stationed at all the ports with instructions to seize all books by
new authors and all new and enlarged editions of new books as they
arrived and to allow no one to handle these until they had been
inspected by representatives of the supreme council. Prohibited
books were detained and burned. The regulations of the Inquisition
had at this time rendered very difficult the carrying on of the
printing and publishing business in Spain, with the result of very
much decreasing the annual production of books. The requirements
of scholars and readers could therefore be met only through the
importation of books produced in France, Italy, or the Netherlands.
The necessity, however, of securing for imported books, in addition
to the inspection (onerous enough in itself) on the part of customs
officials, an examination, volume by volume, by the representatives
of the Inquisition, brought such serious burdens, expenses, and risks
upon the business of the importers as to render this unprofitable.
It is certainly the case that the circulation of books in Spain
during the 17th century became very inconsiderable. An order issued
in 1597 gives evidence of some consideration for the property of
foreigners. When heretics came to trade, bringing books for their own
use, the commissioner was instructed to examine these and to mark
conspicuously and indelibly such as belonged to the prohibited list,
so that they could be recognised by the faithful. The owners were
warned, under heavy penalties, not to bring such books to the shore.
In 1631, it was directed that “ships of England should be treated with
gentleness so as not to cause offence.”[119] The instructions for the
examination of vessels, whether Spanish or foreign, to guard against
the introduction not only of prohibited books but of heretics, and to
punish any infractions of the faith that might during the voyage have
been committed either by the crew or passengers, were very precise and
exacting.
Under the fourth article of these instructions, a report is to be given
as to what Christian doctrine and prayers of the Church have been
recited at sea and what saints have been advocated and invoked in their
necessities and perils. Under article six, it is ordered that all boxes
and chests of the sailors and passengers were to be opened for evidence
of heresy.
Henry C. Lea, in a letter to the writer (under date of October 31,
1898) in regard to the effect of censorship on the literary interests
of Spain, says:
“I was chiefly interested in tracing the influence of censorship
on the intellectual and political development of Spain, but in
many instances a side light is thrown upon the resultant injury
to the commercial interests involved,--as for instance the ruin
of Portonares, the greatest Spanish printer, as a result of the
censorship (_i. e._ the condemnation of the Vatable Bible.)
The business of bookselling was in fact crippled in every way.
I have met with one case in which a bookseller humbly petitions
the Inquisition to come to a decision in regard to certain books
which he had imported and which had been in the hands of the
_Calificadores_ (examiners) for four years.
“The _prima facies_ was against all books; their innocence
had to be proved before their circulation could be allowed
and even after this they were still liable at any time to an
adverse judgment. Under these circumstances, commerce in books
was necessarily crippled and the diffusion of intelligence was
reduced to a minimum.”
The books that were published during the 16th century, and indeed for
a century later, bore everywhere marks of the subjection to which the
press and those who wrote for the press were alike reduced. From the
abject title-pages and dedications of the authors themselves through
the series of certificates collected from their friends to establish
the orthodoxy of works that were often as little connected with
religion as fairy tales, down to the colophon supplicating pardon for
any unconscious neglect of the authority of the Church or for any too
free use of classical mythology, we are continually impressed with
painful proofs, not only how completely the human mind was enslaved in
Spain, but how grievously it had become cramped and crippled by what
it had so long borne.[120] Of the few dramatic pieces written in the
earlier part of the reign of Charles V, nearly all except those on
strictly religious subjects were laid under the ban of the Church;
several in fact being now known to have existed only because their
names appear in the _Index expurgatorius_; and others, like the
_Amadis de Gaula_ of Gil Vicente, though printed and published,
being subsequently forbidden to be represented.[121]
Ticknor writes (with reference to the trial of Luis de Leon, in
December, 1576):
“The very loyalty with which Luis bowed himself down before the
dark and unrelenting tribunal into whose presence he had been
summoned, sincerely acknowledging its right to all the powers
it claimed, and submitting faithfully to all its decrees, is
the saddest proof that can be given of the subjection to which
intellects the most lofty and the most cultivated had been
reduced by sinful tyranny, and the most discouraging augury
of the degradation of the national character that was sure to
follow.”[122]
In 1676, was born Benito Feyjoo, who later became a Benedictine
monk. While his life was spent in strict retirement (for forty-seven
years he remained in the convent at Oviedo), the activity of his
thought made him a fire in the community. He wrote a series of papers
published, in 1726, under the title of the _Critical Theatre_.
In these, he openly attacked the dialectics and metaphysics then
taught everywhere in Spain. Few persons at the beginning of the 18th
century were so well informed as not to believe in astrology, and fewer
still doubted the disastrous influence of comets and of eclipses. The
study of Copernicus was forbidden to be taught on the ground that
it was contrary to Scripture. The philosophy of Bacon, with all the
consequences that followed it, were unknown. In spite of the opposition
of the Inquisition, before which Feyjoo was more than once summoned,
it proved to be impracticable to suppress his investigations or his
publications. In 1742, he began a series of discussions published under
the title _Learned and Enquiring Souls_. The series was finished
in 1760. It was impossible for the Inquisition to assail the soundness
of his faith. Fifteen editions of his principal works were printed in
half a century. It is the conclusion of Ticknor that the quiet monk had
done more for the intellectual life of his country than had been done
in a century.[123]
Ticknor calculates that the number of _auto-da-fés_ during the
reign of Philip V exceeded seven hundred and eighty. It is believed
that more than twelve thousand persons were, in different ways,
subjected, under the authority of the Inquisition, to be punished and
disgraced and that more than one thousand were burned alive. Charles
III, with the assistance of his liberal ministers, was able so far to
abridge the papal power that no rescript or edict from Rome could have
force in Spain without the express consent of the throne. He restrained
the Inquisition from exercising any authority whatever except in
cases of obstinate heresy or apostacy. He forbade the condemnation
of any book until its author or those interested in it had had an
opportunity to be heard in its defence. Finally, deeming the Jesuits
the most active opponents of the reforms he was intending to enforce,
he expelled their whole body from his dominions all over the world,
breaking up their schools and confiscating their great revenues.
Certain abuses were, however, beyond his reach. When he appealed to the
universities, urging them to change their ancient habits and to teach
the truths of the physical and exact sciences, Salamanca answered
in 1771: “Newton teaches nothing that would make a good logician
or metaphysician and Gassendi and Descartes do not agree so well
with revealed truth as does Aristotle.”[124] The other universities
showed little more of the spirit of advancement. Under Charles IV, in
1805, the Inquisition, grown forcible in the hands of the Government
as a political machine but still renouncing none of its religious
pretensions, came forth with its last _Index expurgatorius_ to
meet the invasion of French philosophy and insubordination. Acting
under express instructions from the powers of the State, it instituted
against men of letters, and especially against those connected with the
universities, an immense number of denunciations which, though rarely
prosecuted to conviction and to punishment, were still formidable
enough to prevent the public expression of opinions on any subject that
could endanger the social condition of the individual who ventured to
entertain them.
[Sidenote: University of Paris]
=5. France.=--Duke Philip Augustus in an edict issued in 1200,
confirmed by St. Louis in 1229 and by Philip the Fair in 1302,
directed that the cases of university members be brought before the
Bishop of Paris. The university found disadvantages in being under the
jurisdiction of the bishop (whose censorship later proved particularly
troublesome for the publishers) and applications were made to replace
the authority of the ecclesiastical courts with that of the royal
courts. In 1334, letters patent of Philip of Valois directed the
Provost of Paris, who was at that time considered as the _conservateur_
of the royal privileges, to take the university under his special
protection, and in 1341, the members of the university were forbidden
to enter proceedings before any other authority. This action brought
the control of literary production in the university directly under the
authority of the Crown and constituted a precedent for the contention,
maintained through the 15th and 16th centuries, for the direct control
by the Crown of the printing-presses. The claim on the part of the
university, however, to control as a portion of the work of higher
education the business of the makers and the sellers of books, while
sharply attacked and materially undermined during the 17th century,
was not formally abandoned until the beginning of the 18th. At this
time, the Crown took to itself all authority to regulate the press, an
authority which terminated only with the Revolution of 1789.
[Sidenote: Paris]
The first printing-office in France was established in 1469 by Gering,
Krantz, and Friburger from Constance. At the request of two of the
divines of the Sorbonne, space was given for the printing-office in
one of the halls of the college. An edict of Louis XII, issued April
9, 1513, confirms and extends the privileges previously acquired by
booksellers as officials of the university. In this edict, Louis speaks
with appreciation and admiration of the printing art, “the discovery
of which appears to be rather divine than human.” He congratulates his
kingdom that in the development of this art “France takes precedence
of all other realms.”[125] A year later, the King places on record his
opinion that dramatic productions and representations should be left
free from any restrictions. In 1512, the King writes to the university
requesting the theological faculty to examine a book that had been
condemned as heretical by the Council of Pisa. In place, however, of
demanding that measures of severity should be taken against the writer,
the King proposed that the professors should go over the book chapter
by chapter and should present a refutation of any of its conclusions
that seemed to them to be contrary to the truth. It was hardly possible
that so fair a spirit of toleration should long continue. The spirit
of the time was stronger than the power of any one king and it was
impossible in the 16th century that the Church and the State could
permit the free development and the unrestricted expression of thought.
In 1500, the publisher Badius, who had been selected by the theological
faculty for printing certain of its censorial works, issued an edition
of the _Regula S. Benedicti_, the famous Rule which had exercised
so important and so abiding an influence on the literature and the
intellectual development of Europe. The leading publisher in Paris
between the years 1496 and 1520 was Henry Estienne. The so-called
heretical opinions of Estienne rendered him obnoxious to the doctors
of the Sorbonne and if it had not been for the special interference
of Francis I, by whom his learning and his merits were held in high
esteem, his life would more than once have been in jeopardy. His
opponents succeeded, however, in procuring his expulsion from the
university, and, driven from Paris, he was compelled to seek the
protection of the Queen of Navarre. The case is one of a long series of
instances in which the liberal views and scholarly interests of King
Francis brought him into conflict with the doctors of the Sorbonne.
In the end, however, the theological faculty, backed by the majority
of the ecclesiastics of France and by the influence of the Papacy,
proved too strong for the liberal tendencies of the Crown. With the
triumph of Catholic orthodoxy in France, the leading publishers and
their scholarly editors found so many difficulties placed in the way
of their undertakings that these could no longer be carried on to
advantage in Paris. The chief trouble was due to the ignorance and
suspiciousness of the doctors of the Sorbonne. These doctors possessed
at this period little or no knowledge of Greek and were inclined to
imagine that any Greek sentence must contain or might contain some
dangerous heresy.[126] Any critical analysis of Latin texts which, in
some earlier, and usually imperfect or defective, form, had received
the approval of the Church, also seemed to the divines likely to
prove dangerous, and in any case, constituted a reflection upon the
orthodox scholarship of the previously accepted versions. Their
apprehensions became most keen and their indignation most active when
the “new criticism” (as they probably called it) was applied to the
text of the Scriptures, whether for the purpose of correcting the
early clumsy Latinised versions of the New Testament or of securing
more accurate rendering of the texts of the Hebrew books. During the
first half-century of printing, however, the production of editions of
the Scriptures constituted the most important division of publishing
undertakings. It is not surprising, therefore, that the printers who
were giving their time and their capital to the preparation of these
editions, and who found themselves hampered and harassed by ignorant
and bigoted censorship, came to the conclusion that the advantages of
Paris as a literary and commercial centre were not sufficient to offset
the continued difficulties and annoyances of such antagonism.
By 1540, the ecclesiastical control of the printing-press (exercised
through the authority of the university) had become an established and
an obstructive fact. A necessary result of the antagonism of the Church
to critical scholarship was to drive into the ranks of sympathisers
with the reformers, if not into Protestantism itself, very many of the
scholars who at the outset were not reformers and who were not keenly
interested in the theological issues of the period, but who felt a
natural indignation at the reiterated interference with scholarly
undertakings on the part of very ignorant men. The scholars engaged in
preparing for the public critical editions of the world’s literature
asked to be let alone, but they asked in vain.
In 1546, the doctors of the Sorbonne secured the insertion in the
prohibitory Index of Louvain of the edition of the Bible that had
just been printed by Robert Estienne; but later in the same year,
the King prohibited the printing or the circulation in France of the
Index of Louvain. The King also issued a brief ordering the divines to
withdraw their strictures upon the Estienne Bible. With the death of
the King in 1547, the prohibition of the Bible was, however, renewed.
In 1552, Estienne, deprived of the protection of King Francis, is
finally compelled to close his printing office and to remove to Geneva.
Estienne did not, however, find Protestant Geneva a place of liberal
toleration. The year after his arrival, he witnessed the burning, under
the authority of Calvin, of the heretical scholar Servetus, and more
than once during the later years of his work in Geneva, the Estienne
publications came under the condemnation of the Calvinistic censorship.
Henry Estienne (the second) completed, in 1562, the publication of
certain theological works which had been left unfinished in Geneva at
the time of his father’s death. Among these, were an Exposition of the
New Testament and an Exposition of the Psalms. The editor, a certain
Marloratus, a Huguenot minister at Rouen, was unfortunately, before
the printing was completed, hanged as a heretic, under the direction
of the Duke of Guise, but the books themselves were not suppressed
nor was the publisher interfered with. The faculty of the Sorbonne
appears for the time to have suspended its censorious watchfulness over
heretical publications, perhaps because it found its hands sufficiently
full with the active work of suppressing, by fire, gibbet, and sword,
the heretics themselves. Henry found it later, however, good policy
to divide his publishing undertakings, executing at Paris reprints of
the classics and works in general literature, and reserving for his
press at Geneva theological works which were likely to give offence
in a period of “religious irritation.” This term is, I may mention,
Maittaire’s, and it is perhaps not too strong a description of a period
in which a divine who had taken no part in politics could be hanged
simply for editing a Protestant commentary.
[Sidenote: Geneva]
In 1589, the city of Geneva was being besieged by the Duke of Savoy.
The city contained at the time a population of about 12,000 and was
able to muster for its defence 2186 men capable of bearing arms.
Against this little force, the Duke brought up an army of 18,000
regular troops with the determination of destroying once for all this
“nest of heretics.” The destruction of the city was earnestly urged
by St. Francis de Sales. The schools and the printing-presses were
particularly pointed out by St. Francis as instruments of mischief.
The powers that determine events were this time not in accord with the
saint. The city survived a siege lasting for nine years, although at
its close it had lost out of its little levy nearly three fourths.
Casaubon tells us that in his time (he is writing in 1595) the
ministers of Geneva exercised a strict surveillance over both the work
of teaching and that of publishing. A professor in the academy was not
permitted to publish until his book had passed through the censorship
of the divines. It seems probable that the Calvinistic scrutiny in
Geneva, during the last ten years of the 16th century, may easily have
proved in its narrowness and persistency a more serious obstacle in the
way of publishing undertakings and of scholarship than the censorship
of the Catholic theologians of Paris.
Casaubon secured, in 1600, at the instance of his friend De Vic,
appointment as Keeper of the Royal Library. This library contained at
the time about nine hundred works, a large proportion of which were in
manuscript. The collection of Greek manuscripts was said to be second
only to that of the Vatican.[127] The new librarian found favour with
the King although Henry IV was by no means a scholar. Scaliger says of
him that he could not keep his countenance and could not read a book.
The great minister Sully was, however, critical of any expenditure for
literature. “You cost the King too much, sir,” said Sully to Casaubon;
“your pay exceeds that of two good captains, and you are of no use to
the country.”[128]
A letter from the papal nuncio at Paris, written in 1562 to Pius IV,
makes reference to a statement made to the nuncio by Monsieur de
Bourbon, to the effect that a few days earlier he had confiscated
from a vessel a quantity of heretical books “of the most distressing
character that can be conceived.” These books were packed in wine casks
and had been sent from Geneva. He had consigned them to the flames. No
reference is made to the importer.[129]
Sacchino, historian of the Jesuits, writing in 1526, refers to the
heretical city of Geneva as responsible for the introduction into
Lyons of _vim infinitam librorum pestiferorum_ (“a great mass of
pestiferous literature,”) prepared for circulation not only in France
but in Constantinople. He states further, however, that owing to the
efforts of the zealous Possevinus, the books were seized and burned
(_Ut pestilentium illa farrago voluminum flammis aboliretur_).[130]
The interest of Francis in scholarship and the influence of Budaeus and
other scholars led him to approve the scheme for a Royal College to
be devoted more particularly to instruction in the ancient languages.
The authorities of the university were, with hardly an exception,
bitterly opposed to the plan of the new college. The argument on the
part of the university was presented before the Parliament of Paris
by Galliard. He urged that “to propagate the knowledge of the Greek
and Hebrew languages would operate to the absolute destruction of all
religion.” “Were these professors theologians,” he asked, “that they
should pretend to explain the Bible? Were not, indeed, the very Bibles
of which they made use, in large part printed in Germany, the region of
heresy? Or at least were they not indebted for them to the Jews?” The
rejoinder on the part of the new professors was made through Marillac.
“We make no pretensions,” said the professors, “to the name or the
function of theologians. It is as philologists or grammarians only
that we undertake to explain the Greek and Hebrew Scriptures. If you,
who are criticising our teachings, possess any knowledge of Greek or
Hebrew, you are at liberty to attend our lectures and, if you find any
heresy in our instruction, to denounce us. If, however, you are yet
ignorant of Greek and Hebrew, on what grounds can you base your fitness
as censors or your claims to forbid us to teach in these tongues?” The
victory rested with the scholars and the Collège Royal maintained its
ground and increased in influence and importance.[131] Maittaire quotes
in this connection the testimony of Heresbach, who says that, in 1540,
he heard in a sermon delivered in Paris the following statement: “A
new language has been discovered which they call Greek. Against this
you must be carefully on your guard for it is the infant tongue of
all heresies. There is a book written in that language called the New
Testament. It is _un livre plein de ronces et de vipères_. As to
the Hebrew tongue, it is well known that all who learn it presently
become Jews.”
In 1685, a royal edict was issued by Louis XIV, ordering the
destruction of all heretical books and the punishment of those who
should retain copies of the same. As a result of the edict, the
Parliament of Paris issued a decree appointing the Archbishop of
Paris to prepare an _Index prohibitorius_ of books which in his
judgment ought to be suppressed, an instruction which was carried out
with all promptness. The list of the archbishop comprised the names
of about five hundred authors. The books condemned were those of the
Lutherans, Socinians, Arminians, and Greeks. Included with these
were all versions of the Scriptures. The Parliament published at once
a decree enforcing the prohibition and commanding a strict search to
be made for such books in the bookshops and printeries and also in
private houses. Many books were burned, including a large number of
copies of the Scriptures. The protection, or toleration, heretofore, in
form at least, extended to Protestants was during the same year, 1685,
withdrawn by the Edict of Fontainebleau, repealing the Edict of Nantes.
[Sidenote: Lyons]
The printers of Lyons succeeded in building up, within a very few
years after the introduction of printing into France, a profitable
business. They had the advantage of being well out of the way of both
ecclesiastical and political censorship. They were quite prepared to
take up promptly editions of books which had been prohibited in Paris
and in Rome, or later in Geneva. They were also among the earliest to
develop the art of what may be called piratical printing. The great
expense of the production of earlier editions, more particularly of
the classics, was the outlay for scholarly editing. The printers of
Lyons promptly discovered that they could make money by utilising the
expenditures of Aldus in Venice, or of the scholarly printers in Paris,
through the appropriation of editorial material. They brought out
editions printed with the text that had been shaped in Venice and in
some cases in direct imitation of the typography of these first and so
to speak authorised editions. By the year 1495, there were no less than
forty printers doing active work in Lyons, a number considerably in
excess of those who were then carrying on business in Paris.
* * * * *
In 1526, the university of Paris had authorised the printing of
certain dissertations written by the rector Noël Béda against Fabri and
Erasmus. King Francis wrote to the Parliament directing it to cause the
sale of these books to be prohibited. He added the general instruction
that no books, even such as might have been written by members of
the university, were to be printed or sold which had not first been
examined and approved by the members of the court deliberating
together. It would appear from the King’s letter that he had sufficient
sympathy with the reformers to be unwilling to have Erasmus attacked,
and also that even in matters of theological doctrine, the final
decision was entrusted, not to the faculty of theology, but to the
court of Parliament. By 1531, however, the King had decided that, for
theological questions at least, the responsibility for the control of
literary production had better be left with the Sorbonne. In this year
he gave a direct royal authorisation to the publisher Badius for the
printing of the big treatise of Alberto Pio against Erasmus, which
treatise had been duly approved by the divines. The fury of civil war
and the bitterness of religious dissension gave a special character to
the laws affecting printing and publishing and to the enforcement of
these. In 1545, Etienne Polliot was sentenced for importing and selling
heretical books. He was compelled to carry a bundle of his publications
to the market-place, where he and his books were burned together. In
1546, the publisher Etienne Dolet, himself the author of a number of
books, was burned in the Place Maubert, for his obstinate persistence
in heresy. The ordinances of 1557 and 1560 punished with death, as
guilty of treason, the printers, authors, sellers, and distributors
of books which had been condemned as pernicious or libellous. The
letters patent of 1563 fixed the penalty of hanging or strangling
for the offence of printing a book without a royal authorisation. The
ordinance of Moulins, of 1566, renews the same prohibition. Vitet[132]
points out that the wars of the League had influence in securing a
certain freedom for publishing. The government of the League did not
undertake to free from restrictions the printing-presses of Paris. It
prohibited them, however, only from such undertakings as seemed likely
to prove of service to the enemies of the League. On the other hand,
there was at Tours a government which was hostile only to such writings
as were not royalist, and at Geneva another government the censures of
which affected only that literature which was not Protestant. Through
these three limited censures came into existence three fragments of
publishing freedom. The power of the printing-press in influencing
public opinion may, as far as France is concerned, be said to date
from this period. Under the provisions of the Edict of Nantes, which
bears date 1598, the production and sale of Protestant books were
restricted to certain specified States and districts in which the
public exercise of said religion was authorised. These Protestant
books, while permitted to exist, are, however, classified as “libels
and as inflammatory writings.” It does not appear that any provision
was made for the circulation of such publications between the cities in
which they were permitted to be printed, as such circulation must, of
course, have taken them across the “good Catholic” territory, within
the boundaries of which the Protestant books were incendiary libels.
The difficulties in the way of authors and publishers of such books
must, therefore, at this time have been very considerable. In 1624,
four royal censors were instituted by letters patent. The first four
were all doctors of the theological faculty, but notwithstanding this
selection of the board from the members of the Sorbonne, the university
was dissatisfied with losing its ancient privileges of controlling
directly the examination of religious literature. In 1629, it was
ordered that works submitted for publication were to be passed upon
by censors particularly designated for each work by the Chancellor or
Privy Seal. It is probable that the volumes had to be put into type
before the examiners were willing to give the time for examination. In
1702, an issue arose between the chancellor and the higher clergy on
the question of certain general privileges in regard to printing which
the bishops claimed to be still in force. It was the contention of
the bishops that, being themselves the final judges of the doctrines
of the Church, utterances made by them or utterances accepted by
them could not with propriety be passed upon by others who were not
authorities on points of doctrine. Madame de Maintenon gave the weight
of her influence in favour of the bishops. The King dreaded exciting
the ire of the Jesuits and dreaded also, says the chronicle, the risk
of putting Madame de Maintenon into a bad temper. He avoided making a
decision and an adjustment was finally arrived at in which the bishops
withdrew their main pretensions. Bossuet made an indignant protest
against what he called the attempt of the chancellor to control the
utterances of the Church. It is not to be thought of, says Bossuet,
that the Holy Church of Christ shall be compelled to submit, for the
examination of magistrates, its decrees, catechisms, and spiritual
teachings upon matters which should be confined strictly to the
instructors of their flock. The King, influenced by the pleading of
Bossuet, finally brought himself to decide that for the works which
were at the moment in question, the authority should be left with the
bishops.
The reports concerning the extent of the influence of censorship, from
one authority or another, on the literary activities of France are,
as we have seen, conflicting. The authority of the Sacred Office was,
as stated, not accepted in France, and the work of the French writers
of the 16th century was not seriously affected by the condemnations
and expurgations, sometimes severe and sometimes indulgent, with which
was supervised and restricted the literature of Italy. It is contended
nevertheless (at least by French historians) that the productions
of the French writers of the century, freer from the trammels of
censorship as these writers were, represented a higher standard
of morality and of refinement than characterised the contemporary
literature of Italy.
During the 17th century, persistent attempts were made in France as
in other Catholic States to enforce throughout the realm a policy of
censorship. By one set of authorities, investigations are carried on
in the bookshops and in public and private libraries, and copies of
obnoxious or suspicious books are burned at the hands of the hangman;
by another, St. Cyran is placed in prison and Arnauld and others of
his group are driven into exile. The _Lettres Provinciales_ of
Pascal are indeed brought into print, but only by cleverly eluding
the vigilance of the inspectors. It is nevertheless the case that at
no time during the century did it prove to be practicable to keep in
force, through the entire territory of the State, any consistent or
effective policy. The authority to order proceedings against authors
or to make condemnations of books is not, as was the case in Spain, in
the hands of a special tribunal, all-powerful and irresponsible. In the
place of an Index which preserves the record of a condemnation that
has once been pronounced, we have individual edicts or orders which
easily fall into oblivion; and in place of a Congregation or of an
Inquisition, we find distinct authorities, and sometimes simple local
authorities, the actions of which are more or less conflicting and
lack permanency of influence. There is also throughout the century, as
later, among the ecclesiastics themselves, a strong national feeling
of protest against the exercise within the territory of France of
censorship authority directed by Italians or Spaniards.[133]
While in Italy, the Church labours single-handed at the task of
reforming the people, in France it is the entire nation, without
distinction of ecclesiastics and laymen, that undertakes the
reformation of itself. Frenchmen of the 17th century, equally assured
of their devotion to the true faith and of their intention to maintain
the virtues of Christianity, refuse to admit the necessity for
submitting to a theocracy, a religious dictatorship, and for putting
literature, so to speak, into a state of siege.
Dejob cites, on the authority of the Benedictine editors, a number
of the absurdities introduced into the St. Ambrose text by the Roman
editors, and concludes that “editorial methods so naïve and so
unscrupulous were certainly in need of the aid of the Index in order
to prevent, through the collation of their text with the work of
more faithful scholars, the unmasking of their pious infidelities.”
“What,” he exclaims, “would have been the result for scholarship,
for literature, and for the thought of the world, if the Inquisition
had succeeded in establishing its domination throughout Europe, and
in placing all the manuscripts of the Fathers under the keys of the
Vatican?”[134]
Dom Petra, one of the learned editors of the _Acta Sanctorum_,
writes in 1649: “If Rome condemns our books, the Jansenists will
have a text for saying that this is brought about by intrigue and
corruption.... The Congregation [of the Index] appears to object to
the work done by the editors of our _Acta_ in the correction
of errors; but the Congregation should understand that, rather than
to confirm a record of impostures, we prefer to write nothing; the
Congregation is giving an opportunity to the heretics to point out
the unwillingness of the Papists to make corrections or to remedy
abuses.”[135]
Theophile Raynaud, in order to revenge himself for a condemnation
issued against his books by certain Dominican inquisitors, undertook
the defence, against the Dominicans, of the memory of Reuchlin and
of Erasmus, victims, as he contends, of Dominican ignorance and
calumny.[136]
Writing in 1661, in reference to certain copies of his books that
had been seized in Italy, Raynaud says: “The sovereign pontiff gives
authority, it appears, to his ministers to carry on robbery.”[137]
The only portion of the writings of Rabelais that came under the ban of
the French censors was the fourth book of the _Pantagruel_, which
was prohibited by the divines of the Sorbonne.
The writings of Montaigne were prohibited in 1576 by the Congregation
of the Index but the prohibition was not confirmed in France. In
1595, an expurgated edition of the _Essays_ was published at Lyons,
from which was omitted, together with certain other passages, under
the instructions of the censors, the fifth chapter of the third
book. The twenty-ninth chapter of the first book, apparently equally
reprehensible, escaped condemnation.
“I find,” says Dejob, “no book of importance, excepting the _Tartuffe_
of Molière, that the national authorities attempted to suppress.
Molière, Racine, La Bruyère, were from time to time assailed, but there
were always influences working on their behalf strong enough to prevent
any serious or continued interference with their work. Once, it may
be remembered, Richelieu _se ligua contre le Cid_, but the immediate
protest of the public made clear to the minister that he was on a false
track.”[138]
It is certain that the authority of the Church exercised in France
a much smaller influence over literature than either in Spain or in
Italy. In fact, under Louis XIV, the Church found it necessary to
resort to raillery rather than to discipline in the cases in which it
found ground for criticism.
The learned historian of the Benedictines, Mabillon, brought himself
into criticism on the part of the Papacy through proving that the bones
taken from the catacombs, which were being distributed as relics for
the faithful, had belonged neither to saints nor to martyrs.
Dejob is of opinion that the acknowledged superiority of the
theological writers of France during the 17th century over those of
Italy and Spain was chiefly due to the greater freedom possessed by
the French scholars in carrying on their investigations and in bringing
their books into print.[139]
The intellectual work of the orthodox clergy owes not a little to the
feeling of obligation that rested upon them to offset the influence of
the Huguenot controversialists and to secure for orthodox literature
a prestige to balance that of Arnaud and of Pascal. It may fairly be
claimed that the Church of France showed itself equal to the task. Any
nation may have been proud to produce within the term of a century
five writers or scholars whose names could be compared with those of
Bossuet, Fénelon, Bourdaloue, Malebranche, and Mabillon. No religion
has counted among its ministers during any one generation men superior
to these in intellectual force. Catholicism can refer to this group as
an evidence that orthodoxy does not stifle originality of talent. It
can claim further that the acceptance of dogma does not of necessity
involve the renunciation of scientific and philosophical investigation.
The lay writers of this famous century were hardly less influenced
by the spirit of religion. It is this that inspired Corneille and
Racine, not only in such creations as _Polyeucte_ and _Athalie_, but
in the moral conception with which they handle the subject of love;
it is this which retains within wholesome limits the satirical verse
of Boileau and of La Bruyère and which keeps within bounds even the
bitter personalities of St.-Simon; it is this which raises far beyond
the level of feminine curiosity and maternal egoism the writings of
Mme. de Sévigné, and which imbues with eloquence the work of Mme. de
Motteville.[140]
The religious spirit may be said to have influenced also the work of
Molière, who uses his trenchant pen to emphasise our obligations to
morality. Save in an occasional instance where the manners of the
comedian get control of the pen of the poet, these obligations are set
forth with the certainty of an infallible moralist, while the dramatist
succeeds in securing for his readers (or hearers) full sympathy for
those of his characters which show themselves faithful to wholesome
ideals.
If it had been possible for the fathers who directed the work of
the Council of Trent to have knowledge of this wonderful body of
literature, which gave to Catholicism an incomparable intellectual
éclat, they would surely have admitted that their pious expectations
were surpassed.[141]
The classical literature of France retained, therefore, freedom of
thought and of expression. The eulogies addressed to the rulers, even
when extravagant in form, bore the stamp of sincerity. It was a saying
of La Bruyère that the use of satire in really great subjects was
denied to writers who were at once Frenchmen and Christians. But it is
fair to remember that such an interdiction is confirmed by the opinion
of the public itself, and also that to one who is himself a witness
of great things, the dazzle of their brilliancy may easily prevent a
clear perception of their blemishes. It is certain that the record of
the work done by the great writers of France does not give any evidence
of serious interference by the Church either for praise or for blame.
Apart from the _Lettres Provinciales_ (which after all secured
a wide reading and a general appreciation), no work of the first
importance was brought under condemnation by the authorities either
civil or religious.[142]
=6. Germany.=--Within half a century after the invention of printing
in Mayence, the business of publishing was established in a number of
towns, such as Frankfort, Strasburg, Basel, Cologne, and Nuremberg;
and by the close of the 16th century, the work of the printers became
important also in many towns of North Germany, such as Leipsic,
Magdeburg, Wittenberg, etc. The development of the production of
printed books followed very largely the lines of the trade in
manuscripts which it superseded. The sale of manuscripts had, for the
century before printing, constituted an important item in the business
of the Fair at Frankfort, and after 1480, we find entries in the
annual records of the Fair of sales of printed books. The organisation
of the book-trade of the empire dates from about 1525. Frankfort was
established as the centre or headquarters of this trade, and the Fair
brought to the city twice a year representative publishers and dealers
not only from the towns of Germany but from Italy, France, and the
Netherlands.
The establishment of a centre or headquarters for the book-trade
of Europe was, of course, of immediate advantage in furthering the
knowledge and the distribution of the literature that came into print,
and particularly of the books published in Latin. Latin was generally
accepted throughout the world as the language not only of scholarship,
but of literature, and it was therefore selected by the publishers of
the time for the larger portion of the books brought into print. It is
true that the work of the early printers of Germany was, unlike that of
France and the Netherlands, carried on not in university centres, but,
very largely at least, in commercial towns. The lists of these German
printers contain a much larger number of books addressed to the general
or unscholarly public than was the case with those of their competitors
in Paris, Venice, or Leyden, but in Germany also the production of
works printed in Latin, for the trade of the world, became each year of
increasing importance.
For the operations of the general censorship of the Church, the
organisation of the book-trade presented certain advantages or at least
conveniences. The compilers of the earlier Roman Indexes utilised the
bulletins and catalogues of the Book-Fair in securing for their lists
information concerning new and forthcoming books of heretical writers
or on controversial subjects. As is mentioned in the separate record of
certain Indexes, the censors were not infrequently prepared to condemn
a book without any examination whatever, simply on the repute of its
author, or even on that of its publisher. It occasionally happened, as
a result of this method, that a work was prohibited which never came
into existence, some obstacle having prevented its completion or its
publication after the title had been announced.
The first instances of books issued with _Imprimaturs_ are two
printed at Cologne in 1479 and sanctioned by the university, and a
third printed at Heidelberg in 1480, under the authorisation of the
Patriarch of Venice.
The earliest mandate of which there is record for the appointment of a
censor of books was issued in 1486 by Berthold, Archbishop of Mayence.
The Archbishop forbids the translation into the vernacular of any books
from Latin, Greek, or other languages, or the sale of translations
brought in from without, until these have been examined and approved by
censors appointed for the purpose from the university of Erfurt.[143]
He instructs the Burgomaster of Frankfort to make examination of all
books at the Frankfort Fair before the permit should be given for
their sale. In 1524, the Archbishop of Mayence claims, on the double
ground of his position as High Chancellor of the empire and as a
representative of the authority of Rome, the right to supervise the
book-trade of the empire, and he makes immediate application of this
authority to the control of the sale of books at the Frankfort Fair.
[Sidenote: Frankfort]
In 1648, the year in which the Thirty Years’ War came to an end, the
magistrates of Frankfort gave up formally the attempts to supervise the
book-production of the city. In 1662, the magistrates found occasion
for protests against the imperial regulations for the control of the
book-trade. The emperor, in his edict of March 18, 1662, was acting
under the counsel of his Jesuit advisers. The magistrates were speaking
as the representatives of the publishers, and, as they contended,
for the interests of the community as a whole. In 1665, under some
counsel which proved to be very ill-advised, the imperial commissioners
undertook to fix the prices of the books presented for sale at the
Frankfort Fair. It was contended that the commissioners who had been
charged with the work of censorship had no authority to take upon
themselves the determination of a business detail. It was very certain
that they did not have the expert knowledge required for the task, but
it was, of course, the case that no commissioners could have carried
out successfully any such system. This price regulation proved to
be one of the most effective of the various factors which caused the
replacing of Frankfort by Leipsic as the centre of the publishing and
bookselling interests of Germany.
[Sidenote: Strasburg]
In 1488, the city of Strasburg established under the directions of the
emperor a local censorship supervised by the magistracy. The first
book prohibited under this regulation was the _Germania Nova_ of
Murner, issued in 1502.
In 1501, Alexander VI publishes a bull prohibiting the printing, within
the territories in question, of any books that have not secured an
approval, in the form of a privilege, from the Archbishops of Cologne,
Mayence, Treves, and Magdeburg, or from their vicars-general.[144]
[Sidenote: Leipsic]
By the year 1495, the book-trade of Leipsic had assumed very
considerable proportions and was already beginning to rival that of
Frankfort. The Booksellers’ Association, organised (in Frankfort) in
1525, is at the present time, four centuries later, the most effective
and intelligently managed trade organisation that the world has
known. Leipsic publishers gave from an early period special attention
to the printing of the controversial literature of the Reformation,
and, as was natural from their close relations with Wittenberg, the
sympathies of the larger proportion of the printers were in accord
with the Lutherans. In 1524, Duke George, who was a Catholic, came
to the throne and during his reign, which continued until 1533, the
writings of the reformers were repressed by a rigorous censorship. The
Duke utilised the machinery of the trade organisation for putting into
effect the ducal regulations for supervision and censorship, and two
ecclesiastical censors, appointed under the ducal authority, secured
the aid of the city officials in making examination of all the books
printed and in confiscating or cancelling all heretical works found in
the shops of either Leipsic or Dresden. The immediate result of these
anti-reform operations of the Church and of the Duke was the practical
destruction for the time being of the book-trade of Leipsic. Many of
the printers transferred their presses to Wittenberg or Magdeburg.
In 1526, occurred in Leipsic an extreme instance of the application
of Catholic censorship. Under the instructions of Duke George, Johann
Herrgott, a printer and colporteur, was burned, with certain of his
books, for the crime of distributing Protestant literature. In the next
year, Hübmayer, the leader of the Baptists in Southern Germany, was
burned in Vienna for a similar offence. In 1571, the Duke of Saxony
ordered that the work of the printers should be restricted to three
towns, Leipsic, Dresden, and Wittenberg. The purpose of this regulation
was the facilitating of censorship control.
[Sidenote: Wittenberg]
In advance of the aggressive Protestant measures of Luther, Wittenberg
had already become an important place for book-production, having
secured, among other favourable influences, the advantage of the
transfer of certain of the printers and their presses from Leipsic.
After 1515, Wittenberg was the most important of the centres from
which were distributed throughout Germany the books and pamphlets
(_Flugschriften_) of the reformers. It was in Wittenberg also that
was brought into print the great Bible of Luther.
[Sidenote: Magdeburg]
At an early date in the period of the Reformation, Magdeburg, in
which the printing business had already secured an assured foothold,
had taken an important place among the centres of distribution of
Protestant literature. The work of the printers was interrupted for
a time in 1518 by the repressive measures of the Catholic Albert of
Brandenburg, but after 1528, the presses were again left practically
free from civil authority, while the ecclesiastical influence in the
city was never important. The book-trade was crushed out for the time
by the destruction of the city by Tilly in 1631.
[Sidenote: Münster]
The city of Münster was another centre for Protestant publications.
The excesses of the Anabaptists, who, under John of Leyden and his
associates, had possession of the town for a number of months in
1535–36, were, however, well-nigh destructive to its Protestantism
and proved fatal to its publishing business. In 1562, an edict issued
by the bishop ordered the destruction of all Protestant books in
Westphalia and made it a misdemeanour to print, sell, or possess any
such books.
[Sidenote: Basel]
The city of Basel secured at an early date an important position among
the centres of publishing. The university, founded in 1460, brought
to the city men devoted to scholarly pursuits many of whom took an
early interest in the work of the printing press and were ready to
give coöperation to the publishers. In 1501, Basel broke away from the
imperial control. At that time, there were in the city no less than
twenty-six important publishing and printing concerns.
During the most active period of its publishing interests, Basel had
the advantage over the majority of the German towns in its comparative
freedom from censorship either ecclesiastical or civil. The authority
of Rome was permitted to exert practically no restrictions upon the
productions of the printing-presses; while as a free imperial city, it
had the right to claim exemption from any authority other than that
of the emperor, whose examiners were too far distant to be able to
bring their influence to bear, to any extent, upon the operations of
the Basel publishers. It was this freedom that constituted the most
important cause of the great development of the book-trade of the
city during the 15th and 16th centuries. The leader among the great
publishers of Basel, who ranked at the time with Aldus as one of the
great publishers of the world, was Johann Froben, the publisher,
friend, and close associate of Erasmus. It is the imprint of Froben
that is associated with the most important of the volumes of Erasmus,
including not only those that secured the approval of Leo X and of
other of the Church authorities, but the group which brought the author
into sharp criticism with the ecclesiastical censors. During the years
between 1460 and 1500, the popes themselves sent to Basel for printing
certain books which required more trustworthy work than could be
secured in Rome.[145]
In 1523, the first application for censorship in the city of Basel was
made by Erasmus in connection with the reprinting of certain French
writings which he claimed to be libels of himself. The censorship of
the city was under the direction of the magistrates. The magistrates
forbade the printing of books in any other languages than Latin, Greek,
Hebrew, and German. In 1598 the censors of the city required that there
be placed in their hands catalogues of books that were forthcoming in
order that they might designate those calling for special attention.
[Sidenote: Zürich]
Between the years 1520 and 1580, the presses of Zürich were busied with
the production of the works of the Calvinist reformers. Froschauer,
who was one of the first of the Zürich printers, was a close friend
of Zwingli, whose special tenets he had adopted, and he placed at the
disposal of the Zwinglians the machinery of his printing concern for
the production and distribution of the Zwinglian treatises and tracts.
Zürich presents also an example of early and strenuous Protestant
censorship. Zwingli brought about a prohibition on the part of the
civil authorities of Zürich for the sale within the city of the
Lutheran publications.
[Sidenote: Augsburg]
The city of Augsburg occupied a similar place among the centres of
Catholic book-production to that held by Basel and Zürich for the works
of the Protestants. The presses of the great publisher Koberger and
his associates were devoted during the last third of the 15th and the
first half of the 16th century to the production of editions of the
works of the more scholarly of the Catholic theologians. The books
were addressed to scholars and were comparatively high in price. The
work of the German reformers had as one result the checking of the
activities of the Augsburg publishers. In 1520, the civil authorities
of Augsburg, at the instance of the local ecclesiastics, issued
prohibitions for the sale in the city of the works of Luther and of
Zwingli. It was the multiplicity of prohibitory authorities in the
book centres of Germany that actually worked against the influence of
the prohibitory system. There was also in these German cities a lack
of any effective censorship machinery such as existed in Spain either
for the examination of texts in advance of printing, or for the seizure
of books and the punishment of printers after publication. There were,
during the century after the Reformation, instances (aggregating a
considerable number) of writers who on the ground of their heretical
utterances had been punished in one way or another and some of whom had
even suffered death, but there was no general or effective repression
of literary production and distribution throughout Germany, either on
the part of the Catholic censors working against Protestant writings
or under the influence of the Protestant divines utilising for the
prohibition of Catholic books the civil authority.
[Sidenote: Nuremberg]
In Nuremberg, under a regulation of 1513, the printers were to be sworn
each year as holding the orthodox Catholic faith and as agreeing to
print no books contrary to that faith.[146] The magistrates issued in
1518 a special prohibition against the printing of the writings of the
Hussites, and in 1521, a similar prohibition against the writings of
Luther, Calvin, and Zwingli. This edict was withdrawn in 1535 when the
magistracy of the city had become Lutheran. In 1527, the poet-cobbler,
Hans Sachs, came under censorship for certain rhymes attached to an
illustrated record of the Tower of Babel. In this case, the trouble
appears, however, to have been not religious, but a matter of guild
prejudice. Sachs, being licensed only as a cobbler, had no authority to
do work as a poet. After 1535, when the control of Nuremberg had passed
into the hands of the Protestants, there is a rapid development of the
activity of its printing-presses and book-trade.
[Sidenote: Tübingen Breslau]
The works of Melanchthon were first printed in Tübingen in 1511.
Later, Melanchthon used for his theological treatises and also for his
long series of text-books the presses of Wittenberg. The statutes of
the University of Tübingen in regard to the _Libelli famosi_ were,
in 1500, made binding throughout the electorate of Würtemberg. In 1557,
an edict of the Duke called for an annual visitation of the bookshops
for the search for heretical publications. In 1593, a ducal permission
was given to one bookseller in Tübingen, Gruppenbach, to buy for the
use of the professors two copies of any heretical books called for. In
1601, an ordinance was published in Tübingen prohibiting the sale of
all sectarian or controversial books, Catholic as well as Protestant.
In the three ecclesiastical principalities of Mayence, Cologne, and
Trier, the ecclesiastical censorship became, after 1525, particularly
rigorous with the result of a material checking in the business of
the printers and booksellers. In Silesia, Breslau became the centre
of Catholic influence and the Protestant printers were, after 1577,
largely driven out of business.
[Sidenote: Heidelberg]
In Heidelberg, under an edict of the Elector of Baden, the censorship
control was, in 1651, placed in the hands of the university and came
under the direction of the theological faculty.
[Sidenote: Vienna]
The printing business in Vienna had during the first years of the
16th century made a good start, but with the beginning of imperial
censorship under the edict of Ferdinand, in 1523, the work of the
printers received a check. In this edict the printing, sale, and
possession of the books of Luther is prohibited under heavy penalties.
Ferdinand permitted the ecclesiastics to exercise directly (that is to
say without reference of individual cases to the civil authorities)
the supervision of the work of the printers. These censors made
effective opposition against scientific education and their repressive
measures for literature other than theological was so far effective
that, after the year 1560, the printing in Vienna of editions of the
classics was brought to a close. In the year 1572, the printing-office
and bookshop of Creutzer, who had for some years acted as the publisher
of the university, was closed. In the year 1587, the book stock of
Necker, who was at that time the leading bookseller in the city, was
confiscated and in large part burned. By 1600, the control of the book
business was placed almost exclusively in the hands of the Jesuits and
as a result of their “supervision,” the business practically came to a
close.
Kapp points out that the prohibitory lists issued in Germany contained,
in addition to the titles of the Protestant controversial writings and
religious writings other than controversial, the titles of a number
of books which were really in character _contra bonos mores_.
The advantage of the advertisement given to the books deserving of
existence was unfortunately shared by not a few volumes which were
really scandalous in character.
The Thirty Years’ War in Germany (1618–1648) may be considered as an
extreme application of the principle of censorship. The power of the
emperor and that of the Catholic princes who associated themselves
with the emperor, was directed to the suppression of Protestantism in
Germany and with this to the control under the direction of the Roman
Church of German thought and of German intellectual development. This
was, of course, an attempt to do something much wider than to control
and restrict the printing-press, but the control and restriction of
the operations of the printers constituted an essential part of the
purpose of the pope, the emperor, and their allies the Jesuits and
Dominicans. In so far as the Catholics held their own, succeeding in
maintaining their control in the States of South Germany, the printers
had to accept the continued authority of the ecclesiastics backed by
the power of the State. The States of North Germany, on the other hand,
with the all-powerful aid of Gustavus Adolphus and his sturdy Swedes,
were able to maintain by force of arms their independence as citizens,
and secured also the right to think and to speak, to print and to read
for themselves, free from decisions to be arrived at by the Dominican
Congregation of Italy or the Jesuit censors of Vienna. The waste of
life and of treasure brought upon Germany through the thirty years’
strife was enormous, but even as a matter of material advantage, the
contest was for North Germany worth all that it had cost.
=7. The Netherlands.=--The work of the printers in Holland was
begun in Utrecht in 1473. The Dutch printers had from the outset the
enormous advantage in their business of a practical freedom from
interference by censorship, whether ecclesiastical or political. This
was also true for a quarter of a century or more with the printing
centres of Flanders, where, under the initiative of Mansion, Caxton,
and their successors, the work of printing was begun, in 1474, in
Bruges and in Louvain. In 1476, Caxton migrated from Bruges to London,
setting up his first press in the courtyard of Westminster Abbey.
The Dukes of Burgundy had, for several generations prior to the
introduction of printing, been noted for their liberal interest in
literature, and for their great collections of manuscripts, and this
sympathetic relation of the Burgundian rulers to literature continued
through the first half-century of printing.
During the first three fourths of the 16th century, the Netherlands,
with Antwerp as a centre, present the type of a most enlightened
community. At the time of the great siege of 1585, Antwerp was at the
height of its prosperity, and in the extent and the varied character of
its commercial relations it was possibly the leading city of Europe.
Antwerp possessed exceptional advantages as a centre of book-production
and by the close of the 16th century, out of the sixty-five printers
who were at work in the Netherlands, no less than thirteen were in
Antwerp. The neighbouring University of Louvain supplied scholarly
coöperation which was essential for all the publishing undertakings
of the age, while not a few scholars, who, some years later, found
themselves with the exiles in Leyden or in Amsterdam, were at this
time resident in Antwerp, and were already largely associated with the
work of the printing-press. In 1556, at the time of the beginning of
the work of the great publisher Plantin, an entire quarter of the city
was devoted to the making of books, a circumstance without a parallel
among the cities of Europe. The result of the censorship of the Spanish
Government was practically to crush out the book business of Antwerp.
The presses were largely destroyed and the scholars and printers alike
were scattered among the towns of Holland. Plantin placed his imprint
upon a number of books of theology, for all of which it was necessary
to secure the approval, with the “royal privilege,” of the Duke of Alva
and of the successors of the Duke who represented the Spanish Throne.
[Sidenote: Book Regulations, 1560–1570]
The ordinances issued by Philip II concerning books were for the most
part merely a confirmation, with some increase in severity, of the
edicts of Charles V. The modifications in these ordinances brought
about by the States-General in 1566 provided that those books only
should be prohibited that contained heretical or pernicious opinions;
and that the responsibility for the examination and decision should be
shared with the theologians by the scholars of the other university
faculties; that instructors should be at liberty to utilise all books
not on the prohibited lists; and that the visitation to the bookshops
should be made only under the direct authority of the magistrates.
Under Alva, the routine for such a visitation was to instruct the
magistrates on a specific day (not announced in advance) to place seals
on the doors of all printing-offices and bookshops; the examination of
the books was then carried out by the suffragan bishop and the local
head of the Franciscans. In the years 1566 and 1567, four printers were
sentenced to banishment for from four to six years, one was sent to the
galleys, and one was hanged.[147]
In 1570, Philip II instituted the office of “proto-typographer” or
supervisor of printing for the Netherlands, and appointed as the first
occupant of the office the printer Plantin. Master-printers applying
to the supervisor for authorisation for a work to be printed must
show the certificate of approval of the diocesan bishop or of his
vicar, and also of the local magistrate. Printers were required to
take an oath of conformity to the doctrines of the Church as set forth
by the Council of Trent. No remuneration was attached to the office
of proto-typographer, but the incumbent was freed from the duty of
lodging soldiers. The important service of the post for Plantin was,
of course, the increased facility it secured for him in obtaining
approvals and privileges for his own publications. The theologians of
Louvain (through whom the ecclesiastical censorship for Antwerp was,
in the main, carried on) were not likely to raise question concerning
the undertakings of the literary representative of the King. It was
suggested that one ground for his selection was the wish of the King
to make good to Plantin the loss that had been caused to his business
by his arrest in 1562 on a charge of heretical publishing, a charge
which proved to be unfounded. It may also be recalled that Philip
had promised, in 1568, to pay to Plantin the sum of 21,000 florins
as a subvention for the polyglot Bible, edited by Montanus. This
payment was, however, never made, and the failure to receive it was
one of the causes that had, in 1570, brought Plantin into financial
difficulties.[148]
Under the ordinance of 1570, the censorship is lodged with the
council, the bishop, and the inquisitor. Each book that may secure
their approval is to be referred to the stadtholder, by whom its
selling price shall be fixed. Inspection of the printing-offices must
be made from time to time by the bishop, the inquisitor, and the
proto-typographer, and not less than twice a year by the magistrates.
The booksellers must take oath that without permit from the censors
they will bring in no book from abroad; that they will sell, except to
a buyer with a written permit, no copies, printed in the vernacular,
of the Scriptures or of controversial writings; and that they will
faithfully obey all the regulations of these ordinances and of the
Roman Index (that of Trent, printed as an appendix to the ordinances);
all packages of imported books are to be opened only in the presence of
the bishop or of the inquisitor.
In 1573, it was ordered that of all the books printed in the
Netherlands, one copy should be delivered to the royal library at
Antwerp, and a second (to be paid for) to the Escurial.
[Sidenote: 1569. Liège (Lüttich)]
Henricus Hovius printed in Liège, in 1569, an edition of the Index
of Trent in which (without any reference or specification) certain
additional names and titles have been inserted in the alphabetical
lists. The title-page states that the Index has been prepared under
the authority of King Philip, and in accordance with a decree of the
Duke of Alva. The new titles, probably added at the instance of the
divines of Louvain, are for the most part repeated in the Antwerp Index
of 1570. Reusch points out that this Liège Index is very carelessly
printed and is full of errors.
The prohibitions of the Trent Index were confirmed under the authority
of the diocesan synods of the Spanish Netherlands. One of the diocesan
edicts required the printers and booksellers each year to take an
oath of fidelity to the faith of the Church, in default of which the
license to print was to be forfeited. In 1589, the Synod of Tournai
prohibited the booksellers from possessing a copy of the _Index
librorum haereticorum_, a catalogue printed yearly for the use of
the Frankfort Book-Fair, which was based upon the lists of the Index
of Trent, but the titles in which were from year to year brought
down to date. The book-dealers were already beginning to realise the
value for their business of the labour expended by the Church in the
preparation of bibliographies of the books which were most likely
to prove of interest to the active minded people of the world. This
Frankfort catalogue of heretical books was the beginning of a series of
such catalogues in which the work of the Congregation of the Index and
of the Inquisition was taken advantage of (with material improvements
in the accuracy of the bibliography) to emphasise the value and to
further the circulation of the books which had been condemned by the
Church. The edict of the bishops who met at Tournai in 1589 appears to
have been the first expression of doubt on the part of ecclesiastical
authorities as to the effectiveness of the condemnations of the Index
in lessening the circulation and the influence of heretical literature.
In 1585, through the recognition of the independence of the Dutch
Republic, the long contests in the Netherlands were brought to a
close. The authority of the Spanish King was restored in Antwerp but
the city was impoverished as to both men and resources. Irrespective
of the loss of life in the great city, Antwerp had suffered the loss
of some of the best and most enterprising of its citizens who had
preferred to make their home in the Protestant communities of Holland.
The departing Protestants took with them much of the intellectual life
and literary activity in the city, while Amsterdam and Leyden, free
from the hampering restrictions of Catholic censorship, presented
many advantages for publishing undertakings. In 1585, there was but
one book printing-press in activity in the city in which a few years
earlier there had been no less than forty. Plantin’s first publication
for the new year was an official list of the books at that time under
prohibition, the list comprising some six hundred titles.
It is not surprising, in view of the hampering regulations and
restrictions above specified, that the book-trade of the Spanish
Netherlands should have become demoralised and that the centres of
publishing activities should have been transferred from Antwerp and
Louvain to Amsterdam, Utrecht, and Leyden.
Among the Protestants who during this war period migrated from Flanders
was Louis Elzevir, who removed from Louvain to Leyden and began there
the business which developed later into one of the greatest publishing
houses of the world. The coöperation of the scholars of the university,
together with an absolute freedom from any censorship restrictions,
gave to the new publishing concern advantages which were at that time
possessed by no printer-publishers outside of Holland. The development
of the book-trade of Holland was furthered thirty years later through
the influence of the Thirty Years’ War in Germany. During this period,
1618–1648, the territory of the Seven United Provinces was free alike
from invaders and from civil strife. Much of the work of the scholars
of Europe that had heretofore been brought into print through the
presses of Frankfort or of Leipsic was now transferred to Amsterdam and
Leyden. The theological discussions which became active in Holland,
more particularly after the time of the Synod of Dort in 1618,
furthered the work of the printing-presses. The Hollanders were also
shrewd enough to realise the opportunity given to them for bringing
into print the books which had been prohibited or cancelled in Spain,
in France, or in Italy. With a few exceptions, these books had been
written in Latin and the editions printed in Leyden or in Amsterdam
were, therefore, available for the use of scholarly readers throughout
Europe.
Andrea Schurius writes[149] that he has been told that the Amsterdam
publisher of the _Bibliotheca Fratrum Polonorum_ took special
pains to secure the formal prohibition of his work, considering this to
be the most effective means of bringing it into active sale.
During the 17th century, the press of the Dutch Republic continued this
work free from restrictions which hampered publishing in all other
States of Europe. The censorship measures in Holland were restricted to
certain edicts and regulations issued by the States-General prohibiting
the printing of libellous material or of works directed against princes
or governments which were allied with the Republic. There is also
an occasional edict against the circulation of publications classed
as “irreligious” or “obscene.” The machinery for the enforcement of
these regulations appears, however, to have been very inconsiderable;
and there is no record of any general inspection for the purpose of
censorship of the productions of the printing-press. Among the earlier
noteworthy publications of the Elzevirs were certain books that could
not at that time easily have come into print elsewhere, such as _The
System of the Universe_ by Galileo and the _Defensio Populi Anglicani_
of Milton. Galileo, writing in 1638, gave testimony to the excellence
of the work done for him by his Dutch publishers. The list of scholars
under censorship either ecclesiastical or political in their persons or
in their books who had been exiled from their own countries and whose
names are brought together on the catalogues of the Elzevir house is
a long one. We may mention, in addition to Galileo, Scaliger, Hobbes,
Pascal, Descartes, More, etc.
The Roman, Spanish, and French Indexes served as guides to the Dutch
printers for the selection of books likely to prove of interest
and to secure circulation. In not a few instances, the scholarly
writers themselves who had been banished from Spain or from France
in connection with their so-called heretical teachings, or who,
irrespective of banishment, had decided that they could carry on
their work to better advantage in a territory which was outside of
the control of the Catholic Church, had taken up their residence in
Holland. The influx of these scholars made Holland for a century or
more the centre of scholarly activity in Europe and gave to the Dutch
publishers, in the use of these scholarly pens for original work and
for editorial work, an enormous advantage. The ethics of publishing
were at this time not recognised or certainly at least not recognised
outside of national boundaries. The Dutch publishers were quite ready,
therefore, in the case even of books which had not been prohibited
in the country of origin, to utilise texts that had been edited or
shaped by competitors in Venice, in Paris, or in Frankfort, for the
production of competing editions. The printers of Holland secured for
themselves a final advantage in developing after 1525 a better standard
of typography, both for accuracy and for beauty, than had as yet been
known in Europe excepting with certain of the issues of Aldus and of
Froben. The preëminence obtained under these several influences by the
printers of Holland continued until the middle of the 18th century.
=8. England.=--The work of printing in England began with Caxton,
in 1476. His catalogue speaks of his books as being “printed in the
Abbey of Westminster.” His presses were as a fact placed in the
almonry, a space within the Abbey precincts. Sir Thomas More has
shown why Caxton could not venture to print a Bible in the vernacular,
although the people would have greedily bought the Wyclif translation.
Wyclif’s translation was interdicted and More says: “On account of the
penalties ordered by Archbishop Arundel’s constitution, though the old
translations that were before Wyclif’s days remained lawful and were in
some folks’ hands, yet he thought no printer would likely be so hot to
put any Bible in print at his own charge, and then hang upon a doubtful
trial whether the first copy of his translation was made before
Wyclif’s days or since. For if it were made since Wyclif, it must be
approved before the printing.” This was a dilemma that Caxton was too
prudent to encounter.[150]
In England, during the first half of the century, the printers,
while having various other difficulties to contend with, such as
lack of communication with a public, the small extent of the public
that was ready to be interested in the printed book, and the serious
interference that was caused to all trade by the events of the Civil
War, were practically free from any burdens of censorship. Even if
the ecclesiastics in England had been in a position to make their
censorship troublesome, they would have had small occasion for
interference with the first literary undertakings of the English
printers. The lists included hardly any works having to do with
theology, religion, or controversial subjects of any kind. Caxton and
his immediate successors realised that at this period the interest
of English readers could be depended upon much more safely for books
of romance and for chronicles. It was nearly a century after the
introduction of printing into England before any attempt was made to
produce English editions of the Scriptures. It was in Germany that
during this period the attention of the printers was given largely to
the production of Bibles, theological treatises, and controversial
tracts. The lists of the printers of France were devoted mainly to
classics, with some titles under the headings of romance and poetry,
while in Italy the earlier lists were made up chiefly of classics and
science.
The Stationers’ Company received its charter by royal decree in 1566,
two years after the marriage of Queen Mary (to Philip of Spain). It
constituted an organisation of the publishing and printing trade
of London which assumed to represent the publishing interests of
the country. The basis of the authority of the Stationers’ Company
was the theory that all printing was the prerogative of the king.
The Stationers’ Company had, under its charter, summary rights of
search, seizure, and imprisonment, and these powers were confirmed
or renewed by the licensing acts. It seems probable that the purpose
of the institution of the Company was not so much the furthering of
the business of book-production, as the organisation of this business
in such shape that it could be reached effectively and promptly by
the censorship authorities of the Crown. No question appears to have
arisen in England in regard to any conflicting authority on the part
of the Church to control such censorship. The Crown utilised the
services of bishops and of other ecclesiastics for the examination of
works in the division of theology which came under the suspicion of
heresy. The selection of the examiners and the decision concerning the
disposition of the books so examined was reserved, however, for the
direct action of the Crown or of the representatives of the Crown.
Such censorship as came into action in England proved to be more
important in connection with political literature than with works on
religion or theology. In 1644, the Long Parliament enacted certain
regulations for the control of printing which provided that “No book,
pamphlet, or paper shall be henceforth printed unless the same be first
approved and licensed by censors that shall be thereto appointed.”
Milton had been a persistent opponent of the policy of censorship and
of licensing, and one result of the enactment was the publication of
the famous _Areopagitica_, an oration in the form of a pamphlet, which
presented with fierce eloquence a protest against the whole theory
of the exercise by Government licensers of a supervision and control
of literature, or of the delegation of such control to a commercial
company (the Stationers’ Company) which was the creation of Government.
=9. Oxford. Index Generalis. James. 1627.=--In 1627, Thomas James,
the librarian of the Bodleian Library in Oxford, brought into print,
under the title of an _Index Generalis_, a summary or catalogue
which had been made up from the Church Indexes that had thus far come
into print and of which James had been able to secure copies. It was
his purpose to present in this general catalogue the titles of the
more important of the books condemned under the censorship of the
Church, copies of which books it was, as he pointed out, important to
secure for the Bodleian collection. The so-called James Index came to
be a working guide for book-buyers and its publication had a direct
effect upon the circulation in England of the books specified. It has,
therefore, seemed in order to make reference to it in this chapter on
the influence of censorship on the book-trade of England.
This catalogue of James was utilised during the succeeding years
by English scholars generally, as a convenient guide to the
literature condemned by the Church and which on the very ground of
its condemnation might be assumed to possess interest and value
for scholars who were not troubled by the dread of ecclesiastical
penalties. The recommendation of James that copies of these works
should be secured for the Bodleian has been carried out quite
effectively. The copy of the James Index which has been preserved for
the reference library of the Bodleian has been checked by successive
librarians as copies of the books recommended have been secured and
the list is now very nearly complete. The copies secured for the
Bodleian represent in large part editions printed in Holland; as
before pointed out, the publishers of Amsterdam, Leyden, and Utrecht
had, from the date of publication in 1546 of the Index of Louvain,
interested themselves in bringing promptly into print works condemned
by Roman authorities and in furthering the distribution of these books
throughout Europe.
The full title of James’s Index reads as follows: _Index Generalis
Librorum Prohibitorum a Pontificiis; una cum editionibus expurgatis
vel expurgandis juxta serium literarum et triplicem classem. In usum
Bibliothecæ Bodleianæ et Curatoribus ejusdem specialiter designatus.
Per Tho. James, S. Theol. D. Coll. B. Mariæ. Winton. In Oxon. Vulgo.
Novi dicti quondam Socium Oxonæ Excudebat Gulielmus Turner. An. D.
1627._
I add a rendering of his preface (the original of which, according
to the custom of the time, is in Latin) which is interesting as
indicating the attitude of the Protestant scholar of the day towards
the censorship of Rome. James includes in the volume of his Index an
announcement (addressed to students of theology) of another work
that he had in preparation which he entitles _A Universal Index of
the Sacred Fathers of the Church_. He speaks of having published a
sample of this and goes on to say,
[Sidenote: Bull appended to the oath at the Council of Trent.--“I
will never accept or interpret Holy Scripture except according to the
unanimous opinion of the Fathers.”]
“If my friends tell me that this sample which I have published
is not displeasing to them, there will shortly after follow
the other books of Scripture, if not in their own order, at
least in a series which has the support of other authorities.
My method of procedure will be as follows: The text before us
will be the Vulgate, and no one who has read any of the works
of Cyprian or Tertullian or of the other ancient Fathers of the
Church, has ventured to say that this text is Hieronymian, and
thus the various readings which do not agree with this Vulgate
edition will be added, and the passages which have been disputed
by Bellarmin and his school (of which there are more in this
fifth chapter than in any other) carefully noted in the margin.
By these means, the younger students to whom God has given the
necessary leisure and inclination, may see whether the Fathers
take the side of the Pontifical writers with their shrill
unseemly clamour, or are ranged under our banners: for a careful
inspection of the Company here drawn up will support opinions
of the Eastern as well as the Western Churches one after
another,--a support which is claimed falsely by the Papists,
in direct opposition to the rules laid down by the Council of
Trent, as they would see if they would but face the facts.
“If the opinion of those who have declared that these Books
ought not to be published, or ought to be suppressed, wins
the day, I shall not fall claiming to have championed in the
struggle the fortunes of the Church or any great issue. No! but
relying on conscience and on the conviction that I must promote
the cause of God to the best of my poor ability, I shall
preserve my writings of whatsoever sort in my own house under my
own roof; with the hope that if I can but present a willing and
ready spirit I shall be not unworthy to serve the world, even
though opportunities and resources fail; for has not the Poet
said,
‘In magnis est voluisse satis.’
“In everything I have tried to follow the counsel of S.
Paul,--neglecting my own conscience, taking no care for my
bodily health, not seeking your money, but yourselves, not
trying to profit myself but to benefit the world.
“Finally, that there be no mistake as to the editions which I
have used in the compilation, I have appended the following
Index. Lest you experience difficulty in perusing it or strike
upon the rock which has proved fatal to others, I would have
you remember (being desirous of removing the obstacle which has
long troubled many readers) that I have devised a way by which
all future Editions may be referred to my pages, thus saving
readers the expense and trouble of buying Edition after Edition.
With these words of instruction, learned Reader, I would bid you
farewell. May God direct and preserve us and our studies to the
glory of His name and to the advancement of His Church.
“For the State and the Catholic Church of God these labours.
TH. JAMES, D.D.
“OXFORD, 1627.”
The preface to the Index itself reads as follows:
TO BE NOTED IN THIS CATALOGUE
“First, as regards the numerals 1, 2, 3, occurring throughout
the book.
“1. Denotes condemned authors, that is, authors whose religious
opinions are orthodox and pious, but whose books are prohibited.
“2. Denotes pontifical authors, in whose case caution or
expurgation is prescribed.
“3. Denotes works of doubtful authorship which are prohibited.
“But it must be understood that the inquisitors (if one may say so)
made a rather imperfect classification under these heads. For the
authors Aventinus, Erasmus, Palingenius, Bruciolus, etc., were placed
in the first class, whereas they belong rightly in the second; and
on the other hand, Adolphus Metkerchus, Lavinus Lemnius, and others,
who ought to be in the first class, are placed in the second. And the
third class, which should consist of doubtful works, contains a good
many known authors whose names and surnames are clear as day to any
one looking at the title-pages with one eye. This appears plainly, for
example, in the case of two books, _Bello Papali_, and another of which
the title is, _Beliae, sive consolatio peccatorum_.
“Secondly, it ought to be clear to everybody that books prohibited
by the _pontificii_ (_i. e._ the Congregation of the Index, acting
as the representatives of the Pope) ought to be sought with the more
zeal and read with the greater avidity. For what the papists prohibit,
God grants for our use and benefit, and the memory of those condemned
by our adversaries is and should be blessed, since their names are
doubtless inscribed in the Book of Life.
“Thirdly, a star(*) indicates editions or authors hitherto contained in
the _Bibliotheca Oxoniensis_, which is to be set down as our gain since
we need take no further trouble to make them known.
“Fourthly, the Greek letter denotes authors of the second class (almost
all _pontificii_) who (unless they are emended and expurgated as the
Indexes direct) set forth more clearly than the noonday sun the very
doctrine of the Protestants, so that the _pontificii_ do not venture
even to mutter against it. This is doubtless the work of God’s finger
and of the inspiration of the Holy Ghost, who armed Midianite against
Midianite, to their mutual slaughter.
“Fifthly, we have arranged all authors of whatever class in strict
alphabetical order. Their names cannot be found so easily in the
_Sandovillian_ or _Roman Index_, in comparison with which other Indexes
are rubbish.
“Sixthly, in this alphabetical revision are included books, written
whether in Latin or in French, Italian or Spanish, chiefly on religious
subjects, by men who were in their own day not subject to condemnation
at the hands of either God or men, but who, if they were now alive,
could hardly, or not at all, escape the Inquisition and damnation to
the shades of deeper hell. Moreover (to speak more plainly and to make
the thing clear by examples taken from this book) the _pontificii_
are so far from being consistent that books hitherto praised and
approved by worthy men are now transformed into prohibited books of the
second or third class. In this way was treated even the _Evangelium
Romanum prout a Clementis octavi manu Jacobs Davis Episcopo traditum
est_; for after the book had (if the stories may be believed) worked
miracles on the return of Perron to France, it was not only left
neglected, but the possession of a copy was prohibited under penalty of
excommunication.[151] Capucinus, inquisitor in the diocese of Naples,
has his doubts about the Index of Quirogus (Madrid, 4VO, 1584), and
for this reason he incurs censure in the Sandovillian Index, p. 365
(consult our catalogue) and the _Enchiridion Ecclesiasticum_, Ven.,
1588 (see our catalogue) is by no means to be read unless _corrigatur_.
In the same way, Gabriel Pentherbeus’ book on The Destruction of Evil
Books is not always free from the censure of others. What need of
more examples? The Defence against the Reformers, according to the
principles of S. Francis, S.D.N., by Manfred (and, good God, what a
man) is altogether prohibited, unless I have overlooked something. If
so many and such men do not escape the hands, or rather the claws of
their own party, who can guarantee safety to a book composed by any
author whatever? Not Aesculapius himself, their God, their lord Pope,
ventured to promise this, since Clement VIII changed the books of his
predecessor, Sixtus V, with no consideration for the industry involved,
on the ground of typographical errors, a most glorious lie. There are
many more cases of this sort worthy of notice, but it has seemed best
to mention but these few facts at present. Let the rest be left in the
hands of the intelligent reader, or postponed to another time.
“Finally, it must be carefully noted that the censures sometimes recoil
upon the censors themselves, for no law is juster than that the very
inquisitors should be revised, corrected, and altered, under the rod.
The complete works of Beatus Arias Montanus for one were most severely
castigated by the first inquisitors and expurgators. This is done
(strange but true) on page 55 of the Index Sandovilliano and on page 39
of the Roman Index, to say nothing of the Indexes named above. Are more
instances wanted?”