended that much of the spread of heresy was
due to the misunderstanding of the Scriptures on the part of readers
who were acting without the guidance of their spiritual advisers.
The Church now took the ground that the reading of the Scriptures by
individuals was not to be permitted and that the Bible was to be given
to the community only through the interpretations of the Church. At
the same time, the authority of the Church was exerted to repress
or at least to restrict the operations of the printing-press and to
bring printers and publishers under a close ecclesiastical supervision
and censorship. It was, however, already too late to stand between
the printing-press and the people. Large portions of the community
had become accustomed to a general circulation of books and to the
use without restriction of such reading matter as might be brought
within their reach, and this privilege they were no longer willing
to forego. In Spain, in Italy, and in France, the censorship of the
Church soon became sufficiently burdensome to hamper and to interfere
with publishing undertakings and to check the natural development of
literary production. Even in Italy, however, the critical spirit was
found to be too strong to be crushed out, and from Venice, which became
the most important of the Italian publishing centres (because it was
the freest from papal control) it proved possible to secure for the
productions of the printing-press a circulation that was practically
independent of the censorship of Rome.
The importance of Frankfort as a centre of the trade in books
began with the first years of the 15th century, when the dealers
in manuscripts were present with booths at the Frankfort Fair. The
manuscript dealers came together once a year also at the fairs of
Salzburg, Ulm, and Nordlingen, but the book-trade at Frankfort soon
assumed a pre-eminence that it did not lose for two centuries. The
earliest date at which is chronicled the sale at the Frankfort Fair
of printed books was 1480. For these earlier sales of manuscripts
and printed books, there was apparently no censorship or official
supervision.
The manuscript trade in the Netherlands was more important both in
character and in extent than that carried on in Germany, and it
appears to have exerted a larger influence upon the general education
of the people than the book-trade of the time in either France or
Italy. In France and in Italy, the earlier book-trade, first in
manuscripts, later in printed volumes, was connected with the work
of the universities. In the Low Countries, on the other hand, and
particularly in such centres as Ghent, Antwerp, and Bruges, there came
into existence during the first half of the 15th century an active
and intelligently conducted business in the production of books, both
of a scholarly and of a popular character, the sale of which was made
among citizens who were for the greater part outside of university
circles. One reason why the trade in books found a larger development
in Belgium than in Germany was the greater wealth of the working
classes in the Low Countries. With the wealth, came cultivation and a
taste for luxuries and among luxuries soon came to be included art and
literature. Another factor in the early development of the book-trade
was the freedom from the university censorship control which in Paris,
Bologna, and other book-producing centres restricted the undertakings
of the dealers.
A special characteristic of the literary undertakings of the 16th
century is the practice of collaboration. Such works as the great
dictionary of the Academy and the _Corpus inscriptionum latinarum_
are instances of undertakings which would have been impossible for
individual authorship. The Catholic reformation was also contemporary
with an important development in literary form and in literary
expression. It is fair to remember, however, that for this development
the influence of the Italian writers of the Renaissance may be
considered as chiefly responsible.
The Renaissance, the influence of which in Germany had been so large a
factor in bringing about the Protestant Reformation, had not succeeded
in Italy in revitalising paganism, but the Italian writers of the time
broke away from the traditions of Christianity. Their Deity was no
longer the sombre avenger invoked by Dante; or the consoler who, in the
verse of Petrarch, reunites the souls that have been purified under
suffering and have endured the separation of death. It was Art. The
religion of Ariosto may be summed up as the development of literary
perfection coupled with an indifference to moral ideas.[90]
The rule of Alexander VI (Borgia), 1492–1503, coincided with the
beginning of the active work of the printing-presses in Venice,
Florence, and in Rome. The influence of the Pope was, however,
promptly brought to bear to discourage the undertakings of the
printer-publishers. Venice was practically outside of his control,
while even in Florence the printers were not prepared to accept
dictation from the papal representatives. In Rome, however, the
subjection of the press to ecclesiastical censorship, for the
initiation of which the responsibility rested with Alexander, proved
at once a serious limitation to its activities. It was undoubtedly
this restriction which gave to the printers of Venice their great
advantage over their early competitors in Rome. Venice was the leader
among the cities of Italy in resisting the censorship of the Church,
although even in Venice the Church succeeded in the end in gaining
the more important of its contentions. In Spain, the control over the
printing-presses on the part of the censors of the Church was hardly
questioned, but these censors represented the authority not of Rome
but of the local Inquisition. The Spanish Inquisition was, for the
longer period of its existence under the direction of the Dominicans,
and it was frequently the case that the decisions of the Spanish
inquisitors, in regard both to the literature to be condemned and to
that to be approved, were in direct opposition to the conclusions of
the Papacy. In France, after a century of contest, the ecclesiastical
control of the printing-press became practically merged in the
censorship exercised by the Crown, a censorship which was in itself
as much as the publishing trade could bear and continue to exist. In
Austria and in South Germany, after the crushing out of the various
Reformation movements, the Church and the State worked in practical
accord in maintaining a close supervision of the printing-presses. In
North Germany, on the other hand, the ecclesiastical censorship never
became important. The evils produced by it were, however, serious and
long-enduring over a large portion of the territory of Europe, and
the papal Borgia, although by no means a considerable personage, must
be held responsible for bringing into existence an evil which assumed
enormous proportions in the intellectual history of Europe.
=2. The Universities and the Book-trade.= The book-dealers of Paris,
beginning their work as part of the organisation of the university,
had their first quarters in the immediate vicinity of the college
buildings. The foundation of the College of the Sorbonne dates from
1257. The college had been instituted by Robert de Sorbon, chaplain to
Louis IX, from whom it took its name. It was at once affiliated to the
university, the work of which had begun about half a century earlier.
The college assumed the control of the theological instruction in the
university and the divines of the Sorbonne exercised from the outset
a controlling influence over the general policy of the university.
The theological faculty took charge, on behalf of the university,
of the censorship of the Paris book-trade and of the productions of
the Paris press. It based its authority for this censorship in part
on the fact that the book-dealers had from the earliest manuscript
period been under the direction of the university, and in part on the
authority of the Church. The dealers who did not secure a license
from the university occupied as their locality the precincts of
Notre Dame on the island of La Cité. Throughout Europe, in fact, the
earlier book-dealers carried on their business very frequently under
the immediate shadow of the cathedral if not within its portals. In
Cologne, for instance, the manuscript-dealers in the early part of
the 15th century took possession for their shops or booths of various
corners or angles of the cathedral building; while in Münster was
allotted to them the court immediately in front of the cathedral. There
is a reference as early as 1408, in one of the Strasburg chronicles, to
the scribes who sold books on the steps of the Cathedral of Our Lady.
With the invention of printing, the universities (with the exception
of Paris) lost their control over the business of book production, and
there resulted necessarily a decrease in their influence and relative
importance in the community. They continued to lay claim to the control
of censorship but this claim could not be supported in the face of the
direct action of the Church on the one hand, and that of the civil
authorities on the other. Paulsen[91] writes: “The tradition of the
universities, and, in particular, their method of instruction in the
arts and in theology, were rejected with scorn by the new educator
through its representatives, the poets and the orators,” to whom the
form and the substance of this teaching seemed alike to be barbarism.
The _Epistolae obscurorum virorum_, published in 1516, was the
work of a band of youthful poets working under the leadership of
Mutianus at Erfurt; it expressed the hatred and detestation felt by the
Humanists for the ancient university system. Within a few years from
the publication of the _Epistolae_, the influence of the Humanists
had so far extended itself as to have effected a large modification in
the systems of study in all the larger universities. The ecclesiastical
Latin was replaced by classical Latin; and the old translations of
the Aristotelian texts were driven out by new versions representing
more exact scholarship. Greek was taken up in the faculty of arts, and
courses in its language and literature were established in nearly all
the universities. This change was coincident with the shifting of the
authority for censorship from the hands of the university theologians
to those of the direct representatives of the pope or of the State.
The strifes and contentions of the Reformation checked for a time the
development in the universities of the studies connected with the
intellectual movement of the Renaissance, and lessened the demand for
the literature of these studies. The active-minded were absorbed in
theological controversy, while those who could not understand the
questions at issue could still shout the shibboleths of the leaders.
As Erasmus puts it, rather bitterly: _ubi regnat Lutheranismus, ibi
interitus litterarum_. The literature of the Reformation, however,
itself did much to make good for the printing-presses the lessened
demand for the classics, while, a few years later, the organisation in
Germany of the Protestant schools and universities aroused intellectual
activities in new regions and created fresh requirements for printed
books. Within half a century of the Diet of Worms, the centre of the
book-absorbing population of Germany had been transferred from the
Catholic States of the south to the Protestant territories of the north
and the literary preponderance of the latter has continued to increase
during the succeeding generations.
Mark Pattison says[92]:
“If we ask why Italy did not continue to be the centre of the
Humanist movement which she had so brilliantly encouraged, the
answer is that the intelligence was crushed by the reviviscence
of ecclesiastical ideas. Learning is the result of research, and
research must be free and cannot co-exist with the claim of the
Catholic religion to be superior to enquiry. The French school,
it will be observed, was wholly, in fact or in intention,
Protestant. As soon as it was decided (as it was before 1600)
that France was to be a Catholic country and the University
of Paris a Catholic University, learning was extinguished in
France. France saw without regret and without repentance the
expatriation of her unrivalled scholars. With Scaliger and
Saumaise, the seat of learning was transferred from France to
Holland.
The third period of classical learning thus coincides with the
Dutch school. From 1593, the date of Scaliger’s removal to
Leyden, the supremacy in the republic of learning was possessed
by the Dutch. In the course of the 18th century, the Dutch
school was gradually supplanted by the North German, which from
that time forward has taken, and still possesses, the lead in
philological science.”
As early as 1323, the University of Paris was the most important in
Europe for theological studies, as that of Bologna was the authority on
jurisprudence, and that of Padua for medicine. The early development
of theological studies in Paris was one of the influences that brought
about the authority of the College of the Sorbonne in the censorship of
the book productions of the kingdom.
An anonymous author of a polemical tract, written in the previous
century for the purpose of pointing out the errors of some heretical
production, says: _Is autem erroneus liber positus fuit publice ad
exemplandum Parisiis anno Domini 1254. Unde certum est quod jam publice
predicaretur nisi boni prelati et predicatores impedirent._ (“This
heretical tract was openly given to the scribes to be copied in Paris
in the year of our Lord, 1254. Whence it is evident what manner of
doctrine would now be set forth to the public had not good priests
and preachers interfered.”)[93] By the beginning of the 16th century,
the University of Vienna had taken a leading place among the centres
of education in Europe. It is said to have contained at this time no
less than seven thousand students and the work of the Humanists in
furthering the revival of interest in the classic authors was in Vienna
at this time particularly active. Within a quarter of a century after
Luther had begun his protests, the Jesuits secured the controlling
influence in matters in Vienna and from this time the relative
importance of the university steadily declined.[94]
The jurist Scheurl writes from Nuremberg to Cardinal Campeggi, March
15, 1524: “Every common man is now asking for books or pamphlets and
more reading is being done in a day than heretofore in a year.”[95]
In Nuremberg, as in other towns, it became the practice to read the
books of Luther out loud in the market place. Erasmus complains, in
1523, that since the publication of the German New Testament, the whole
book-trade seems to be absorbed with the writings of Luther, and to
be interested in giving attention to nothing else. He says, further,
that it is very difficult to find in Germany publishers willing to
place their imprint upon books written in behalf of the Papacy. As
an example of the kind of interest caused by the writings of Luther,
it is recorded that the magistrates of Bremen sent a bookseller to
Wittenberg for the purpose of purchasing for their official use a set
of Luther’s works. The citizens of Speyer are described as having the
books read to them at supper, and as making transcripts of the texts.
In hundreds of towns throughout Germany, Luther’s writings were brought
to the notice of the people by means of the very edict which had for
its purpose their final suppression, and after the Diet of Worms, the
demand for them rapidly increased. The preacher Matthaeus Zell writes
from Strasburg, in 1523: “The Lutheran books are for sale here in the
market-place immediately beneath the edicts of the emperor and of the
pope declaring them to be prohibited.”
With the beginning of the 13th century, it was realised that the newly
organised universities had become the centres of intellectual activity.
The popes undertook promptly the institution of machinery for the
supervision of the work done in the universities and of the literary
productions that came from the instructors. It was the contention of
the papal representatives that the appointments of the university
officials having to do directly with the work of multiplying books,
must rest with the theological faculty, that is to say with the
immediate representatives of the Church. This contention was, in the
main, sustained in such university centres as Bologna, Paris, Prague,
Vienna, and Cologne. A brief, issued in 1479 by Sixtus IV, charges
the rectors and the deacons of the university with the responsibility
of censorship. The edict in 1486 by Berthold, Archbishop of Mayence,
is to be classed not as an ecclesiastical act but as an expression
of authority of a German prince. The Archbishop asserted the right
on behalf not of the Roman Church but of his State. The censorship
exercised by the University of Cologne terminated with the close of the
15th century. The representative of the Archbishop claimed authority,
on the strength of the Bull issued in 1486 by Innocent VIII, directed
against the printers of pernicious books, to take into his own hands
the direction of censorship of the entire principality.
[Sidenote: Early Printers and the Church]
=3. Italy.=--The introduction of the printing-press into Italy was
brought about under the initiative of Juan Turrecremata, who was Abbot
of Subiaco, and who later became Cardinal. The Cardinal was a Spaniard
by birth and his family name (in the Spanish form Torquemada) was,
later, associated with some of the most strenuous of the persecutions
which the Inquisition brought to bear upon the printers. The great
Spanish inquisitor was a nephew of the Cardinal. The Cardinal had been
one of the confessors of Queen Isabella and is said to have made to her
the first suggestion of the necessity of establishing the Inquisition
in order to check the rising spirit of heresy. He did not realise what
a Trojan horse, full of heretical possibilities, he was introducing
into Italy in bringing in the Germans and their printing-press.
Turrecremata was a man of scholarly interests, and he felt assured
that the new art could be made of large service to the Church. He
provided funds for the establishment in Subiaco, in 1464, of the first
printing-press in Italy, which was placed in charge of the Germans
Schweinheim and Pannartz who had learned their art directly from
Gutenberg. The two Germans later migrated to Rome and within a few
years there was a large invasion of German printers into the capital.
The first books printed in Subiaco under the instructions of the
Cardinal were a _Donatus_, an edition of Lactantius, and an edition of
the _De Oratore_ of Cicero. Until towards the close of the century,
when the Church authorities began to realise the risks that were to
be incurred by the Church through the popular distribution of printed
literature, the German printers found opportunities in Italy for
successful and remunerative business.
[Sidenote: Venice]
In 1492, the printing art was introduced into Venice, where it speedily
developed into one of the most important of the industries of the
city. For nearly a century thereafter, Venice took place among the
most influential of the European centres of publishing and literary
activity. There were various grounds on which the productions of the
Venetian presses aroused criticism and antagonism in Rome. After the
beginning of the work of Aldus in 1495, the Venetian publishing lists
included a number of productions by Greek scholars. The majority of
these books being editions of Greek classics, had of course nothing
whatever to do with matters of doctrine or Church policy. The Roman
censors of the time had no knowledge of Greek, an ignorance for which
they were hardly to be criticised, as, until the books of the Aldine
press began to reach the university centres, it was an ignorance that
was shared by all the scholars of Europe. These ecclesiastics were,
however, very apprehensive of the influence of the doctrines of the
Greek Church. They appear to have imagined that the text of Homer
or of Aristotle, or the accompanying notes, might be made to carry
the contentions of the Greek Church in regard to the old-time issues
which had divided Constantinople and Rome. As the censors were unable
themselves to examine the texts, and were unwilling to accept the
conclusions of any examiners who understood Greek, their only means of
defence against this insidious attack on the orthodoxy of Italy was to
prohibit the production and the circulation of any volumes printed in
this heretical language.
The presses of Venice were dangerous not only because they were being
utilised by the scholars of Greece, but because they were bringing into
print also works in Arabic, in Hebrew, in Persian, and in Chaldean. In
the Index lists as printed in Rome, the term “Chaldean” is utilised to
cover the entire group of Oriental tongues which came into print in
one form or another from the presses of Venice. The censors who were
ignorant of Greek were not likely to have any knowledge of Hebrew,
while there was still less chance that they would be able to secure
an understanding of the character of the literature presented in
other Oriental tongues. The first Hebrew books issued in Venice were
editions of the Hebrew Scriptures, of the _Talmud_ and of the
_Targum_, which were printed under the directions of the rabbins
and at the cost of a publication fund, collected for the purpose from
Hebrew congregations throughout South Europe. The doctrines presented
in the long series of Talmudic commentaries might very possibly, if
they could have been read by the censors in Rome, have been interpreted
as antagonistic, at least by implication, to the authority of the
Church of Rome. It would have been difficult, however, to point out
any measure of doctrinal antagonism in the Arabic books selected
for production in Venice. These comprised treatises on mathematics,
treatises on medicine, and Arabic versions, with commentaries by Arab
philosophers, of certain of the texts of Aristotle. The two or three
Persian volumes printed in Venice during the first years of the 16th
century included an exposition of the faith of Zoroaster, a memoir of
Haroun-al-Raschid, and some specimens of the poets of the 14th century.
The actual Chaldean volumes, but one or two in all, were devoted to
astrology. It was the repute that came to these volumes that brought
about the application of the term Chaldean as a description of any
works of divination or magic. Each of the Roman Indexes, from 1559,
down, reiterates the prohibition of “Chaldean books of magic.” The
date of the publication of the first of the Roman Indexes happened to
coincide with the time of the greatest activity of the publishers of
Venice. If the censorship policy of Rome could be enforced in Venice,
the Venetian printers would be driven out of business. The issue was
one that had to be fought out. The victory finally secured by the
printers was due, in the main, to the courage and the intellectual
force of a priest, Paolo Sarpi.
In 1479, Pope Sixtus IV makes Jenson, printer-publisher of Venice,
Count Palatine, the first nobleman among publishers. In 1503, the
Venetian Senate charged Musurus (the friend and literary associate
of Aldus and professor of Greek in Padua) with the censorship of all
Greek books printed in Venice, with reference particularly to the
suppression of anything inimical to the Roman Church. This constitutes
one of the earliest attempts made in Italy to supervise the work of
the printing-press. The action of the Senate was doubtless instigated
by the authorities of the Inquisition. It was natural that the
ecclesiastics should have dreaded the influence of the introduction
into Italy of the doctrines of the Greek Church, while it was doubtless
the case that the refugees from Constantinople brought with them no
very cordial feeling towards Rome. The belief was very general that
if the Papacy had not felt a greater enmity against the Greek Church
than against the Turk, the Catholic States of Europe would have saved
Constantinople. The sacking of Constantinople by the armies of the
Fourth Crusade was still remembered by the Christians of the East as a
crime of the Western Church. There were, therefore, reasons enough why
the authorities of Rome should think it necessary to keep a close watch
over the new literature coming in from the East, and should do what
was practicable to exclude all doctrinal writings, and the censorship
instituted in 1503 was but the beginning of a long series of rigorous
enactments.
The censorship measures undertaken by the Government of Venice (as
was true of the measures of other States in which the business of
publishing became of importance) were more largely concerned with
the supervision of the press for the safety of the State than for
the interests of the Church. For the century between 1407–1528, this
censorship in Venice was carried on without the aid of any general
law, and was based simply upon a series of precedents evolved from
the individual action taken by the Government in each instance as it
arose. The responsibility for the censorship of the press rested with
the Council of Ten, which, in its capacity of a standing committee,
assumed a general charge of the morals of the community. An application
from a printer for a privilege must, according to the usual routine, be
accompanied by a certificate or _testamur_ from the examiners who
were willing to certify as to the soundness and the importance of the
work in question.
In the year 1508, we have the first example of an ecclesiastical
_testamur_ being required by the Council of Ten as a condition for
their own _imprimatur_. The work was the _Universalis animae
traditionis liber quintus_ of Gregoriis, and the ecclesiastical
censor reported that he found in it nothing opposed to Catholic
verity.[96] This is the first instance of a religious censorship
exercised by the secular government. The case indicates the position
the Government of Venice proposed to take in regard to supervision
of books touching upon theological matters. The State had a personal
interest in protecting the Church against the attacks of books likely
to be subversive of the Faith, and the authorities were glad to secure
the opinion of the Church in regard to the character or tendency of a
doubtful work; it intended, however, to retain in its own hands the
final decision as to the permission to print; and it contended that
the interests of Church and State could be best protected by the State
taking action for both. It was the conclusion that, while there should
be a religious censorship, the censor should act only through powers
delegated to him by the secular government.
In 1515, an order was issued by the Council of Ten which established a
general censorship for the literature of the Humanists. It was worded
as follows:
“In all parts of the world and in the famous cities not only
of Italy but also of barbarous countries, that the honour of
the nation may be preserved, it is not allowed to publish works
until they shall have been examined by the most learned person
available. But in this our city, so famous and so worthy, no
attention has as yet been given to this matter; whence it comes
to pass that the most incorrect editions which appear before
the world are those issued in Venice, to the dishonour of the
city. Be it, therefore, charged upon our noble Andrea Navagero
to examine all works in Humanity which for the future may be
printed; and without his signature in the volumes they shall
not be printed, under pain of being confiscated and burned,
and a fine of three hundred ducats for him who disobeys this
order.”[97]
This is the first Italian example of a general or prevention
censorship, applied to a whole class of literature. The third class of
censorship concerns itself with the morals of literature, political
morality, the attitude of the writer or of the publisher towards the
State, and the probable influence of the book upon decency and _bonos
mores_. The political censorship was apparently more effective than
the censorship of morals. It was certainly the case that the imprimatur
was given to not a few books of a scandalous character. In 1526,
the Council of Ten issued a general order decreeing that for future
publications, the _imprimatur_ should be given only to works which
had been examined and approved by two censors who should make a sworn
report that its character was satisfactory.
In 1544, the commissioners of the University of Padua were constituted
the permanent censors of Venetian books submitted for the _imprimatur_
of the council. The censorship of the commissioners covered all points
excepting those relating to religion or theology, which were still
left to be passed upon by the ecclesiastical censors. In 1548, the
first catalogue of prohibited books was issued in Venice. In this
year were instituted, as an addition to the regular executive, three
commissioners on heresy, the _Savii sopra l’Eresia_, who were charged
with the new publications having to do with matters of religion or
doctrine and also with the examination of imported books. The Lutheran
heresy was now being promulgated by means of the press, and the
ecclesiastical authorities were especially suspicious of literature
coming from Germany. The organisation in this same year, 1548, of the
Venetian guild of printers and publishers had for an important part of
its responsibilities the checking of the production or the importation
of heretical books.
In September, 1573, the History of Venice, written by Justiniani, which
had been examined and, to a considerable extent, corrected by the local
inquisitor, having been brought into print, was required to submit to
a further censorship on the part of the Roman examiners. Fra Marco,
the first examiner, writes to Sirleto that he has already written so
frequently in regard to this book that he is mortified to trouble him
further. He points out, however, that the Venetians are in a state of
irritation that the promised papal permission has not been secured, and
he asks for a decision in a matter that has already been held up for a
long period of months.
In 1547, occurred the first instance of a trial undertaken in Venice
by the Holy Office for offence committed through the printing-press.
The list is closed in 1730, with the trial of Giovanni Checcazzi. In
the 16th century, there were one hundred and thirty-two trials by the
Inquisition; in the 17th, fifty-five; in the 18th, but four. It is not
clear whether the diminished activity of the Inquisition during the
later years was due to the increasingly hostile attitude taken by the
Government of Venice towards the Church of Rome after 1596, or to the
fact that the vigour of the press prosecutions during the last half of
the 16th century had effectively stamped out the publication in Venice
of heretical and immoral publications.
[Sidenote: Venice and the Pope]
It is in connection with the Index of Pope Clement VIII and the
Concordat that the history of publishing in Venice comes for the first
time into touch with general history. The claim of the Church to the
control of all publishing undertakings soon became involved in the
larger question of the relations between Venice and Rome. Paolo Sarpi,
who became the champion of the cause of the independence of the State
against ecclesiastical domination, comes into the history of literature
as the upholder of the rights of authors and of publishers against the
crushing censorship of the Inquisition. The problem presented to the
Venetian Government was whether the Venetian press, supported in its
liberty by the Government, should continue to maintain its character as
one of the freest presses in Europe (and therefore one with the most
active production); or whether it should be permitted, for want of
the support of the Government, to fall under the repressive influence
of the Inquisition and the Index. As early as 1491, Franco, Bishop
of Treviso and Papal Legate, had issued a decree prohibiting any one
from printing in Venetian territory or from causing or permitting, to
be printed, any books treating of the Catholic faith or of matters
ecclesiastical without the express permission of the bishop or of the
vicar-general of the diocese. The Legate named at once two works,
Rosselli’s _Monarchia_ and Mirandola’s _Theses_, which were absolutely
prohibited, and all existing copies of which were to be burned in
the cathedral or in the parish churches within fifteen days from the
publication of the decree. There was no charge that these works were
in any way immoral or scandalous. They were condemned simply on the
ground of the unsoundness of their doctrine. The contention raised
in this order on behalf of the Church was far-reaching. If it were
heretical to discuss, in a sense at all hostile to the Curia, the
relative powers of the pope and the emperor, there would be an implied
right in the Church to censure and to condemn any political writings
in which reference was made to the authority of the pope or to the
responsibilities of the emperor. It became in fact the keystone of the
ecclesiastical position that in the case of the Church no separation
was possible between politics and ecclesiastical dogma. In July, 1693,
Paruta, the ambassador of Venice at the Vatican, submitted to the pope
a vigorous protest against the publication of the Clementine Index,
which was then in readiness. Paruta pointed out that the commercial
importance of the book-trade in Venice at that time exceeded that of
any city in Europe; that the book-trade was in itself deserving of
protection and consideration; that a sufficient censorship was already
exercised by the _imprimaturs_ of the Council of Ten, who utilised
among their examiners the inquisitor; that the publication of this
Index would destroy the property, and might cause the ruin, of many
who, believing themselves to be safe as long as they kept within the
regulations of the Council of Trent, had published books which were now
to be prohibited in the Clementine Index; that the new Index not only
made many additions to the lists of prohibited books, but proposed a
radical change in the standard of prohibition--a great number of books
were now, on the ground of some trivial expressions, to be condemned
although they were not at all concerned with ecclesiastical or
religious questions; that it was important for the Church to keep well
affected men of learning throughout the world and that such men would
certainly be very much troubled with any measures that interfered with
scholarly undertakings and the distribution of the world’s literature.
The arguments of Paruta and similar protests that came to Rome from
Germany and from Paris had the effect of convincing the pope that
some modification of his Index was necessary. The Index, as finally
published four years later, was very much altered and diminished. Among
the omissions from the first lists were the titles of the whole class
of non-religious books printed in Venice, in behalf of which Paruta
had spoken. In 1596, the printers and publishers of Venice again found
occasion to appeal to the Senate for support against the regulations
of the Clementine Index. They found that the works that remained
prohibited in the Clementine lists, in addition to those on previous
lists the prohibitions of which were still in force, included many
that had constituted an important staple in their trade and that this
trade, particularly for export, was suffering severely. The Clementine
regulations also undertook to take away from the Venetian printers the
right to print Bibles and missals and to restrict the printing of such
books to Rome. Negotiations between the Senate and the Papacy lasted
for some months but in the end the pope gave way on the more important
points complained of, and a declaration or Concordat was agreed upon
which lessened as far as Venice was concerned the stringency of the
most objectionable features of the Index. When this Concordat had been
signed, the Senate authorised the publication of the Index. The most
important clause in the Concordat was the seventh, which provided that
the right of the bishops and inquisitors to prohibit books not on the
present Index should refer only to books which attacked religion, or
which were printed outside of Venice, or which were issued with a
false imprint. This limitation of the ecclesiastical Inquisition to
purely religious or theological questions constituted a most valuable
precedent in the long fight between the Church and the secular
authorities for the control of the press. The Concordat was the last
arrangement arrived at until the year 1766 between Rome and Venice in
regard to the supervision of the press. During the century and a half
following the Concordat, the Venetian republic persistently refused to
authorise the publication within its territory of an augmented Index.
A list of later prohibitions was, however, finally accepted in 1766,
_juxta formam concordatorum_.
The most prominent figure in this long struggle between Venice and
the Papacy was Fra Paolo Sarpi. Cleric though he was, he contended
vigorously that the Church was embarking upon a wrong course, and he
held that the State was justified in resisting, in secular matters,
ecclesiastical encroachments upon the rights of the sovereign. The
fight made by Sarpi on behalf of the independence of the State, and
particularly of the right of the State to supervise and control
literary productions, was of first importance for the intellectual
activities of Europe. The arguments used in Venice were repeated in
Madrid, Paris, Zürich, and Oxford. Time was gained for authors and for
printers, until, largely by means of the presses which the Church was
endeavouring to throttle, the spirit of resistance to the domination
of the Papacy, and the feeling of national independence against the
right of Rome to lay down the law for Europe, had gathered so much
strength that the claims of the Church had to be withdrawn or very much
moderated.
In 1613, two books by the Englishman Thomas Preston, who wrote under
the name of Roger Widdrington, _Apologia Cardinalis Bellarmini_ and
_Disputatio Theologica_, were placed on the Index by the Congregation.
The Government of Venice, acting under the advice of Sarpi, refused
to allow the provision to take effect in Venice on the two grounds
that the theological doctrines taught by Widdrington were sound and
orthodox, and that his arguments against the pernicious doctrine of
the temporal authority of the pope over princes were eminently worthy
of dissemination.
There were also instances of books that were approved by the Church but
the publication of which was considered detrimental to the interests
of the State, and their sale in Venice was accordingly prohibited. An
example of this class was the _Recantation_ of the Archbishop
of Spalato, printed in Rome in 1623. The republic objected to the
contention of the Archbishop that the pope had power in things temporal
as well as in things spiritual. The republic also prohibited the
History of the Council of Trent, by Cardinal Pallavicini, written
in answer to the History by Sarpi, on the ground that the work
contained sentiments obnoxious to the Government of the republic.
In a report written to the Government by Sarpi, he takes the ground
that the course of action of the Church during the past few years had
produced a series of books whose doctrines were entirely subversive
of secular government. The writers taught that no government but the
ecclesiastical had the divine origin; that secular government is a
thing profane and tyrannical which God permits to be imposed upon his
people as a kind of trial or persecution; that the people are not
in conscience bound to obey the secular law or to pay taxes; that
the imposts and subventions are for the most part iniquitous and
unjust, and that the princes who impose these have in many cases been
excommunicated. In short, princes and rulers are held up to view as
impious and unjust; subjects may have to obey them perforce, but in
conscience they are free to do all that in them lies to break their
yoke. Sarpi emphasises the importance on the part of the republic in
retaining in their own hands the control of literary censorship.
He pointed out that unless the burden of papal censorship could be
lessened, literary production in Venice and elsewhere must cease. He
contended that in the correction of books which are open to censure,
it is not advisable to follow the practice of the Church of “raking
through the entrails of an author” and altering the sense and the
intention of a whole sentence so that the writer is made to say the
reverse of what he had desired to say; first, because all the world
stigmatises such action as falsification; secondly, because such
conduct would bring upon Venice the infamous charge of castrating
books; thirdly, because the court of Rome assumes for itself the sole
right to alter passages in books. He submitted ten propositions upon
which he recommended the Government to take action. The purpose aimed
at in these propositions was the retention in the hands of the State of
the final decision as to prohibition or expurgation, admitting that the
civil authorities could very properly utilise in matters of doctrine
the service of ecclesiastical censors. Sarpi insisted that in all
Venetian editions of the Index, the Concordat should itself be printed.
It was evident in the course of the controversy that Venice was,
ostensibly at least, as anxious as the Church could be for the purity
of the press. In fact, judging from the Indexes, this point had not
caused the Church any particular anxiety. The unsettled question was,
which authority should exercise the censorship over the offences of
libel, scandal, and obscenity--the Church or the State? It was the
opinion of Sarpi that all such books should be absolutely prohibited.
The risk, as emphasised by him, was that the Concordat might fall
into desuetude, leaving the Venetian press, deprived of the bulwark
which the State had secured for its defence, placed completely
under the control of the Inquisition. The future justified Sarpi’s
dread. The heat of the argument died away, and the Concordat was
substantially forgotten. The Inquisition secured full control of
the censorship. The press of Venice came under the influence of the
Index and the Rules. Its losses were greater than those of the other
presses that the Council of Trent had undertaken to regulate, for
the reason that it had so much more to lose. From the middle of the
17th century, the printing-press of Venice, though not destroyed,
ceases to hold pre-eminence in Europe. The last contest of Venice
with Rome occurred in August, 1765, when the Senate issued a decree
instructing the _Rifformatori_ to publish and to circulate the
Index of Clement and the Concordat, and providing further that the
_Rifformatori_ should appoint as an equal associate with the
inquisitor an ecclesiastic who should be a subject of Venice, and whose
_testamur_ as to matters of faith and doctrine should have equal
weight with that of the inquisitor.
A decree was at once issued by the papal court prohibiting the sale
or circulation of all books licensed by the newly appointed Venetian
officers and the nuncio demanded the withdrawal of the Venetian
decree. The issue between the republic and the Papacy turned simply
upon the selection of the authority that should decide what was
heretical or dangerous. The republic was prepared to make use of
ecclesiastical censors but insisted that these must be appointed by
the civil government. The Papacy, on the other hand, maintained that
the entire responsibility of keeping the faithful from poisonous
food had been entrusted to the Church. The Venetian decree of 1765
was never withdrawn and the place of inquisitor as censor of books
upon matters of faith was thereafter held by persons appointed by the
_Rifformatori_ of the university. As late as 1794, the commissioners
of heresy secured an opinion from these university censors upon the
_Institutiones Theologicae_ of De Montazet, Archbishop of Lyons, which
had been condemned at Rome in 1792. As a result of their report, the
Government refused to sanction the decree of the Congregation of the
Index. Such an instance can be accepted as an evidence that the press
of Venice had at last secured freedom from the censorship of Rome.
The revolutionary spirit which was agitating all Europe, and which in
France had for the time completely overthrown both Church and monarchy,
must have seriously weakened the control of the Papacy over the Italian
States, and doubtless exercised no little influence in this final
contest between the ecclesiastical censorship and the printing-press.
The Venetian press possessed a greater measure of freedom than had been
secured by the printer-publishers of any other Italian State and this
was an important factor in its long-continued pre-eminence. The general
course, however, of the legislation for the supervision of the press
was similar in character to that of the other Italian cities in which
attention was given to printing.
[Sidenote: Rome]
The city which undertook the task of at once purifying and revitalising
the literature of the Christian world, has itself been curiously barren
of literary producers. In examining the lists of the writers of Italy
whose names and whose works have survived through the centuries, one is
surprised to note how few are to be credited to Rome. It is Florence,
Venice, Bologna, Ferrara, Milan, and Naples that are recorded as the
birthplaces of the most illustrious of the writers of Italy, and it was
also largely in these smaller cities rather than in the capital that
their important work was carried on.
In artistic productions, the record of Rome is more important. There
was, during the 16th and 17th centuries, a Roman school of art that
had influence, while in Rome were produced many of the famous works by
artists who were natives of Tuscany, of Venice, or of other regions
outside of the States of the Church.
The vision of the cardinal’s hat or of the tiara must have had a
powerful effect in attracting to the papal capital the talent of
the Christian world, and particularly, of course, of Italy; but the
concentration of energies upon ecclesiastical aims and dignities may
easily have had a depressing and restricting influence on general
intellectual development, at least as expressed in literature or art.
Dejob suggests that the possession of the throne of St. Peter, held as
the chief wealth of the country, may possibly have brought intellectual
poverty to Italy as the mines of America had caused ruin to Spain.
It is the conclusion of Dejob that the crushing surveillance of
ecclesiasticism, in connection with the demoralising influences that
opulence had brought upon a society already corrupt, has been the chief
reason why the States of the Church produced fewer writers and artists
of note than are to be credited to the other Italian States; while the
Roman writers whose names are known, such as Leopardi and Caporali,
have in their work manifested an aversion rather than a patriotic
sympathy for the spirit of their home government.[98]
An examination of the list of the popes shows how seldom the choice has
fallen on any one not a native of Italy. Since Adrian VI, who died in
1523, no “foreigner” has been called to the headship of the “World’s
Church,” while of the forty-one popes who have ruled the Church since
Adrian, no less than twenty were born within the territory of the
States of the Church. Dejob (writing in the time of Pius IX) is willing
to ascribe greatness to but one pope since the 16th century, namely
Sixtus V.[99]
This impresses me as too sweepingly pessimistic, at least if we are
to consider the term greatness by the standard attained by the other
monarchs of Europe. I should suppose for instance that Benedict XIV
was entitled to a high relative position among the rulers of the 18th
century for wisdom and for capacity.
In 1561, Pius IV calls to Rome Paul Manutius, son of Aldus, to take
charge of the publication of the writings of the Fathers of the Church
and of such other works as might be selected. Pius was impressed with
the belief that the printing-press, under scholarly management, could
be made of service to the cause of the Church in withstanding the
pernicious influence of the increasing mass of the publications of the
German heretics. These Protestant pamphlets and books were not merely
undermining the authority of the Church in Germany, in Switzerland,
and in France, but were making their way into Italy itself. The first
issues of the Aldine press in Rome were the decrees of the Council of
Trent, the writings of Cyprian, and the letters of St. Jerome. The
press secured the continued support of Pius V and of Gregory XII.
Pius V, when he was Inquisitor of Como, had made one seizure of twelve
bales of books characterised by him as heretical, which had been sent
from the Valtelina to Como for distribution in Lombardy and Romagna.
The books were detained at the office of the Inquisition, but the
application for their release on the part of the bookseller to whom
they were consigned, being backed up by the vicar and the chapter, the
too zealous inquisitor was compelled to release the books, and escaped
only with difficulty payment of damages to the importer whose business
had been interfered with.[100] The same inquisitor, when stationed at
Bergamo, made seizure of two chests of prohibited books, which were in
the possession of a priest who was waiting for a favourable opportunity
for their distribution. The inquisitor reports that the priest had
become depraved by the reading of heretical literature.[101]
[Sidenote: Milan]
In 1614, the Milan guild of printers and booksellers secured a fresh
edict confirming its authority and enjoined, under heavy penalties,
strict obedience to its regulations. In the application for this
decree, the guild no longer lays stress upon the necessity of
upholding the dignity and honourable standard of the book-trade, but
emphasises the risk to the Church and to the community of believers
if permission to print or to sell books should be given to uneducated
and irresponsible persons who could not be familiar with the lists of
forbidden works. Experience had evidently made clear to the publishers
that with a government like that of Spain (which might be described as
a despotism tempered by the Inquisition) this class of considerations
would be more influential than any thought of upholding the dignity
of the business of making and selling books. The confirmation of
the authority of the guild under the direct control of ecclesiastics
representing the Spanish Inquisition, had the effect of checking its
business in publications outside of the classes of jurisprudence and
medicine. These subjects were naturally less affected by ecclesiastical
censorship.
[Sidenote: Discrimination in Censorship]
A factor to be taken into account in considering the selections of
books ordered to be condemned, was the patriotism of the Italian
clergy, in whose hands rested the control of the operations of the
Congregation. They were as unwilling to characterise as pernicious
noteworthy and representative books by Italian writers, as they
were to place any one but an Italian on the throne of St. Peter.
This partisan zeal for the literary glory of Italy must frequently
have seriously interfered with the aim of securing a consistent and
effective Index and have brought upon a conscientious pope not a little
embarrassment. An example of the difficulty experienced by Rome in
enforcing a consistent censorship in the face of Italian patriotism,
on the part of ecclesiastics, no less than of laymen, is afforded by
Dante and Petrarch. Of the former, was prohibited the _De Monarchia_,
but the _Divine Comedy_, with all its bitter strictures of things
ecclesiastical, escaped condemnation and even expurgation.
The _Canzoniere_ of Petrarch were also left untouched by Rome, although
the Inquisition of Spain had characterised them most severely in the
Indexes of 1612 and 1667. It was not until 1667 that the _Satires_ of
Ariosto were placed upon the Index, while the _Comedies_ of the same
poet were never condemned although in these the poet had assailed
fiercely the trade in indulgences, and had painted a vivid picture of
the traffic carried on by the capital of the Christian world with the
blood of the apostles and martyrs.
The example of independence set by Venice in its series of contests
with the Church for the freedom of the press had a natural influence in
other cities of Italy where conditions were favourable for publishing
activity. In Florence, Pisa, Ferrara, Milan, and other cities in
which scholarship had flourished during the manuscript period,
the productions of the printing-press became, during the 15th and
16th centuries, of increasing importance. This work was frequently
interfered with and sometimes seriously hampered by the censorship
regulations of Rome and by the operations of the local inquisitors,
but it was never entirely blocked even in any one city. The feeling of
State and municipal independence and the individuality of the people
were too strong to be crushed out by Roman edicts or by the threats
of the Inquisition. In Italy as in Germany, the fact that there was
not one government in the peninsula, but a number of independent
States, helped to secure for the work of the printers some degree of
opportunity, notwithstanding the censorship edicts of the Church and
the repressive measures of the State. The presses of the day were small
and in case of trouble in one city, they could easily be moved to
another.
An instance of a book the censorship of which caused no little
difficulty to the authorities of the Index is afforded by the
_Decameron_ of Boccaccio. The book had, under the instructions of
Paul IV, been placed upon the Index of 1559, and the prohibition was
confirmed in that of 1564. In response to an urgent requirement from
the public, an expurgated edition was printed for the needs of the
faithful by the Giunti in Florence in 1573, under a special privilege
from the Duke of Tuscany and from Gregory XIII, who himself contributed
a prefatory word. The volume includes further an authorisation from
Manrique, Grand Inquisitor, and one from de Pise, Inquisitor-General
of Florence. The introduction states that the work has been purged of
its obnoxious passages. It appears, however, that the eliminations were
confined almost exclusively to the passages which were tainted with
heresy, and to the uncomplimentary references to the clergy and to
monastic institutions. The amorous incidents are left untouched, but
in all cases in which a monk or a cleric, an abbess or a nun is made
by Boccaccio to play an undignified or unworthy rôle, the character is
replaced by a citizen, a nobleman, or a bourgeoise.
The edition of the _Decameron_, revised under the instructions
of Gregory XIII, did not prove satisfactory to Sixtus V, and the
book was therefore replaced on the Index. The demand for copies on
the part of readers, ecclesiastics and others, who were prepared to
respect the prohibition of the Index, continued urgent, and the Pope
authorised the production of a further expurgated edition, which was
printed in Florence in 1582 and reprinted in Venice in 1588. The task
of expurgation had been confided to two laymen, Salviati, known as a
linguist, and Groto, a poet. This further revision still failed to
satisfy the Pope and the book remained on the Index, but it continued
in general reading, and the authorities appear finally to have decided
to close their eyes to this particular instance of disobedience.
The record presents a curious example of a book the vitality of
which, persisting through the centuries, defied all efforts for its
suppression. It is referred to by the historians as the first _chef
d’oeuvre_ in prose that had as yet been produced in Italy, whose
literature was so rich in great poems.
[Sidenote: Papal Authorisation]
One would suppose that the authority of the head of the Church ought
to have been accepted in all cases as adequate to cover the permission
required for the printing and continued circulation of a book. It
appears, however, that from time to time even the papal authorisations
were disregarded or failed to receive continued consideration. Dejob
refers to a history of Bologna by Sigone, the publication of which was
suspended, owing to the malignancy of certain Bolognese, after the
approval had been secured from the examiners appointed by the pope.
Baronius, the defender of the most extreme claims for the supremacy of
the Papacy, secured for his monograph on Sixtus V the approbation of
the papal examiner and of the master of the palace. Notwithstanding
this approval, the printing of the book was blocked through some cabal
and the work was held up until Cardinal Caraffa intervened to secure
its publication.[102]
In the year 1600, was completed, in thirteen folio volumes, the
_Annales Ecclesiastici_ of Baronius, the most comprehensive work
which the controversies of the Protestant revolt had as yet produced.
The series was continued by various writers until, in the edition
issued at Lucca in 1738–1786, it had grown to thirty-eight folio
volumes, a work of which purchase was difficult and perusal impossible.
A reply to Baronius was undertaken by Casaubon, who published in
London in 1604 (as a fragment of the work originally planned) his
_Exercitationes_, a volume of eight hundred folio pages. For
the great work of Baronius, the authorities of the Church interested
themselves in securing through the Church machinery channels of
distribution and such reading public as was practicable considering its
compass and scholastic character.
The Roman idea of reforming and developing the intellectual life
of the State was to follow a policy of official supervision with
prohibitions and penalties. Ecclesiastical censors undertook to bring
authors under a system of religious and theological obligations, and
were willing to give their official approval only to works complying
with their standards. Certain writers accept with docility the
regulations imposed, but it is not those whose productions will live
or will retain influence. The books that have not conformed to the
ecclesiastical restrictions must be either reshaped or suppressed.
It is not under such conditions, says Dejob, that a great literature
can be produced.[103] And yet in spite of an ecclesiastical policy of
restriction and repression enforced, or at least attempted, through
centuries, the intellectual vitality of Italy was so great that it
proved impossible to crush out its independence of thought, or even
seriously to limit the expression of its spiritual and literary ideals.
A scholarly Catholic of France writing in 1883 says (in substance):
The peculiar conception, that from the earliest times Italy had formed,
of the Kingdom of God and of the way in which this Kingdom was to be
reached, the astounding freedom of spirit with which (during the middle
ages) it handled matters of dogma and of discipline, the serenity that
it was able to maintain in the face of the great mystery of life and
death, the marvellous way with which it brought into accord faith and
rationalism, its indifference for heresies and for the temerities of
its mystical imagination, the ardent affection with which it accepted
the highest ideals of Christianity, and finally, the indignation with
which from time to time it denounced the feebleness, the violence,
the corruption of the Church of Rome,--this is the religion of Italy,
the faith of Peter Damien, of Arnold of Brescia, of St. Francis,
of John of Parma, of St. Catherine of Siena, of Savonarola, and of
Ochino; but it was also the faith of Dante and of Petrarch, of Giotto,
of Fra Angelico, and of Raphael, of Vittoria Colonna and of Michael
Angelo.[104]
=4. Spain.=--In Spain as in Italy, the Church did not at once
realise the risks to orthodoxy that were to be associated with the
work of the printers. German printers coming to Spain as early as
1474 were received with favour and found opportunities for profitable
work. Even Hebrew printers were at the outset welcomed. Between the
years 1499–1510, Cardinal Ximenes (following in the footsteps of
Turrecremata) paid fifty thousand crowns for the production of a series
of classics. It was not until 1510 that the Church began, through the
organisation of its censorship, to hamper the work of the printers.
Pütter is authority for the statement[105] that for a term of two years
(1484–1486) Christopher Columbus served as a bookseller’s apprentice
and as a colporteur. An ecclesiastic named Bernaldes writes in 1487: “I
have recently seen a man named Christofero Colombo who comes from Genoa
and who is a dealer in printed books that he has brought to this city
(Cogolludo) from Andalusia.”
The destruction of books classed as pernicious appears to have been,
during the 15th century, within the province of any person of position
and influence.[106] In 1490, Torquemada burned, under order of
Ferdinand and Isabella, a number of Hebrew Bibles, and, later, he made
at Salamanca an _auto-da-fé_ of more than six thousand volumes
described as books of magic or as infected with Jewish errors. Ximenes,
while yet merely Archbishop, burned in the public square of Granada
no less than five thousand Arabic books, many of them splendidly
ornamented and illuminated. The only books spared from the collection
were those on the subject of medicine, which were deposited in the
University of Alcala.[107] In 1502, Ferdinand and Isabella enacted
an elaborate law, which is referred to as the first of the kind in
Europe, establishing a general censorship of the press. In this law,
were laid down the principles on which were based nearly all subsequent
enactments. To Spain thus belongs the honour of organising the system
which was to exercise an influence so incomputable on the development
of human intelligence.
“The Spanish people strove earnestly for the maintenance of the faith
but it understood by this not the reform of methods of life and the
correction of immorality, but the extirpation of heresy.”[108]
“The uncompromising character of the Spanish temperament, which pursued
its object regardless of consequences, saw at once what was elsewhere
only perceived by degrees, that any endeavours to set bounds to the
multiplying products of the press could be successful only under a
thorough system of minute surveillance.”[109] It was ordered that
no book should be printed or imported or exposed for sale without
examination and license. In some places, this duty was imposed upon
judges of the royal courts and in others on the archbishops or bishops.
The examiners, men of good repute and learning, were to be appointed
by these authorities and were to be adequately paid for their work.
After a work in manuscript had been licensed for printing, the printed
sheets were to be carefully compared with the original to insure that
no alteration had been made on the press. Any book printed or imported
or offered for sale without such license was to be seized and burned
and the printer or vendor was declared incapable of longer carrying on
the business.[110] In this first enactment, no reference is made to
the Inquisition as having any concern either with the investigation
of books for heresies or with the punishment of delinquents; but
the Inquisition had not long to wait before its jurisdiction over
literature was established on an impregnable basis.
After the beginning of the Reformation in Germany, the operations of
the censorship in Spain were carried on with renewed vigour. Special
efforts were naturally made to protect the faithful in Spain from
contamination through the importation of heretical books from Germany.
A letter of June 25, 1524, written by Martin de Salinas, mentions
that a ship from Holland bound for Valencia had been captured by
the French and then recaptured and brought into San Sebastian. In
discharging the vessel, there were found two casks of Lutheran books
which were publicly burned. Salinas writes, some months later, that
three Venetian galleasses had arrived at a port in Granada, bringing
large quantities of Lutheran books. The books were burned and the
captains and crews arrested. An edict of the Supreme Council of the
Inquisition, issued in August, 1530, urged the inquisitors to increased
vigilance in connection particularly with the destruction of certain
Lutheran writings that had been introduced under false titles or under
the names of Catholic authors. The inquisitors were ordered to add to
the Edict of Denunciations, published annually, a clause requiring the
denunciation of all who possessed such books or of all who had read
them.[111] In spite of the watchfulness of the inquisitors and of the
customs officials, it is reported that, in 1570, no less than thirty
thousand copies of a Spanish version of the _Institutes_ of Calvin
were brought over the frontier.[112]
It is the conclusion of Ticknor that by the end of the 16th century,
bookselling in Spain, in the sense in which the term was used elsewhere
in the world, was practically unknown, and the Inquisition and the
confessional had often made most rare what was most desirable. In
March, 1521, papal briefs were sent to Spain, warning the Spanish
Government to prevent the further introduction of books written by
Luther and his followers, copies of which had, it was believed, been
penetrating into the country for about a year. These papal briefs
were addressed to the civil administration, which still, in form at
least, retained in its own hands the control of such matters. It was,
however, more natural and more in accordance with the ideas then
prevalent, not only in Spain but in other countries, to look to the
ecclesiastical power for remedies in a matter connected with religion.
This was certainly the attitude of the great body of the Spanish
people. In less than a month (as is evident from the date of the briefs
in question) and possibly even before these briefs were received in
Spain, the grand inquisitor addressed an order to the tribunals under
his jurisdiction, requiring them to search for, and to seize, all books
supposed to contain the doctrines of the new heresy. The measure was
bold and proved successful.
In the meantime, the Supreme Council of the Inquisition proceeded with
this work with a firm and consistent step. By successive decrees issued
between 1521 and 1553, it was ordained that all persons who had in
their possession books infected with the doctrines of Luther, and all
persons also who failed to denounce the holders of such books, should
be excommunicated and subject to severe punishments. These decrees
gave to the Inquisition the right to inquire into the contents and the
character of whatever books were sold and printed. They also relegated
to itself the power to determine what books might be sent to the
press. This assumption was made gradually and with little noise, but
effectually.
While at first there was no direct authority for such action from
either the pope or the Kingdom of Spain, it necessarily implied the
assent of both, and was carried into effect by means furnished by one
or the other. In certain works printed before 1550, the Inquisition
began quietly and without any formal authority to take cognisance and
control of books that were about to be printed. A curious treatise
on exchange, by de Villalon, entitled _Tratado de Cambios_, was
printed at Valladolid in 1541. The title-page declared that the book
had been “_Visto por los señores Inquisidores_.” In the _Silva
de Varia Leccion_, of Pero, printed at Seville, in 1543, the title
gives the imperial license for printing, while the colophon adds that
of the Apostolical inquisitor. The author was evidently anxious to
secure, in addition to a permission resting on law, one which rested on
the still more formidable authority of the Church.
A system which should effectually preserve the faithful from the
contamination of evil by keeping from them the knowledge of its
existence comprised two functions; the first was the examination of all
books prior to publication, permitting only the innocent to be printed;
the second was the scrutiny of the books that had come from the press
and the condemnation or expurgation of those containing errors which
had escaped the vigilance of the first examiners. Under the rigid
institution of censorship in Spain, the first of these duties was
assumed by the State and the second was confided to the Inquisition.
The first law in regard to Spanish censorship was enacted in 1502 and
forbade the printing or importation of any book without an examination
and license. The chancellor Gattinara, writing in 1527 to Erasmus,
says that in Spain no book could see the light without a careful
preliminary inspection which was rigidly enforced. This statement is
confirmed in 1540 by Hugo de Celso. The Inquisition had no legal status
in the matter of preliminary licensing, but its growing influence
caused its judgment to be frequently appealed to in advance. Ticknor
makes reference to books of 1536, 1541, and 1546 as bearing records of
examination by the Inquisition.
In 1554, an edict of Charles V confines to the royal council the
function of issuing licenses for the printing of books of all
descriptions. In the case of works of importance, the original
manuscript was to be deposited with the council to ensure detection
of any alterations made while the book was going through the press.
In 1558, it is ordered under royal edict that no bookseller or other
person shall sell or possess any books printed or to be printed which
have been condemned by the Inquisition and that such books should be
publicly burned. The penalty is death and confiscation of all property.
The same penalties apply to the importing of any books in Romance which
do not bear a printed license from the council. A later regulation
specifies that, in order to prevent any alterations in the printing,
the original manuscript shall be signed on every leaf by a secretary
of the royal chamber, who shall mark and rubricate every correction or
alteration in it and shall state at the end the number of leaves and
of alterations. When the printing has been completed, these corrected
leaves are to be compared with the printed sheets. The infection of
heresy could be communicated by manuscript, and therefore the penalty
of death and confiscation is decreed for all who own or show to others
manuscripts on any religious subject without first submitting these to
the council.[113] Lea goes on to say: “I am not aware that any human
being was actually put to death for violating its provisions, unless
the offence was complicated with heresy express or implied, but such
violation remained to the end a capital crime. The only modification
of this ferocious penalty occurs in a revision of the press law in
1752.”[114] It is not surprising that under restrictions of this
character, the work of the Spanish printer-publishers during the 16th
century was seriously hampered. As an example of the enforcement of
the regulations of the Valdes Index of 1559, may be named the case of
a French priest named Jean Fesque. He had handed to a bookseller named
Trechel a volume without imprint, asking Trechel if he could say where
it was printed. The book belonged to the condemned list, being a French
version of the Psalms of David, translated by Marot and Bèza. Fesque
stated that he had purchased the book from a boy in the street without
knowledge of its character. He was brought before the Inquisition, and
after five months’ imprisonment and various examinations, he was put to
the torture but was unable to give further evidence as to the history
of the book. He was finally released after six months’ incarceration,
seriously disabled by the torture.[115]
The machinery of the Inquisition was effective even in the farther
parts of the empire. In 1795, a priest in the settlement of Hopelcheen
in Yucatan published a prohibition of the Inquisition warning his
congregation not to read a certain book which had been described by
the Inquisition as dangerous and to surrender at once all copies in
their possession. The book was entitled _Disengaño del Hombre_, by
Puglia, and bore the imprint (possibly fictitious) of Philadelphia. The
congregation of Indians and half-breeds was hardly likely to have had
knowledge of the book or to have been able to read it even if copies
had reached Hopelcheen.[116]
_The Index expurgatorius_ in its literal sense may be described
as peculiarly a Spanish institution. In the Roman series, there is
record of the publication of but one expurgatory Index, that of
Brasichelli, and this was never republished and was in fact promptly
recalled by the authorities. The inquisitors of Spain took upon
themselves the task of preserving the faithful from contamination, and
the successive expurgatory Indexes give evidence of the enormous labour
expended by the examiners in the correction of the text of books which
they were not prepared absolutely to prohibit, but the circulation of
which they were ready to permit if the heresies could be expunged or
corrected. The Roman prohibitory Index contained against many works
the restriction _donec corrigatur_. This indicated that the book
when corrected was to be permitted; the objectionable passages were,
however, not specified, although the author could ascertain these on
application. As an actual result, it was very rarely the case that it
proved practicable to bring into publication an edition in which the
corrections in question, having been ascertained from the authorities,
could be made. The Spanish censors took credit to themselves for their
liberality in securing the use of heretical works of value through the
expurgation of the offensive passages. It is true that, under this
system, permission was given for the production of the writings of
authors like Erasmus, Casaubon, Bertram, and others who were absolutely
prohibited in Rome. It does not appear, however, that as far as the
publishers of Spain were concerned, this permission brought about
for the greater portion of the books in question the production of
corrected editions. It is in fact easy to understand how the heavy
loss that must be incurred through the suppression of the original
edition would have discouraged both author and printer from the task
of risking a further investment in a second edition which might itself
in like manner be prohibited until again revised. It may safely be
concluded that the restricted prohibition in Spain had as far as the
production and distribution of books were concerned practically the
same result as the absolute prohibition in Rome. In fact, in Spain,
the result was more effective simply because the regulations of the
Spanish Inquisition were enforced, while for the similar orders of
the Inquisition of Rome or of the Congregation of the Index, the
enforcement throughout the States of Italy or outside of Italy was but
vacillating and fragmentary. An example of the watchfulness of the
Spanish examiners is given in the expurgation of a passage from the
Second Part of _Don Quixote_. But a single sentence is cancelled.
It reads: “Works of charity negligently performed are of no worth.”
In the _Divine Comedy_ of Dante, the censors found but three
passages for excision. Lea points out that for this work at least the
examination can hardly be described as thorough.[117] In 1790, the
history of the monastery of Sixena, by Varon, which had been published
with the approval of the royal examiners in 1776, was prohibited until
the following sentence had been expurgated: “When Philip the Second
was despoiling the world to enrich his monastery of the Escorial.”
The Inquisition of Spain even assumed for itself the authority to
revise and correct the utterances of the popes. The State utilised the
censorship of the Inquisition not only for matters theological but for
the suppression of writings that were purely political. Instructions
of Clement VIII were accepted as the authority for the expurgation
of teachings that were derogatory to princes and to ecclesiastics and
contrary to good morals. In 1612, for instance, the works of Antonio
Perez were placed on the Index because they were critical of Philip
II.[118] In 1640, the Inquisition suppressed a manifesto addressed by
the authorities of Barcelona to Philip IV, and, in 1642, it prohibited
a further manifesto in which the Catalans accused the favourite,
Olivares, of causing the misfortunes of Spain. In 1643, on the other
hand, after the dismissal of Olivares, the Inquisition prohibited a
pamphlet which had been issued in his defence.
[Sidenote: Book-trade and the Inquisition]