THE CENSORSHIP OF THE CHURCH
SYNOPSIS OF CONTENTS
VOLUME I
I. Introductory. The Index and Censorship.
II. Censorship and the Early Church. 150–768.
III. Prohibition of Books in the Middle Ages. 830–1480.
IV. Book Regulations before the Indexes.
In England, the Netherlands, France, Spain, and Germany.
1450–1555.
V. Papal Censorship before the Indexes and the Bull _Coenae
Domini_. 1364–1586.
VI. The Roman Inquisition and the Congregation of the Index.
VII. The First Series of Indexes.
Louvain, 1510, Venice, 1543, Paris, 1544, Louvain, 1546,
Lucca, 1545, Louvain, 1550, Venice, 1549, Valentia, 1551,
Florence, 1552, Valladolid, 1554, Venice, 1554, Louvain,
1558, Valladolid, 1559, Rome, 1559.
VIII. The Council of Trent and the Index of Pius IV. 1564.
IX. Censorship Regulations. 1550–1591.
X. Indexes of the Netherlands, Spain, and Italy. 1569–1588.
XI. Roman Indexes and Decrees. 1590–1661.
(This chapter includes the Index of Sixtus V, the only
papal Index which undertook the work of expurgation.)
XII. Indexes and Prohibitions, Spanish, Roman, Belgian,
Portuguese, and Polish. 1612–1768.
XIII. The Index of Alexander VII. 1664.
(This Index includes the record of the condemnation of
Galileo.)
XIV. Decrees and Indexes, French, Belgian, Bohemian, Roman and
Spanish. 1685–1815.
XV. Erasmus and Luther in the Index.
XVI. The Jansenist Controversy and the Bull _Unigenitus_.
VOLUME II
I. Theological Controversies in France, Germany, England, and
the Netherlands. 1600–1750.
II. The Treatment of the Scriptures under Censorship.
III. The Monastic Orders and Censorship.
IV. Roman Indexes. 1758–1900.
(This chapter includes a specification of the Index of
Benedict XIV of 1758, and description of the latest
Indexes, those of Pius IX and Leo XIII.)
V. General Prohibitions and the Continuation of Class I.
VI. Issues between Church and State.
VII. Examples of Condemned Literature.
VIII. The Censorship of the State and by Protestants.
a. Catholic States: Catholic Germany, France, Spain,
and Portugal. b. Protestant States: Protestant Germany,
Switzerland, Holland, Scandinavia, and England.
IX. The Book Trade as Affected by Censorship: 1450–1800.
X. The Censorship of the Stage.
XI. The Literary Policy of the Modern Church.
(This chapter includes a study of the Indexes of Leo
XIII, 1896–1900, the work of Index revision and reform,
1865–1880, “Romanus” and the Tablet, 1897, and a
reference to present methods of censorship.)
XII. The Authority and the Results of Censorship.
Supplement, with schedule of the Indexes issued under the
authority of the Church, 1526–1900.
By Geo. Haven Putnam
=Authors and Their Public in Ancient Times.=--A sketch of
literary conditions, and of the relations with the public of
literary producers, from the earliest times to the fall of the
Roman Empire.
Third Edition, revised. 12^o, gilt top, net, $1.50
=Books and Their Makers during the Middle Ages.=--A
study of the conditions of the production and distribution of
literature, from the fall of the Roman Empire to the close of
the Seventeenth Century.
Two vols., sold separately. 8^o, gilt tops. Each $2.50
Volume I., 476–1600.
Volume II., 1500–1709.
=The Question of Copyright.=--Comprising the text of
the Copyright Law of the United States, and a Summary of the
Copyright Laws at present in force in the Chief Countries of
the World. Third edition, revised, with Additions, and with the
Record of Legislation brought down to March, 1896. 8^o, gilt top
$1.75
=The Censorship of the Church of Rome and Its Influence upon
the Production and the Distribution of Literature.=--A Study
of the History of the Prohibitory and Expurgatory Indexes,
Together with Some Consideration of the Effects of Protestant
Censorship and of Censorship by the State.
Two volumes, 8vo. Uniform with “Books and Their Makers.” Each
net, $2.50
G. P. Putnam’s Sons
NEW YORK AND LONDON
THE CENSORSHIP OF
THE CHURCH OF ROME
AND ITS INFLUENCE UPON THE PRODUCTION AND
DISTRIBUTION OF LITERATURE
A STUDY OF THE HISTORY OF THE PROHIBITORY AND EXPURGATORY
INDEXES, TOGETHER WITH SOME CONSIDERATION OF THE EFFECTS
OF PROTESTANT CENSORSHIP AND OF CENSORSHIP BY THE STATE
BY
GEORGE HAVEN PUTNAM, LITT.D.
Author of
“AUTHORS AND THEIR PUBLIC IN ANCIENT TIMES,” “BOOKS AND THEIR MAKERS IN
THE MIDDLE AGES,” “THE QUESTION OF COPYRIGHT,” “AUTHORS
AND PUBLISHERS,” ETC.
_IN TWO VOLUMES_
VOLUME I
G. P. PUTNAM’S SONS
NEW YORK AND LONDON
The Knickerbocker Press
1906
COPYRIGHT, 1906
BY
GEORGE HAVEN PUTNAM
The Knickerbocker Press
TO
MY DAUGHTER ETHEL
IN RECOGNITION OF LOVING SERVICE AND OF SKILLED AND PATIENT
LABOUR, DEVOTED TO PREPARING THIS MATERIAL FOR THE PRINTERS
PREFACE
In these volumes, I have undertaken to present a record of the Indexes
which have been issued under the authority of the Church of Rome, or
which, having been compiled by ecclesiastics, were published under the
authority of the State, between the year 1546 (the date of the first
list of prohibited books which may properly be described as an Index)
and 1900, in which year was issued the second Index of Leo XIII, the
latest in the papal series.
To this record I have added a selection of the more noteworthy
examples of censorship during the earlier centuries of the Church (a
list which begins with a curious prohibition in 150, probably the
earliest instance of censorship by a Church council); a schedule of
the more important of the decrees, edicts, pastoral briefs, etc.,
issued under ecclesiastical authority, which had to do with the matter
of censorship; and a specification of certain censorship regulations
which, before the publication of the first Index, came into force
in the several States of Europe. Such a schedule of decrees and
regulations can, of course, lay no claim to completeness. I have
attempted simply to present examples of prohibitions and condemnations,
from decade to decade, which were typical or characteristic, and from
which some impression could be gathered as to the nature and the extent
of the censorship experiments throughout the centuries in the several
communities concerned.
A brief account has been added of the organisation and of the
operations of the Roman Inquisition and of the Congregation of the
Index, as it was from these bodies that emanated the series of papal
Indexes, and with them rested, from the middle of the sixteenth
century, the responsibility for the shaping of the general policy of
the Church in regard to censorship. The plan of the treatise does
not render it practicable to attempt any general survey of political
censorship or the censorship of the State, but I have presented a brief
selection of examples of State action in censorship, in order to make
the necessary comparison between the methods followed by the State
and those of the Church, and to make clear that the censorship of the
Roman Church was (at least outside of Spain) not so autocratic in its
principles, nor so exacting and burdensome in its methods, as was the
censorship which was from time to time attempted by State governments
acting for the most part under Protestant influence.
I have attempted to base upon these schedules and records some
conclusions as to the actual influence of the general system of
censorship, as connected more particularly with the enforcement of
the penalties prescribed by the Indexes, upon the production and
distribution of literature in the several communities which recognised
to a greater or less extent the authority of the Church. An interesting
indication of the extent of this influence is given through the
records of the business of the printer-publishers and booksellers
of the period, in such States as Italy, Spain, France, Germany, the
Netherlands, and England.
Finally, I have attempted, in the closing chapters, to make a study of
the literary policy of the modern Church as indicated in the latest
of the papal Indexes and in certain utterances by representative
Catholics concerning the censorship policy of the Church, which have
come into print during the past quarter of a century.
In collecting the material for the several schedules of Indexes,
decrees, etc., I am chiefly indebted to the treatise of Heinrich
Reusch, _Der Index der Verbotenen Bücher_, published in Bonn
in 1885. Dr. Reusch’s work may be described as monumental in the
thoroughness and authoritativeness of its scholarship. The information
presented in regard to the series of Indexes and decrees is most
comprehensive and precise. The compass of Reusch’s three volumes (which
comprise twenty-four hundred closely printed octavo pages) renders
them, however, unavailable for the use of the general reader. I have
knowledge of no work in English which presents, with any measure of
completeness, the record of the Indexes, and of no book in any language
which attempts a general survey of the purpose and results of the
censorship of the Church. It has seemed to me, therefore, that I might
render some service to the study of the conditions affecting literary
production and distribution, by utilising certain portions of the
material collected by Reusch in a work prepared for English-speaking
readers, which should present the schedule of the Indexes and a summary
of the more noteworthy of the decrees, edicts, briefs, etc., having to
do with censorship, and by connecting with this a study of the results
secured through this censorship policy of the Church and of the range
of its influence.
I have been able to include in the catalogue of Indexes certain titles
which were not listed by Reusch, and I have added the record of the
Indexes which have been published since the date of Reusch’s treatise.
I have not been dependent upon Reusch’s schedules for the contents
of the Indexes themselves, as I have been able to make a personal
examination of all of the more important Indexes in the series from
examples in my own library, and in the comprehensive collection of
my valued friend Mr. Archer M. Huntington. Mr. Huntington has, I may
mention, rendered a most important service to students of the Index
through his reprints, produced in facsimile, of five of the earlier
issues as follows: Louvain, 1546; Louvain, 1550; Cordova, 1550;
Cordova, 1554; Valladolid, 1559.
Certain Indexes have been selected from the long series as on one
ground or another entitled to special attention. For these I have
given, in addition to some analysis of the prefatory matter, the
accompanying Bull and the regulations, and a specification of the
more important of the literature which is represented in the lists
of the books condemned. Among the Indexes that call for such fuller
description and analysis are the following: Louvain, 1546, (usually
classed as the first in the series of the Church Indexes); Rome, 1559,
(the first in the series of papal Indexes); Trent, 1564, (the papal
Index which secured the widest and most continued influence); Rome,
1607, (the only expurgatory Index in the papal series); Rome, 1664,
(in which is presented the condemnation of Galileo); Rome, 1758, (the
Index which marked the beginning of the wider literary policy for the
Church); Rome, 1900, (the latest of the papal Indexes and the one which
must, therefore, be taken as expressing the present literary policy of
Rome). I have also given, with some detail, analyses of certain of the
Spanish expurgatory Indexes, as these present a class of censorship
quite distinct in character and not attempted outside of Spain.
Separate chapters are devoted to the treatment throughout the series
of Indexes of certain subjects of continued importance, such as the
relations between the Church and State, the consideration given to
Erasmus and to Luther, the treatment of the monastic orders, etc.
In Chapter IX of the second volume, is presented a study of the
influence of the Index upon the book-trade in the several States of
Europe. While there are in existence no trustworthy statistics for such
a record, certain general results can be determined from the history
of the printer-publishers and from the transfer of the centres of book
production and distribution from the States which were under the direct
control of the Index regulations to territories in which the action of
censorship was less effective, or, as in Holland, non-existent.
The titles of the works utilised or cited as authorities from which
quotations have been made will be found in the bibliography. I have
thought it desirable, for the convenience of later students of the
subject, to include also in this bibliography the titles of certain
other important works having to do with the subject of censorship, from
which I did not have occasion or opportunity to make citations.
I desire to express special acknowledgment to Dr. Mendham, whose
_Literary Policy of the Church of Rome_ was published in London
in 1834. The author made a thorough study of such of the Roman and
Spanish Indexes as were within his reach, and he has been able to
throw no little light upon the methods adopted in Church censorship.
His vivacious treatise, which may be said fairly to bristle with
controversial opinions and conclusions, constitutes a curious
antithesis to the volumes of Reusch, who hardly permits himself to
connect with his comprehensive catalogues and records any opinions
whatsoever.
For matters connected with the Inquisition, the authorities are the
well-known _Histoire de l’Inquisition_ of Llorente, and the monumental
_History of the Inquisition of the Middle Ages_ by Henry C. Lea. The
first volume of Lea’s _History of the Inquisition in Spain_ comes
into publication just as my own work is completed. For the history of
the operations of the Church in Spain, operations which were largely
conducted under the authority of the Spanish Inquisition, I have,
however, been able to utilise Lea’s _Religious History of Spain_, which
for this division of the subject-matter is the book most frequently
cited. (In the Spanish chapters, in order to avoid the repetition of
the full title, the reference has been made simply to “Lea,” and is to
be understood as connected with the above volume.)
For matters connected with the book-trade and with the influence on
the work of the publishers of the regulations of the Index, the chief
citations are from Kapp’s _Geschichte des Deutschen Buchhandels_ and
from Putnam’s _Books and their Makers in the Middle Ages_.
The leading authority for the modern Catholic view of the literary
policy of the Church is the treatise on the Index by the Jesuit Father
Hilgers, which was published in Freiburg as recently as 1905, and which
is certainly a most forcible and effective example of controversial
writing.
A little volume by the Paulist Father Searle entitled _Plain Facts
for Fair Minds_, published in New York in 1895, is valuable for its
statement of the present policy of the Church in regard to the relation
of faith with science and as to the rightful influence of the authority
of the Church upon intellectual action.
A treatise by Charles Dejob, a French Catholic, which came into
print in Paris in 1885, has been found interesting for its effective
presentation of the Gallican point of view, both of the present date
and of the earlier centuries, in regard to controversial matters.
I have occasion to render a cordial personal acknowledgment to
the well-known scholar the Rev. Thomas J. Shahan, of the Catholic
University of America, for most friendly service and valuable
suggestions. I owe thanks also for friendly counsel received from the
Rev. A. A. Lambert, of the Paulist Fathers.
With the expectation that these volumes will be used chiefly for
purposes of reference, it has seemed desirable to arrange the material
according to the cyclopaedia method, under certain main headings
with sub-headings for the special divisions of each subject. Such an
arrangement involves, of necessity, some repetition, but it is hoped
that the convenience of securing for the presentation of each subject
division a larger measure of completeness, may outweigh the annoyance,
from the literary point of view, of an occasional reiteration.
G. H. P.
NEW YORK, October, 1906.
ERRATA.
_Page._ _Line._
XVIII. 27. _For_ Bibliotheca, _read_ Bibliothecae.
XXI. 24. „ erudita, „ eruditae
161. 28. „ Ferdinand, „ Ferdinandi
166. 23. „ Diologis, „ Dialogis
180. 3. „ Tridentinae, „ Tridentina
201. 32. „ Expurgatur, „ Expurgatae
201. 33. „ Prodierunt, „ Prodierint
217. 21. „ Selectissimum, „ Selectissimorum
236. 21. „ Imamorato, „ Inamorato
241. 15. „ Venito, „ Veneto
242. 2. „ Aliquot, „ Aliquod
242. 2. „ Placatum, „ Peccatum
242. 5. „ Indictis, „ in dictis
243. 9. „ Emendationis, „ Emendatioris
245. 13. „ Regularam, „ Regularum
252. 21. „ Hominis, „ Hominibus
253. 20. „ Dèque, „ Deque
268. 9. „ Indices, „ Indicis
290. 14. „ Expurgatae, „ Expurgati
290. 14. „ Permittentur, „ Permittuntur
292. 6. „ Fidelitas, „ Fidelitatis
292. 7. _After_ nunc, a _comma_.
292. 8. _For_ Principo, _read_ Principe
294. 2. „ Veribus, „ Viribus
299. 20. „ Indici, „ Indice
308. 22. „ Siu, „ Sui
320. 19. „ Sine, „ Sive
331. 35. „ Erasimana, „ Erasmiana
336. 4. „ Haes, „ Haec
345. 19. „ quorumdam „ quorundam
352. 5 and 12. „ Bailliet, „ Baillet
352. 13. „ Veritatum, „ Veritatem
CONTENTS
PAGE
PREFACE v
BIBLIOGRAPHY xvii
I.--INTRODUCTORY. THE INDEX AND CENSORSHIP 1
II.--CENSORSHIP IN THE EARLY CHURCH, 150–768 55
III.--PROHIBITIONS OF BOOKS IN THE MIDDLE AGES, 830–1480 64
IV.--BOOK REGULATIONS BEFORE THE INDEXES, 1450–1555 77
1. General, 1450–1560
2. England, 1526–1555
3. Netherlands, 1521–1550
4. France, 1521–1551
5. Spain, 1521–1551
6. Germany, 1521–1555
V.--PAPAL CENSORSHIP BEFORE THE INDEXES 108
1. Earlier Utterances concerning the Writings
of the Reformation, 1487–1521
2. The Bull _Coenae Domini_, 1364–1586
VI.--THE ROMAN INQUISITION AND THE CONGREGATION
OF THE INDEX 116
1. The Institution of the Roman Inquisition,
1542
2. Trials under the Inquisition in the 17th
Century
3. The Congregation of the Index, 1571
VII.--THE FIRST SERIES OF INDEXES, 1510–1559 140
1. Louvain, 1510
2. Paris, 1544
3. Venice, 1543
4. Louvain, 1546
5. Louvain, 1550
6. Lucca, 1545
7. Venice, 1549
8. Florence, 1552
9. Valentia, 1551
10. Valladolid, 1554
11. Venice, 1554
12. Louvain, 1558
13. Valladolid, 1559
14. Rome, 1559
VIII.--THE COUNCIL OF TRENT AND THE INDEX OF PIUS IV,
1564 180
IX.--CENSORSHIP REGULATIONS, 1550–1591 214
1. Papal Regulations, 1550–1591
2. Regulations in Bavaria, 1561–1582
3. Censorship under Pius V and Gregory XIII,
1570–1585
X.--INDEXES OF THE NETHERLANDS, SPAIN, AND ITALY,
1569–1588 226
1. Antwerp, 1569
2. Antwerp, 1570
3. Antwerp, 1571
4. Parma, 1580
5. Lisbon, 1581
6. Madrid, 1583
7. Toledo, 1584
8. Naples, 1588
XI.--ROMAN INDEXES AND DECREES, 1590–1661 243
1. Sixtus V, 1590
2. Clement VIII, 1596
3. Supplements to the Clementine Index,
1597–1609
4. Continuations of the Roman Indexes, 1600–1632
5. Brasichelli, _Index Expurgatorius_, 1607
6. Expurgations in the Roman Index, 1624–1640
7. Censorship Decrees
XII.--INDEXES AND PROHIBITIONS, SPANISH, ROMAN, BELGIAN,
PORTUGUESE, AND POLISH, 1612–1768 282
1612. Madrid, Sandoval
1617. Cracow, Szykowski
1624. Lisbon, Mascaregnas
1628. Papal Decrees re Poza
1632. Rome, Capsiferro
1632. Seville, Zapata
1640. Madrid, Sotomayor
1664. Rome, Alexander VII (see also Chapter
XIII)
1707. Madrid, Valladores
1714. Namur and Liège, Hannot
1747. Madrid, Prado
1790. Madrid, Cevallos
1793–1805. Madrid, Supplements to Cevallos
1559–1768. Examples of Spanish Prohibitions
XIII.--ROME. 1664. THE INDEX OF ALEXANDER VII AND
THE CONDEMNATION OF GALILEO 307
XIV.--DECREES AND INDEXES. FRENCH, BELGIAN, BOHEMIAN,
ROMAN, AND SPANISH, 1685–1815 317
1685. Paris. Decrees of Louis XIV
1695–1735. Belgian Indexes
1726–1767. Bohemian Indexes
1676–1800. Editions of Roman Indexes
1815. Madrid. Inquisitor-General
XV.--ERASMUS AND LUTHER IN THE INDEX 328
XVI.--THE JANSENIST CONTROVERSY AND THE BULL _Unigenitus_ 345
1. The Jansenist Controversy, 1641–1649
2. Quesnel and the Bull _Unigenitus_, 1671–1755
3. Controversial Writings on Theological
Morality, 1667–1730
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CENSORSHIP
CHAPTER I
INTRODUCTORY: THE INDEX AND CENSORSHIP
In any investigation of the development of literary production and of
the relations of the producers of books with the reading public, it is
necessary to give consideration to the influence exerted upon literary
activities, and upon the actual effectiveness of literature, by the
censorship and the restrictive measures instituted by the Church.
Church censorship may be said to have begun as early as 150, with an
edict issued by the Council of Ephesus, in which the _Acta Pauli_
(an unauthenticated history of the life of St. Paul) was condemned and
prohibited. During the centuries following, a number of similar edicts
or mandates were published by councils, by individual ecclesiastics,
and by civil officials acting at the instance of the authorities of
the Church, under which edicts the faithful were cautioned against the
pernicious influence of various works classed as heretical, and the
heretics who had been concerned in the production and circulation of
such writings were threatened with penalties ranging from confiscation
of property to imprisonment, excommunication, and death. A schedule of
these decrees and edicts will be found in a later chapter.
The revolution in the methods of the production and distribution of
literature brought about by the invention of printing in the middle of
the 15th century, had, as an immediate result, an enormous increase
in the influence upon the shaping of popular opinion of the written,
or rather of the printed word, that is, of thought in the form of
literature. The work of the printers was at first welcomed by the
rulers of the Church. They convinced themselves that the Lord had
placed at their disposal a valuable instrument for the spread of
sound doctrine and for the enlightenment of believers, and with this
conviction, they found funds for the support of a number of the early
printers and kept their presses employed in the production of works of
approved theological instruction.
It was in fact not until nearly three fourths of a century after
Gutenberg, when the leaders of the Reformation were utilising the
printing-presses of Wittenberg for the spread of the Protestant
heresies, that the ecclesiastics became aroused to the perils that the
new art was bringing upon the true faith and upon the authority of
the Church. If the people were to be protected against the insidious
influence of the new heresies, it was absolutely essential that
some system should be instituted under which the productions of the
printing-press could be supervised and controlled. The more active and
far-reaching the operations of the printers, the greater the necessity
for the watchful supervision of their work, and the greater at the same
time the difficulty in making such supervision complete and effective.
The requirement was met by the institution of a system planned to
permit no books to reach the public that had not been passed upon and
approved by ecclesiastical examiners appointed for the purpose. To
this end, the production and the circulation of any literature not
so approved were stamped as constituting a misdemeanour of the most
serious character, one that might, under certain circumstances, become
the final sin against the light, the offence against the Holy Ghost.
The German historian Pütter says[1]:
“As a result of the great facility brought about in the
production of books by the invention of printing, there came
to be anxiety on the part of the authorities lest teachings
destructive of religion or morality, or inimical to the
interests of the State, should be given to the public. On this
ground, the conclusion was in all countries promptly arrived
at that no production should be permitted to come into print
that had not been passed upon and approved by an officially
instituted censorship, and that no printing-offices should
be established excepting under proper license and effective
supervision.”
In 1559, the responsibility for the censorship of literature was first
assumed directly by the papal authority through the publication of
the _Index Auctorum et Librorum Prohibitorum_, of Paul IV, the
first of a long series of papal Indexes, aggregating, up to 1899,
forty-two in all. It does not appear to have been the intention either
of Pope Paul IV or of his successors that the responsibility for the
system of censorship should be retained under the exclusive direction
of the papal authorities, and I find no record of objections having
been raised to the publication of the Indexes prepared by such
representatives of the Church as the theological faculties of the
Universities of Louvain and of Paris, or by the Inquisition of Spain.
There were, however, very material differences between the lists as
shaped in Rome of works condemned as heretical and the similar lists
issued within the same period in Louvain, Paris, or Valladolid; books
of undoubted heresy included in one Index would fail to find place in
another, and it is difficult to arrive at any consistently followed
principle or policy by which the selections of the different compilers
were determined.
In the absence of any definite instruction to the contrary, it
might at first be assumed from the wording of the prohibitions that
any and all of the Indexes, published under the direction of such
ecclesiastical authorities as those specified, must have been intended
to be equally binding on all the faithful, irrespective of political or
ecclesiastical boundaries. We know, however, as a matter of history,
that, in the majority of cases, no attempt was made to enforce the
prohibitions of the Index outside of the territory of the State in
which it had been promulgated.
It is difficult to secure any trustworthy information as to the
precise range of the effectiveness of these prohibitions, but it seems
probable that the Roman Indexes were held to be in force outside of the
immediate territory of the Church only after they had been formally
accepted and promulgated by the authorities, ecclesiastical and
political, of the individual States, such as Spain, France, the Empire,
etc.
The Index of 1559 was, as stated, the first of the series of papal
Indexes; but as early as 1542, the Inquisition of Rome had promulgated
a special edict prescribing penalties for the reading of heretical or
of doubtful books, and in 1545 was published the first Italian list of
prohibited books and authors. In 1571, under Pope Pius V, the task of
compiling the papal Indexes was confided to a body organised under the
name of the Congregation of the Index, which is still (1906) carrying
on its work.
The work of the framers of these Roman Indexes exercised an important
influence even in the States in which the papal prohibitions had not
been officially published, as the titles collected for them were
largely utilised by the makers of the Indexes of Spain, France, and
Belgium; and in like manner, the material put into print in Louvain,
Paris, and Valladolid formed the basis of certain of the Roman lists.
A more authoritative position in regard to the work of censorship was
taken by the Papacy through the publication, in 1564, of the Tridentine
Index. This Index, as well through its formulation of the rules for
censorship, as because of the greater comprehensiveness of its lists,
constituted the most authoritative guide that had yet been issued.
The Tridentine Index was promulgated, under the authority of pope and
of council, throughout all the Catholic States and also in countries
in which the Catholic Church, while no longer the ruling power, still
possessed followers. It was printed in a long series of editions
issued from all the more important publishing centres of Europe; its
lists formed the basis of all subsequent Indexes, while its rules were
accepted as the guide for future censors and compilers. After the
Council of Trent, a wider and more assured recognition was given by
churchmen throughout the Catholic world (from which must, curiously
enough, be excepted Catholic Spain) to the authority of the Papacy,
acting through the Congregation of the Index, to retain the general
direction and control of the business of censorship.
In 1758, two centuries after the publication of the Tridentine
Index, was issued the Index of Benedict XIV, the lists in which
represented better bibliographical work than had previously been
attempted, and which was particularly important as representing what
may be called the last attempt of the Papacy to maintain any general
censorship of the world’s literature. The series of papal Indexes from
time to time has been continued, the latest bearing date 1899; but the
compilers of these later Indexes content themselves with repeating
the general rules or principles by which the reading of the faithful
should be guided, while the lists of current publications are limited
almost exclusively to works by Catholic writers, and chiefly to works
of a doctrinal character, the teachings of which are found to be in
one respect or another open to condemnation. The proportion of books
absolutely prohibited becomes smaller, the greater number of the
works cited being placed in the lists of _libros expurgandos_,
the reading of which is forbidden only until certain corrections or
eliminations have been made, _donec corrigatur_. The Index of 1884
and that of 1899 bring forward from the more important of the preceding
papal Indexes the titles of the most noteworthy of the works condemned
in these. No attempt, however, is made to condemn (except under general
rules and principles) the increasing lists of modern Protestant
doctrinal books, or to characterise or differentiate the great mass of
the world’s literature. The printing-press had outgrown the machinery
of ecclesiastical censorship.
During the centuries in which the censorship of the Church was active
and comprehensive, it must have exerted a very material influence
over the relations of authors with their public; the effectiveness of
literature as an intellectual force in directing or shaping public
opinion was assuredly not a little hampered and restricted, while the
value of literary productions as property was seriously lessened and,
in certain territories, entirely destroyed. It is evident that if
the production, the sale, and the possession of copies of a book are
prohibited, the work can possess no property value within the territory
throughout which such prohibition can be enforced. Its possibilities
as property are either cancelled altogether, in case the prohibition
can be made effective throughout the entire possible market, or are
lessened in the proportion in which such market has been curtailed.
In fact, in the cases in which, under the more extreme penalties of
a censorship system, the purchase or the possession of a copy of
a condemned work involved fine, imprisonment, or excommunication,
the work might be said to possess a negative in place of a positive
commercial value. The author, and others interested with the author,
in securing a circulation for the book, might even be imagined as
offering, if not a bonus, something in the nature of a guaranty against
risks, to those who would co-operate with them in the dangerous task of
distributing copies.
The other obstacles that have been noted as standing in the way of the
development of literary property had been negative in their character.
The lack of realisation on the part of the literary worker himself
that he was producing anything entitled to be classed as property;
the difficulty on the part of the reading public in arriving at the
conception that there could be property in anything not material,
in such an abstract entity as a right; the physical impossibility,
in advance of the invention of printing, of the multiplication of
copies of a literary production by any method that should preserve
for the author any control over the text of each copy, or any share
in the selling price of the same; the limitations of the territory
within which, after the era of printed books had begun, and after the
development of public opinion had brought a community to the point of
recognising the property rights of one of its own literary workers,
such recognition could be made effective; the fragmentary character and
necessary inadequacy of the system of local privileges; and finally the
lack, during a long series of years after the invention of printing, of
any adequate publishing machinery for making known to possible buyers
the existence of books, for distributing the copies, and for collecting
the amounts paid by the purchasers;--all these obstacles operated
against the possibility of securing for producers of literature such
protection under the law and such recognition for the results of their
labours as had, in all organised communities, been for centuries
assured for other classes of producers.
Against such obstacles and difficulties, the recognition of literary
productions as property and the actual commercial value of the labour
of literary workers had, through the first century of printing been
making an assured, though fitful and interrupted, progress. Early in
the 16th century, however, the rulers of the State and the authorities
of the Church began to find occasion for alarm at the increasing range
of influence of the printed word, and came to the conclusion that if
the community was not to be undermined by heretical, dangerous, and
demoralising opinions, measures must be taken to maintain supervision
and control over the production of books.
The interference on the part of the political rulers was fitful and
intermittent, and appears at no time to have arrived at the dignity
of a continued policy or system. In a number of States, while the
rulers continued to claim for themselves the exclusive control of
the printing-press (as was, for instance, the case with Spain,
France, and the Holy Roman Empire), they were willing to confide to
the ecclesiastics the selection of the books to be condemned and
prohibited. The actual work of censorship, at least in the countries
which remained Catholic, fell, therefore, more and more into the hands
of the Church, and was, as a result, carried on with reference to
the clerical standard of orthodoxy and morality, and to the clerical
theories of what was required for the welfare of the community.
In the series of the Indexes, the proportion of works of a purely
political character was small as compared with the long lists of books
which had been condemned on doctrinal grounds. It is in order, however,
to bear in mind, as a limitation of this statement, that during the
two centuries in which censorship was the most active and exerted the
largest influence upon intellectual development, say from 1550 to 1750,
the minds of men were directed more largely to doctrinal questions
than to political matters. It was not the State but the Church whose
authority and existence had been assailed and the contest was fought
out over creeds and not political platforms.
When, with the outbreak of the Reformation movement, it became apparent
how great a range of influence was possessed by the printed sheet, the
problem which confronted the authorities of the Church was certainly
serious in more ways than one. For the space of fifteen centuries, the
education of the people had remained almost exclusively under the
direction of the Church. The faithful believers (and the unbelievers
were but few) had accepted their entire intellectual sustenance at
the hands of the priests. The instruction given in the parish schools
instituted by the Church was almost entirely oral, although some use
was made of written alphabet tables and of written psalters with the
musical notations.
The instruction for those who took up higher branches of study,
students who were for the greater part destined for the Church, was
naturally, during the manuscript period, carried on by the priests, not
only because but few others possessed anything that could be called
scholarship, but also because it was only in the collections of the
monasteries (the _armaria_) that the requisite manuscripts could
be found. It is true that with the beginning of the 13th century, the
educational work of the earlier universities, such as Bologna, Paris,
and Oxford, begins to assume importance; but even in the universities,
outside of the faculties of law and of medicine, the direction of the
instruction was retained very largely in the hands of the Church, the
lecturers in the department of philosophy, for instance, being almost
exclusively ecclesiastics.
During the 13th century, there does come into existence a body of
scholarship which is outside of the Church, but it remains the case
that, up to the time of Luther, the great mass of the people had looked
to Rome, and to teachers acting under the authority of Rome, for its
light and leading, intellectual as well as religious. The association
of education and intellectual training with the Church is in fact
fairly indicated by the use of the term “cleric.”
In 1516, the leaders of the Reformation, in beginning their long
contest against the abuses of the Church of Rome, a contest which
soon developed into a fight for the complete overthrow of the
papal supremacy, promptly availed themselves of the power of the
printing-press. While the words spoken in the pulpit or in the
market-place could reach at best but a few hundred of hearers the
tracts poured forth from the Wittenberg presses, the “flying-leaves”
(_Flüg-schriften_), carried the teachings of Luther and Melanchthon
to many thousands, and it was through the influence of these “winged
words” (_epea pteroenta_) that the revolt developed into a revolution.
To the devout adherents of the Church of Rome, and particularly to
those to whom had been given the responsibility for its government
and for the spiritual guidance of its members, the situation, not
only during these earlier years of fierce strife against Protestant
heresies, but throughout the succeeding centuries, presented the
gravest difficulties. There is something almost pathetic in the long
series of attempts made by popes, councils, bishops, congregations, and
inquisitors to protect the souls of the faithful against the baneful
influence of the ever-increasing tide of literature that was pouring
forth from the various publishing centres, and so much of which was
calculated to lead men astray from the true doctrines and to bring them
into risk of everlasting perdition. To ecclesiastical rulers, honestly
holding such a conviction, there was, of course, but one duty. They
must use every means in their power to suppress the heresies, and to
warn and protect their flocks. What were the fortunes or even the lives
of a few evil-minded or devil-inspired printers and writers as compared
with the eternal hopes of the great masses of men? Nay! It was better
that the misguided reader himself should, by prompt and, if necessary,
extreme penalties, lose all that he had in this world, rather than that
he should be permitted, in continuing to absorb heresy and in spreading
its leprosy abroad, not only to sacrifice his own soul, but also to
undermine the faith of his fellow-men.
The action of the Church was, therefore, not only logical and
reasonable; it was the only course that was possible for an
organisation to which, as its rulers undoubtedly believed, the
Almighty had confided the care of the spiritual welfare of mankind.
The safety of the soul depended upon the nature of the intellectual
sustenance taken in, whether through the ears or through the eyes. All
literature or instruction in any form, spoken, written, or printed,
must, therefore, before reaching the understanding, be sifted under
the authority of an all-wise and infallible Church. The believer must
be protected against harm, the doubter must be recalled to the true
path, and the heresies and the heretics must alike be exterminated.
While it was only after the active propaganda work of the Reformers
of Wittenberg had made clear the perils of the printing-press that
any general system of censorship was attempted, there had been, as
pointed out, instances of prohibited books centuries before the time of
Gutenberg. An heretical utterance in manuscript form was a restricted
or manageable evil, in that its influence was limited to the small
circle of clerics and could not, at least directly, reach the masses.
It was, however, none the less an evil which it was the duty of the
Church to condemn and to repress.
The record of the Index is also to be considered as an important
contribution to the history of literature. Thomas James, whose treatise
on the _Index Generalis Librorum Prohibitorum_ was printed
at Oxford in 1627, says in his preface that his book is addressed
particularly to the curators of the Bodleian Library to whom it should
serve as a guide concerning the works which it was particularly
desirable to collect and to preserve; only the curators must be sure to
secure the earlier and, therefore, unexpurgated editions. Bishop Barlow
writes that he has found the
“_Indices Expurgatorii_ invaluable as records of the literature
of the doctrines and opinions obnoxious to Rome.... Their
_Indices Expurgatorii_ are very good common-place books and
repertories (for that use we make of them) by help of which we
may presently find what any author by them censured has uttered
against the vulnerable parts of the Catholic system. In these
_Indices_ we are directed to the book, chapter, and line where
anything is spoken against any superstition or error of Rome; so
that he who has the _Indices_ cannot want testimonies against
Rome.”[2]
Reusch points out that the Indexes have preserved the record and
the purport of not a few works of interest and importance, the very
existence of which would otherwise have been lost sight of. It is also
the case that the Index lists have preserved the titles of a number of
works of comparatively trivial importance, which, if they had not been
fortunate enough to secure the condemnation of the Church, would have
fallen still-born from the press.
It was the practice, in making condemnation of books either through
a general Index or under a separate decree, to order destroyed
such copies of the condemned books as could be collected, and this
destruction was, as a rule, done by fire. In the record of censorship,
there are, however, a number of instances of books which had received
the honour of a special condemnation for burning, the titles of which
had not appeared in any Index issued by the Church or in any separate
papal or diocesan decree. The books so recorded were, with hardly
an exception, condemned under civil authority. The writers who have
brought together records of books condemned to be burned (of whom
Peignot is perhaps the most important) give, under the same general
heading, titles of books selected from the Index, books condemned
under special decrees of the Church, and works which had fallen under
the censorship of the civil authorities. As will be noticed in the
later chapters, the special emphasis given to the importance of a book
through the burning of copies in a public place, constituted a valuable
advertisement and usually extended its influence.
The history of the Index may be divided into two main periods. The
first begins, as far as the papal censorship is concerned, in 1559,
with the publication of the _Index Auctorum et Librorum_, prepared
under the instructions of Paul IV, and closes with the end of the
16th century, with the issue of the final appendices to the Index of
the Council of Trent. During this period, the chief and almost the
only subject-matters considered are the great questions raised by the
Reformation. In the second period, which closes with the Index of
Benedict XIV, issued in 1758, the controversies turn, as indicated by
the character of the works placed on the lists, on issues of doctrine,
opinion, and conduct arising within the Church itself. The writers
whose works are condemned during this period are for the most part
ecclesiastics of the Church.
The work done during the 19th century by the Congregation of the Index
may be said to belong to a third or modern period, in which, as
will be noted later, the censorship over literature and the literary
instruction for the faithful has for the most part taken the form
of statements of general principles in place of detailed lists of
pernicious books. The attempt to characterise the mass of the world’s
literature has been abandoned and the comparatively few titles named
are (with a few curious exceptions) those of doctrinal works emanating
from within the Church itself and the errors in which are, therefore,
likely to mislead believers.
It is to be borne in mind further in connection with the general
division of periods suggested by Reusch, that while the greater portion
of the work of the Index was carried on under the direct supervision of
the popes, a long series of Indexes were issued by authorities acting
independently of the Papacy, such as the Inquisition of Spain, the
theological faculty of the University of Paris, the theological faculty
of the University of Louvain, and other bodies.
The first Index, in point of date, of the long series, was in fact
issued not in Rome but in Paris, the second and third in Louvain,
the fourth in Valladolid, etc. The several dates will be given in
the schedules presented later. It is also noteworthy that, while the
papal Indexes were of course in form binding on the entire Church and
throughout all the States classed as Catholic, they were not actually
put into force in the several States unless or until they had been
accepted and confirmed by the respective rulers; and, as a fact, a
number of the papal Indexes were never so accepted either in France
or in Spain. The Church of Spain, acting through the Inquisition,
undertook to carry on an independent system of literary censorship and
of literary repression. The inquisitors condemned a number of works
which do not appear in the Roman lists, and declined to condemn not
a few books which had in Rome been classed as pernicious. A similar
course was taken by the Gallican Church, whose censorship was carried
on by commissions of ecclesiastics acting under the direct authority of
the Crown.
A necessary result of the condemnation of books by a number of
authorities was a large measure of confusion in regard to the status
of a number of books and of not a few authors. A faithful believer,
who was fully prepared to accept in regard to literature the guidance
of the authorities, may well have had cause for perplexity in finding
condemned and prohibited by one pope the works of an author whose
writings had received the special commendation of another, or in
being prohibited in Madrid from reading books which were permitted or
even recommended in Rome. In not a few instances, Indexes which had
been issued in regular course with the papal sanction were themselves
prohibited from being printed or promulgated in Spain, in France, in
Germany, or even in places as near to the papal seat as Venice.
During the period before the Council of Trent, the work of the
compilers of the Roman Indexes was chiefly based upon the Indexes
which had originated in Spain or in the Netherlands, while there is,
as said, occasionally ground for perplexity at the absence from the
Roman lists of works of undoubted heresy which had been duly condemned
by the censors of Valladolid or Louvain. It is not easy to understand
why the Papacy, having recognised the necessity for the exercise of
control over literary production, and over the operations of the
printing-press, should have permitted the system of Indexes to be
initiated anywhere but in Rome, and should have further permitted,
apparently without reprimand or protest, so large a proportion of the
long series of Indexes to be compiled and published by ecclesiastics
who, while claiming to be defending the true faith and to be carrying
out the policy of the Church, were not acting under the direct
supervision or authority of Rome. Independent action in such an
all-important matter as the direction of public opinion as expressed
through printed literature might have been considered a dangerous
precedent and undoubtedly did constitute an important factor in
strengthening the separate authority of the State churches of Spain and
of France.
Joseph Mendham finds in the Indexes the literary policy and the
doctrinal policy of the Church of Rome. He writes:
“The Indexes issued by the Church of Rome may be regarded
as a grand Index of the sentiment, spirit, and policy of an
ecclesiastical empire, claiming with the most critical exactness
the terrific appellation of the Mystery of Iniquity.
“To no power but modern Rome is equally applicable the encomium
of the poet on the ancient:
_Tu regere imperio populos, Romane, memento;
Hae tibi erunt artes; passisque imponere morem:
Parcere subjectis et debellare superbos._
Aen. VI, 852.
“The other class of Indexes, the expurgatory, contains a
particular examination of the works specified and indicates
the passages condemned to be expunged or altered. For these
Expurgatory Indexes, publicity was so little desired that it
was the chief thing guarded against.... The copies were intended
for the possession and inspection only of those to whom they
were necessary for the execution of their provisions.... It was
not thought desirable that the dishonest dealings of the writers
of these censures should be known either to the authors who were
injured and who would thus have an opportunity of justifying
themselves, or to readers whose judgment must in many instances
be at variance with that of the censors.”[3]
The framers of the several expurgatory Indexes found themselves
occasionally under the necessity of censuring and correcting the works
of writers accepted as the Fathers of the Church. Mendham gives an
example, from the Roman Index of Brasichelli, of a condemnation of
certain propositions printed by Robert Estienne, which propositions
are, he says, direct citations from the Fathers. Mornay, in his edition
of the Spanish Index of 1601, presents a list of similar condemnations
or expurgations of the texts of the writings of the Fathers themselves.
The propositions which, naturally enough, came under this condemnation
are those which appear to present grounds for the doctrine of
justification by faith and those which enforce the importance of the
injunction against the worship of images. The Jesuit Gretser, in
apologising for the action of the Church in the case of Bertram’s book,
makes the following interesting argument:
“Although Bertram be prohibited, I deny that a Father is
prohibited, for that one can properly be called a Father of
the Church who feeds and nourishes to the faithful salutary
doctrine, who being placed over the family of the Lord, gives it
in due season its portion of the corn. If, therefore, instead
of the food of salutary doctrine and the portion of corn, he
offered and distributed cockles and tares and the burrs and
briars of perverse doctrines, so far from being a Father he is
but a stepfather, not a doctor but a seductor.”[4]
In another page, Gretser writes: “Who, therefore, is so stupid as not
to recognise that the Church or the sovereign pontiff, while he reviews
the lucubrations of his sons, and wherein he corrects these, performs a
service grateful to the authors and a work useful to posterity.”[5]
It is a natural inference from the assumption by the Church of the
responsibility of indicating in the Index lists the books which are
on one ground or another pernicious and which require important
corrections, that the further responsibility is assumed of approving
by implication the books not thus condemned or not corrected through
expurgation. While it is the case that the Church has never admitted
this responsibility, the contention is one which has often been raised
and which does not appear to have been answered. If the books that
are not condemned by the Index are considered as having been approved
or even sanctioned by the Church, it would follow that the authority
in the Church from which the Indexes emanate could be understood to
approve and to sanction those doctrines or assertions from the writers
within the fold of the Church which these condemning decrees have
failed to proscribe or to expurgate. Such a contention does not appear,
however, to be really well founded when we bear in mind the necessary
limitations, even in the earlier years of the work of the Index, of the
facilities possessed by the examiners in passing upon publications
originating in various countries and not always even printed in the
common ecclesiastical language. The criticism presents, however, one of
the most serious difficulties attending the assumption by the Church
of this responsibility for the control of literary productions, even
though this control be limited to the writings of members of the Church
itself.
The Indexes were certainly utilised, and were intended to be utilised,
as instruments for the suppression of heresy and for the maintenance
of true doctrine as interpreted by the rulers of the Church. The
chaplain of Philip II of Spain (Alphonso de Castro) has declared that
in his opinion the purification of Spain from heretics was due to the
fact that in Spain and in Spain alone the prohibition of heretical
literature was effectively enforced. The continued prevalence of
heresies in other countries, even in such Catholic States as France,
Italy, and South Germany, was, in the opinion of Castro, due to the
lack of effectiveness in enforcing the purification of literature.[6]
It is the inference of Mendham that the effect referred to by Castro
was due not to the simple prohibitions of the Index but to the
enforcing of these prohibitions under the thorough-going methods of
the Inquisition. Cardinal Pallavicino has assigned the preservation
of Italy from the infection of presumed heresy to the activity of the
Inquisition and particularly to the work done both by the Inquisition
and the Index of the Congregation in suppressing heretical literature.
He speaks as if there had been serious risk, in the absence of
persistent efforts of this kind, that Italy itself might embrace the
Reformation.[7]
Mendham, who writes always as a bitter controversialist, is of opinion
that the expurgatory Indexes, and the expurgatory work done quietly
without the use of Indexes, were utilised so as to modify in the later
editions the text of the writings of the Fathers and of the earlier
authorities of the Church, in the respects in which this text did not
appear to give consistent support to the accepted doctrine of the
later Church, or in which words were used by the authors which could
be interpreted and which had been interpreted in support of heresies.
It is not practicable, without a careful textual comparison of the
“orthodox” and approved editions of the Fathers with the editions of
earlier date and with those which the Church censors found occasion to
condemn, to say how far there may be any foundation for this severe
arraignment. Mendham goes on to suggest that it had been the hope of
the Church gradually to replace the former and original editions of
books of this class with the editions approved by the Church.
“In this way, the mouth of antiquity should be thoroughly shut
up and prevented from uttering any syllable or sound against
the doctrines of the later Church.... By the addition of words
where opportunity and pretence might serve, and by drawing the
marginal notes and glosses of their friars into the texts of
the Fathers (as has already been handsomely begun with certain
texts) the mouth of antiquity should also be opened for them
(the present leaders of the Church). There remained then only
the rectifying of St. Paul and of the other scriptural writers
whose authority being already set beneath that of the Church,
it were not such great matter to submit it also to her gentle
and moderate censures; especially for so good an intent as the
weeding out of heresies and the preserving of the faith Catholic
in her purity and glory.”[8]
Panzer makes reference[9] to an Index printed in Louvain as early as
1510. The title is recorded as follows:
_Die Cathlogen of inventargen van den Quaden verboden bouken: na
advis der Universiteyt van Louen. Met een edict of Mandement der
Keyserlicken Majesteyt. Te Louen geprint bej Sewaes van Sassen.
MCCCCCX. 4^o._
No copy of an Index of this date was known (1897) in the British
Museum, and it is not referred to by Reusch. Knapp, in his scheme for a
History of the Index, is in accord with Reusch in making that of Paris
of 1544 the earliest. It seems probable that Panzer has been misled as
to the date of the Flemish Index.
The series of Indexes is understood, therefore, to begin with the
middle of the 16th century (that is, a century after the invention
of printing), but from the earliest years of the organised Church,
attempts had been made from time to time to protect the faithful
against the pernicious influence of heretical writings, by the
destruction of the copies and by the punishment of the writers when
these were within reach of the strong arm of the Church and when they
refused to be convinced of their errors.
A number of the editions of the Roman Indexes, as for instance that of
1819, bear as their motto: “Many of them also which used curious arts
brought their books together, and burned them before all men” (Acts
xix, 19); while on others was printed a head-piece engraved on copper,
representing the believers burning their books of magic. The example,
however, of these early converts, under the influence of the eloquence
of Paul, bringing of their own free will, to be destroyed, books the
teachings of which were believed to be incompatible with the doctrines
of Christianity, does not constitute a fairly logical precedent for the
later practice of the Church in punishing by excommunication and in
other ways those who continued to read books condemned as heretical.
Throughout the Middle Ages, there are a number of examples of
prohibitions, emanating from various authorities, and applying
sometimes to single books or individual authors, and sometimes to
groups. It is not likely that during the manuscript period, the
duplication or reading of the books denounced was seriously affected,
except in the immediate locality in which the prohibition was issued.
These earlier attempts at censorship possess interest chiefly as
indications of the ecclesiastical policy and of the varying standards
of different periods and of different places, and also because the
titles of the works selected for condemnation were in part utilised by
the compilers of the Indexes.
A “Directory” of heresy was prepared early in the 16th century
by Nicholas Eymeric of Cologne, under the title of _Directorium
Inquisitorium_. This was reprinted in Venice in 1607, _cum commentariis
Francisci Pegnae_. This Directory was, says Reusch, utilised by Bernard
Lutzenburg as the basis for his _Catalogus Haereticorum_,--Catalogue
of Heretics,--first issued in 1522. In these two lists have been
preserved the names of a number of persons classed as heretics, of
whose books there is no record, and who may possibly even never have
written anything, or at least never have brought anything into print.
The Lutzenburg Catalogue was utilised in the compilation of the Index
of Paul IV.
After the middle of the 13th century, the papal condemnations of
specific books frequently included the specification of names of the
examiner or examiners, usually one or more of the cardinals. We have
here the beginnings of the body that became later the Congregation of
the Index.
In 1256, in a Bull issued by Alexander IV against a tractate of William
of Saint-Amour, of Paris, the Pope says that his action is based upon
the report of four cardinals, to whom had been confided the task of
examining the work. All copies are ordered to be burnt within eight
days, under penalty of excommunication. Saint-Amour’s essay presents a
very unfavourable picture of the condition of the Church of the times,
and is especially sharp in its strictures upon the newly instituted
mendicant orders. After the beginning of the series of official
Indexes, the list of works concerning which the judgment of the
Church was reversed under the authority of the different popes, or of
successive councils, becomes considerable, and may easily have proved a
perplexity to faithful believers who were prepared to accept as a final
guide the infallible authority of the Church.
Before the close of the 12th century, there appear to have been no
attempts on the part of the Church to restrict the reading of the
Scriptures, or the distribution of the manuscript copies of the
Scriptural books. During the 13th century, several of the synods held
in France issued prohibitions of the use or circulation of versions in
the vernacular of the Scriptural books, with the exception only of the
Psalms. A similar prohibition was enacted for popular versions of any
doctrinal or theological writings. The Church was gradually developing
the procedure, finally formulated as a general policy, under which
laymen were to be forbidden reading either the Scriptures or works of
doctrine except under the immediate direction of the ecclesiastical
authorities.
Between the years 1239 and 1320, a series of orders were issued by
successive popes, beginning with Gregory IX, for the destruction of
copies of the _Talmud_.[10] In the first portion of the 16th century,
a more tolerant view was taken by the papal authorities in regard to
the preservation of the literature and the learning of the Hebrews; but
Julius III and his immediate successors again ordered the destruction
of the _Talmud_. The work is also included in the first of the official
Indexes, that of Paul IV. In the Tridentine Index, the previous
prohibitions are relaxed, but under Clement VIII the _Talmud_ was once
more condemned.
The whole business of the supervision of literature and the control of
opinion was of necessity very materially modified by the invention of
printing. It was at first assumed that the control of literature by
the Church would be strengthened by the new method of book production.
The ecclesiastical authorities decided that no books should be printed
excepting under their own supervision, and if there had been any
effective means of carrying out such a decision, the printing-press
would speedily have become a mere means of expression of Church
doctrine and Church policy.
The multiplying of the printing-presses and the development of
machinery for the distribution of the copies of the printed books,
together with the rapid increase in the public demand for such books,
speedily, however, rendered impracticable the effort on the part of
the Church to retain the control of book production.
The Louvain Index of 1546 was, as will be noticed in the later summary
of the Indexes, followed by several Spanish Indexes which were for the
most part compiled and issued under the direction of the Inquisition,
and during the succeeding centuries, the general control of the
censorship throughout the dominions of Spain remained in the hands
of the Inquisition. There was, in such an arrangement, one manifest
advantage; the authority that determined the offence was the same as
that which put into force the penalties that had been prescribed. As a
result of this identity between the power that judged and condemned,
and the power that carried the condemnation into effect, the censorship
was effective throughout Spanish dominions to an extent which was never
reached under any censorship machinery that was put into force in other
States. A book that was condemned in Spain did actually pass out of
existence, as far, at least, as Spanish territory was concerned, and a
similar fate occasionally befell the author. The copies that had been
printed were destroyed, and the printing or circulation of further
copies was too perilous an undertaking to be ventured upon.
If the Inquisition had been in a position to carry on throughout
Europe, or even throughout the Catholic States, a censorship as
effective as that put into force in Spain, the extermination of books
would have been so considerable that there would have been brought
about a serious break between the literatures of the centuries.
In France, the censorship was exercised in a more fitful and less
consistent manner. The Indexes originating in France were for the most
part compiled, under the authority of the Crown, by the theologians of
the Sorbonne. Books were, however, from time to time condemned under
the direct supervision of the royal chancellor.
It is to be borne in mind also that a refusal on the part of the
chancellor to issue a royal privilege for a book served to prevent its
publication, at least in France (the edition must as a rule have been
printed before the examination of copies by the royal censors could be
made), and was, therefore, practically identical with a prohibition.
The title of such an unprivileged and therefore unpublished work would
as a rule not find its way into the lists of the French Index. The
extent of the repression or restriction of literary activity can,
therefore, not be fully measured by the number of titles on the lists
of works prohibited.
It was unquestionably the case that the censorship had a very material
influence in discouraging the production of literature, an influence
that might be classed as an indirect damage to the intellectual
development of the community. While the fact of such interference
in a country like Spain in which the provisions of the censorship
were, under the Inquisition, enforced with strictness and often with
severity, is fully established, there can of course be no data for
ascertaining the extent of the loss.
It is easy to understand that if an instructor in one of the Spanish
universities got into trouble with the Inquisition in bringing into
print a series of lectures, he would, in the majority of cases, have
kept his later studies or conclusions in the safer form of manuscript.
It is probable also that his associates on the faculty, or the students
who had followed his work, would in great part be deterred from
pressing their studies to a logical conclusion. Not only would the
books not be printed or even completed, but the lectures themselves,
on subjects that had once been stamped by the Church as pernicious,
would be stopped. The Inquisition was in a position to put an end to
any courses of study or lines of investigation that it found reason to
disapprove, and the record shows that it did not neglect the exercise
of its authority to such end.
In like manner, if the business of a printer-publisher had been broken
up or seriously hampered through penalties imposed for the crime of
circulating literature found deserving of condemnation, it is very
certain that such dealer, if continuing in business at all, would have
reason to avoid taking in the future any such undesirable risks, and
his competitors in the book-trade would wish to be equally conservative
in the selection or acceptance of books for their own presses.
Apart even from the cases of books which had been condemned as
heretical, and which had involved in their condemnation the authors,
the printers, and the booksellers, the whole system of censorship
constituted with its delays, its interference, and its fees or charges,
a very heavy burden upon the business of printing and selling books.
The details of the methods employed by the censors will be referred to
in a later chapter. Their operations, were, of course, not confined
to the supervision of books printed in Spain or prepared for the
Spanish press. An elaborate system of inspection was instituted for
books ordered by booksellers or by individuals from other countries.
Large numbers of these foreign publications were destroyed in the
customs-houses, while in other cases, as a milder judgment, the
supplies were refused admission and had to be returned to the shippers.
As a result, the business of importing books could hardly be made
profitable, and at times became dangerous. It is not surprising that,
in the face of such difficulties and under the hampering influence
of such burdens, the book-trade of Spain, during the three centuries
following the date of the first Spanish Index, was attenuated and
insignificant, and as compared with that of France, Germany, or the Low
Countries, played but an inconsiderable part in the community. It is in
fact difficult to understand how under these exceptional conditions,
any printer-publishers or booksellers should have been able to maintain
an existence.
In Italy, also, the publishers and booksellers worked during these
centuries under similar difficulties, but there were mitigating
circumstances. The Inquisition was able to retain in its hands only
a partial control of the censorship, while outside of the papal
States its authority was not infrequently set at naught. In fact, in
Venice, for a large portion of this period (to use a phrase of a later
century), the writs of the Inquisition “did not run,” an exemption
which was by no means the least of the several factors combining to
make Venice a centre of book-production. The division of the Peninsula
into a number of states or principalities was an important influence in
maintaining for the printer-publishers some measure of independence,
as the undertakings that were stopped or interfered with in one State
could, with no insuperable difficulties, be carried across the nearest
boundary and brought to completion in another. A further influence
serving to secure protection for the printing-press, and to promote
its activity, was the personal interest on the part of many of the
Italian princes in intellectual pursuits and in literary production,
an interest that caused them to compete with each other for the
possession of scholars and to offer special advantages to enterprising
printer-publishers, and which made them frequently willing, for the
sake of the literary prestige of their States, to brave the disfavour
of the ecclesiastical authorities. In Italy, therefore, while the
production and distribution of books was frequently interfered with
by the operations of the Congregation or by the Inquisition, it is
probable that (at least outside of the papal States) the actual
detriment caused by the censorship to intellectual interests was by no
means as great as, from the long list of mandates, prohibitions, and
penalties, might at first be inferred.
In France, the conditions which opposed and those which favoured the
freedom of the press differed in several respects from those which
obtained in Spain or in Italy. We have here to deal with a central
government whose authority over a fairly homogeneous territory was
for the greater part of the periods under consideration not seriously
questioned. The literary and publishing interests of the kingdom
were centred in the capital, and in fact, with the single exception
of Lyons, there were, outside of Paris, no publishing centres of
importance. The literary policy of the Church, expressed through the
theological faculty of the Sorbonne, could, therefore, conveniently
be brought to bear very directly upon the operations of the Paris
book-trade, the organised guild of which itself formed part of the
university. Finally, the authority of the Crown, acting through
the royal courts or directly through the chancellor, was, in form
at least, available for putting into effect any measures for the
supervision or restriction of literature with which the administration
might find itself, in accord. Notwithstanding, however, this
apparent completeness of the supervising machinery, the book-trade
of Paris was able to retain a very large measure of independence,
and its contributions to the literary productions of Europe were,
notwithstanding the censorship, of continued importance. Several
influences worked in its favour. The divines of the Sorbonne and the
leaders of the Gallic Church, while often actively opposed to scholarly
undertakings, were by no means prepared simply to register and to
execute the censorship decrees of the authorities of Rome. No Roman
Indexes were accepted as binding upon believers in France unless or
until they had been formally approved by the French Church and had been
put into effect by the authorities of the State. With an occasional
exception, such as that of the Index of the Council of Trent, the
Gallican censors preferred to frame their own Indexes and to adapt
these to the requirements and conditions of their own country.
The State was still less ready than the Church to accept as
authoritative instructions emanating from Rome in regard to the
character of the books that should be produced or should be permitted
in France. Successive kings took the ground that the final authority
in regard to censorship was vested in the State, that is to say in the
Crown. The divines of the Sorbonne were instructed or permitted to
pass upon the applications for privileges for books belonging to the
department of theology, but even for these, their dicta were not always
accepted and (as in the case of the Bibles of Estienne) were sometimes
entirely set aside by the Crown.
And finally, the University of Paris, for centuries the most
important in Europe, contended through a long series of years that
the supervision and control of the book-trade of the kingdom was
a university matter, and it succeeded for a series of years, with
occasional exceptions and set-backs, in maintaining this contention
very largely until, with the gradual extension of the powers of the
Crown, the direction of censorship and of privileges had been, with
nearly all other divisions of government, brought directly under royal
authority.
More than one scholar has been quoted as saying that the intellectual
life and development of Europe during the centuries between 1556 and
1800 could be traced by the lists of condemned books, and that these
books would in themselves constitute a fairly complete library for the
thoughtful student. There might be ground for complaint that, owing to
the remissness or ignorance of the censors, the lists included titles
of a number of works not valuable enough to deserve condemnation, and
omitted many of real value and continued importance. Irrespective of
such inconsiderable exceptions in one direction or another, there can,
I judge, be no question that a very large proportion, one may say by
far the largest proportion, of the world’s literature that stood for
intellectual activity and insight, literature which expressed the
conclusions of the greatest minds of their several generations, and
which stood for the development and the civilisation of the community
itself, had been placed by the Church in the Index of condemned and
prohibited books. Comparatively few of these books of light and
leading had been omitted (and those apparently through inadvertence)
and comparatively few books had been included which, apart from any
questions of heresy or pernicious doctrine, would, under a standard
not theological, be classed as dangerous or unwholesome for the
community. In fact, the service of the Index in suppressing or in
discouraging books _contra bonos mores_ may be characterised as
unimportant.
I have referred to the service to literature and to the intellectual
development of mankind (a service none the less important because it
was so entirely unintended) brought about through the action of the
Church in preparing Indexes that served to chronicle the books of the
thinkers and thus to preserve and extend their teachings. It is natural
to enquire to what extent this service was offset by the interference
with literary production and distribution caused by the burdens of
censorship and by the repressive measures of the inquisitors and other
censors. To such an enquiry there can be no very satisfactory answer.
The materials or data for any precise calculation do not exist. In the
chapter on the Index and the Book-trade, I have however presented such
general data as I have been able to secure concerning the effect of the
censorship regulations upon the operations in different States of the
printer-publishers and the booksellers.
It is evident that the extent of the influence of the system is not
to be measured by the number of books condemned after publication
or after being put into type. It is probable that the restrictions
and detriments placed in the way of literary production constituted
a more important influence on the intellectual life and development
of the people than the cancellation or expurgation of books that had
already come into existence. These latter might be reprinted, and to
a considerable extent were reprinted, in other countries, in which
case their authors would be able to feel that their work had not been
altogether without results. But the influence of the writers who were
deterred from writing, and of the lecturers who were afraid to continue
to speak, was lost not only for their own community but for their own
development, unless, as from time to time happened, they preferred
banishment to repression and silence. Whether the leaders of thought
were expatriated or were silenced, the effect in the home country on
the university centres and on the so-called educated circles was the
same.
At the very time when in Italy, France, Germany, and the Low Countries
the intellectual activities were greater than ever before known, and
minds working in new directions of research were expressing themselves
in varied and suggestive literary productions, scholarship in Spain
had been confined in a few fixed channels, its expression had become
stilted and reiterative, and the literature of thought, imagination,
and opinion had almost disappeared. It would be interesting to
ascertain whether an intelligent Romanist of to-day, who believed
conscientiously in the necessity, or at least in the wisdom, of
ecclesiastical censorship, would be prepared to accept as satisfactory
the results of such a system in the one country in which it had been
carried on with any measure of consistency and thoroughness.
It must at the same time be borne in mind that this censorship was not
imposed upon Spain by an authority from without. The power of Rome
was never applied, either in regard to literature or to other matters
controlled by the Church, with greater strenuousness or severity in
Spain than in France or in Italy itself. In fact, whether from choice
or from necessity, the direction of the affairs of the Church of Spain,
and the regulation of the discipline of its members, were left by the
Papacy to be controlled by the Spanish ecclesiastics themselves. The
Inquisition, as organised in Spain, was the creation of Spaniards and,
with hardly an exception, the inquisitors who during the centuries in
question carried on its work were Spanish in birth and in training.
The policy of placing in the hands of the Inquisition the creation
and the administration of a system of censorship of literature, and
the responsibility for the preparation of the Indexes, is one for
which the rulers of the kingdom, acting naturally under the influence
of their spiritual advisers, must be held directly responsible. The
ecclesiastics succeeded in convincing not one but successive Kings
of Spain that for the safety and welfare of the community literature
and education, higher as well as elementary, must be placed under the
supervision of the Church.
A further responsibility, however, for this abandonment to
ecclesiastical control of the intellectual life of the community
must rest with the people themselves. If the literary productions
of Spain were restricted and hampered to the point of crushing out
altogether, if the men of active minds were banished or made dumb, if
the business of the printer-publishers was brought to a close, and if
the few enterprising readers who, notwithstanding the instructions
of their confessors, might still venture to interest themselves in
current literature, were obliged to depend for their supplies upon the
chance of securing copies of the prohibited books smuggled in with
bales of merchandise, it was because the people of Spain had decided
for themselves that such methods were necessary for their spiritual
safety. It may well be a matter of surprise that, under the conditions
of censorship obtaining during the 16th and 17th centuries, it should
have been possible to bring into existence any such national literature
as that which is described by Ticknor and other historians. With a
censorship which, in form at least, differed very little in the several
great Catholic States of Europe, the fact that the Spaniards were
willing to accept and to give obedience to a series of regulations, of
penalties, and of prohibitions such as it proved to be impossible to
enforce in Italy, in France, or in Germany, is evidence of some special
quality in the Spanish nature.
In Italy, the fulminations of the Church in regard to heretical or
dangerous literature were, in form at least, as severe in their
penalties and as sweeping in their prohibitions as those which emanated
from the inquisitors in Spain. There appears, however, to have been
no period during which there was any consistent consecutive system
applied throughout the entire Italian peninsula in carrying out the
regulations that had been formulated by the Inquisition of Rome
or by the Congregation of the Index. The successive papal Indexes
were produced at considerable and very varying intervals. There is
no evidence in the series of these Indexes of any definite policy
in regard to the terms of years to be covered or the extent or the
classes of the literature which was to be considered. From time to
time, as successive popes assumed the papal chair, there would come
one possessing a larger measure of literary interests or a clearer
perception of the influence of literature upon the religious conditions
of the community. Instructions would then be given for the production
of a new papal Index, the lists in which would include, in addition to
the more important of the titles in the preceding Indexes, the works of
the later period the use of which was to be forbidden.
As will be made clear in the detailed record of the papal Indexes,
the attempt was made but once in Rome to produce an _Index
Expurgatorius_. The popes and the members of the Congregation,
who had the immediate responsibility for the work, appear to have
shrunk from a task with which the Spanish inquisitors had charged
themselves without hesitancy, namely the reshaping of books which had
already come into circulation and influence, in such manner as to
eliminate heretical passages or expressions which might in any way
conflict with sound doctrine. The fact that through such eliminations
and interpolations the purpose and character of the work might be
materially altered and the author might be made responsible for
utterances or opinions which were not his own, or the further fact
that through any such reshaping the literary form, and sometimes even
the actual sense of the narrative, was practically sacrificed, did not
trouble the minds of the revisers selected by the Spanish inquisitors.
The effectiveness of the prohibitions and regulations instituted
in Rome by the Congregation of the Index varied materially in the
different Italian States. The printer-publishers of Rome were naturally
obliged to give respect to the papal ordinances concerning literature,
but even in Rome itself it was usually not difficult to secure through
the booksellers, in Venetian, Florentine, or foreign editions, copies
of prohibited books. It was in Venice that, as far at least as the
territory of Italy was concerned, the smallest measure of attention was
paid to the prohibitions of the Roman Index. The contest instituted,
about 1580, by Paolo Sarpi against the authority of Rome to control
the printing-presses of Venice, was not the beginning but really the
culmination of a long series of active protests on the part not only of
the printers, but of the government of the republic itself. In fact,
the conflict in which Sarpi took place as leader was brought about
immediately by a renewal of attempts on the part of the Curia to secure
for Rome the control of censorship in Venice.
In the Catholic States of South Germany, the record of the censorship
of Rome is very similar to that which has been noted in the case of the
Italian States. There were times in which very strenuous censorship
regulations were issued, under the authority of either emperor or
prince, in such cities as Vienna, Basel, Nuremberg, Frankfurt, etc. The
immediate result of such ordinances was to check the operations and to
curtail the undertakings of the local printers, but the effect on the
final circulation of the books condemned was but inconsiderable.
In France, the prohibitions of the papal Indexes and the censorship
regulations instituted by the Roman Congregation of the Index were not
accepted as binding unless and until they had been confirmed by the
rulers of the Gallic Church, and there were but few instances in which
the French bishops attempted to take action in regard to censorship
excepting under instructions emanating from the Crown. There was, under
the successive kings, not a little variety of policy in connection with
censorship, and of method in carrying out the policy adopted. With
certain monarchs the influence of the ecclesiastics was much stronger
than with others, and during such reigns, the decisions concerning the
acceptance of the Roman Indexes and the work of preparing the Indexes
originating in France were left in the hands of the bishops. From reign
to reign, however, the precedent became more firmly established that
the final authority in the matter rested with the Crown, and that even
when the immediate direction of censorship was left with the bishops,
their power to act came to them not from the pope, but from the king.
Any jealousy that may have existed with the ecclesiastics against
interference on the part of the State with functions elsewhere held as
belonging to the control of the Church, appears in France to have been
more than offset by the determination of the Gallic Church to maintain
its full independence against Rome. Censorship in France remained,
therefore, a matter kept under the direct control of the Crown, to
an extent which was paralleled in no country excepting England. The
Kings of France, during the two centuries succeeding the invention of
printing, were for the most part more keenly interested in furthering
the operations of the printer-publishers, than in protecting the
doctrines of the Church and the faith of believers against the risks of
heretical literature. The undertakings of the printers had been made
part of the work of the royal university, and the literary achievements
of the Paris press brought prestige to the rulers of France.
Censorship was, of course, exercised, and in the case of theological
works, the supervision of which was confided to the divines of the
Sorbonne, the prohibitions and restrictions were not infrequently
narrow and burdensome. It was the case, however, that the press of
Paris was on the whole less seriously interfered with during the
censorship period than that of any other Catholic State. It was further
true, also, that while the prohibition of a book by the Sorbonne did
from time to time block the sale of the Paris edition, bringing serious
loss to the original publisher, it could not prevent the distribution
of copies even among French readers. A work that had proved of
sufficient importance to be placed on a Paris Index was pretty sure to
be promptly printed in Lyons or in Tours, and if or when the authority
of the censors had succeeded in stopping the operations of the
provincial printers, the presses of Geneva, Cologne, and Amsterdam were
always ready to supply the demand that was quite certain to continue
for a work classed as heretical or dangerous. The total circulation
and final influence of the book was, therefore, likely to be furthered
rather than restricted by the action of the censors.
In the Low Countries, and particularly in Holland, the operations of
the censors and Index-makers of Italy, Spain, and France constituted a
factor of not a little importance in furthering the development of the
book-trade. The printer-publishers of Holland kept themselves promptly
informed of the operations of the various authorities which had taken
upon themselves the task of supervising the literature of the world.
Early copies of all the original Indexes found their way, as soon as
produced, to Leyden, Amsterdam, and Utrecht, and were promptly utilised
by the enterprising Dutch publishers as guides for their publishing
undertakings. Within a few months of the time when the censors of Rome
or of Paris had completed, as they supposed, the cancellation of the
local editions of the condemned books, copies of the Holland issues
would begin to find their way, more or less surreptitiously, into
the hands of the readers of the country of origin. Literature is, in
this respect, like water; whatever the intervening obstacles, it is
pretty sure to find its level, or, like air, to find its way under the
pressure of the mass of the intellectual atmosphere to the points
where there exists an intellectual vacuum or need.
It is certain that at a time when, in the absence of journals,
there were but limited means of information as to the existence or
the character of literary productions, the Indexes proved to be
most serviceable guides concerning books for which communities were
waiting. The restrictions and prohibitions of the censorship system
brought serious and sometimes crushing difficulties upon publishing
undertakings in certain centres, but proved of invaluable service as
suggestions for active-minded readers throughout Europe, and also for
the undertakings of publishers in countries like Holland, who, free
from restrictions at home, were very ready to utilise their presses
for the profitable work of distributing abroad literature for which
the Church, in advertising it as heretical, had taken pains to prepare
the way and to provide a public. However great were the difficulties
brought through the Church censorship upon the book-trade in other
communities, it was certainly the case that for the printer-publishers
and book-distributors of Holland it secured very direct and
considerable advantages.
In England, even prior to the schism under Henry VIII, the Church of
Rome never secured any control over the censorship of the press. The
responsibility for the production of books had, with special reference
to the convenience of supervision, been concentrated at an early date
in the Stationers’ Company. The supervision of the operations of
this company was retained under the direct control of the Crown and
was carried out by officials appointed under royal authority. These
supervisors or censors were for the most part not ecclesiastics. Such
censorship as took place in England was in fact more largely political
than ecclesiastical. The perils guarded against had to do with assaults
upon the authority of the Crown rather than with opinions classed as
heretical by the Church.
It was also the case that while the book-trade of the realm had, very
conveniently for the censors, been centred in London and organised
under the Company of Stationers, there were from time to time presses
in activity outside of the capital, presses the work of which very
largely escaped supervision. Either through such county town issues
or by means of supplies imported from Holland, it is probable that
English readers who were prepared to interest themselves in heretical
literature met with no serious or continued difficulties in the way of
securing the desired material. For England as for Holland and North
Germany, the Indexes published at Rome and elsewhere served also as
convenient guides for the book-buying and the reading of the more
active-minded members of the community.
As before stated, it is not easy to arrive at any trustworthy net
result concerning the final effect upon the literary conditions of
Europe of the work of the ecclesiastical censors. The preceding brief
summary gives my impression as to the more immediate effect of the
censorship in the more important States which were within reach of
the supervision of the Church. It would appear as if the literary
conditions of each community had been hampered or interfered with in
almost direct proportion to the efficiency of the censorship machinery.
To the extent to which the prohibitions and restrictions of the Indexes
were carried out consistently, literary activity was checked, the
production of higher literature was lessened, and the intellectual
capacities of the people were stunted.
It seems hardly possible that the indirect service, to which
reference has been made, that was rendered by the work of the censors
in emphasising for communities not within the control of their
prohibitions the distinctive interest and abiding importance of the
prohibited books, could make an adequate offset for the sterilising
influence exerted within the communities that were under thorough
supervision and control.
The system of organised Church censorship had its origin during the
time of the Reformation in the necessity under which the Church felt
itself of protecting the faithful, and perhaps more particularly
the doubtful, from the influence of heretical arguments presented
in printed form. The earlier history of the Indexes is therefore
closely associated with the record of the conflict of the centuries
between Protestantism and the Church. This relation has, however, a
confusing effect in the attempt to estimate the direct influence of
the censorship upon literature, for the reason that the direction of
literary activities and the character of literary production were,
during the two centuries succeeding the first protests of Luther,
very materially affected, outside entirely of the influence of the
censorship, by the theological and controversial tendencies of
the time. The Reformation was an intellectual revolution, and the
contest was carried out on both sides with intellectual weapons.
These controversies had the effect of sharpening men’s minds and of
cultivating the capacity for thought, for analysis, and for reasoning
power. In reading the controversial literature which proceeded on the
one hand from such Protestant centres as Wittenberg and Geneva, and
on the other from Rome, Cologne, or Louvain, it may well be to-day a
matter of surprise that the writers were able to count upon circles of
readers likely to be interested in their dissertations and capable of
understanding the class of arguments presented. It was the case during
the 16th and 17th centuries not only that long series of controversial
works were prepared by scholars for the reading of scholars, but
that great masses of material, mainly in the form of pamphlets, were
placed upon the market for the instruction or the influencing of what
we should to-day call the common people. The tracts, “flyleaves”
(_flügschriften_), which were distributed from the presses of
Wittenberg were addressed directly to artisans, farmers, and peasants.
For a few years, the controversial literature of this class was
monopolised by the Protestants. The arguments of the defenders of the
Church were addressed to the scholars and preachers with the idea of
reaching through them the understanding of the common people. Before
the middle of the 16th century, however, Catholic writers also began to
give attention to the production of controversial literature addressed
directly to the common people. The historian who to-day examines the
files of this Reformation literature is struck by the high estimate
placed by the writers on both sides upon the understanding of these
readers among the people. It would be difficult to find to-day among
the peasants of Germany, or in the same classes of other countries,
any body of readers who would be prepared to interest themselves in
thoughtful literature of such a standard, or who would be competent to
follow the reasoning and the arguments of these controversialists of
the Reformation period. It may be borne in mind, as a credit to the
educational influence of the Roman Church, that these communities, the
common people of which were sufficiently intelligent to be influenced
to the point of revolution by the arguments of the Protestant leaders,
must have owed their education almost entirely to the priests of the
Church of Rome.
While, in this direction of controversy, the Reformation had a
stimulating effect on the intellectual interests of a number of the
European States, it may be admitted that in certain respects its
influence upon literature was hampering and restricting rather than
elevating. In the countries in which the Protestant opinions secured
control there was, for a considerable period at least, a decided
setback to the study of the classics and to all literary production
outside of the domain of theology or religion. The interest in
classical literature which had been initiated in Italy under the
so-called Renaissance and in connection with the rediscovery of the
great works of Greece, was for the time lost sight of in the Protestant
States of Germany and of the Netherlands and among the Calvinists of
France and of England. Classic writers were classed as “pagans” and
their works were discouraged as likely to have a worldly influence on
the minds of the faithful. The work in the universities in these States
was, outside of the theological faculties, more and more restricted
to what might be called utilitarian channels. The textbooks planned
by Melancthon and his associates were of distinctive service for
elementary education and undoubtedly represented a material advance
over the books of the same grade which had been utilised for the
elementary Catholic school. For a considerable period, however, the
educational advance stopped with this elementary work; and in the
universities there was a lack of higher grade teaching and a narrowing
of the whole course of training.
The letters of Erasmus emphasise the conviction that took shape
in his mind as to the essential injury brought upon the cause of
higher scholarship by the absorption of so large a proportion of the
active-minded thinkers in matters purely controversial. He believed
strongly in the necessity for radical reforms in the Church. He
recognised as clearly as did the Protestant leaders the enormity of the
evils which had been permitted to creep into the administration of the
affairs of the Church and to corrupt both the teachers and the hearers.
He looked with dismay, however, upon the operations of the reformers
when these took the shape of antagonism to the final authority of pope
or council and thus constituted an assault upon the very existence of
the Church Universal.
To Erasmus and to other scholarly readers in the Church whose devotion
to the religious purposes of the Church organisation was possibly
purer minded and more consistent than his own, men like Sir Thomas
More, and Dean Colet, it seemed essential for the wise management of
the Church upon which depended the maintenance of the true faith, that
the leadership and authority should be left in the hands of scholars.
They dreaded lest the establishment of the doctrine of individual
interpretation, of the right of believers to a direct relation with
their Creator, and the shaping of creeds and of rules of action apart
from the counsel and guidance of trained ecclesiastics, must of
necessity lead to such excesses as were evidenced in the performances
of the Anabaptists in Westphalia, or in the utterances of the fanatics
who incited the peasant revolt in Saxony.
It may be concluded, therefore, that while the machinery of
ecclesiastical censorship remained in force only in the countries
which the Reformation had not succeeded in detaching from the control
of the Church, there was no such immediate advantage, at least during
the half-century succeeding the work of Luther, in the production and
distribution of literature in the Protestant countries as might have
been expected to result from the freedom secured from the interference
of the ecclesiastics. By the close of the 16th century, however,
when the Protestant control of the States which have since remained
Protestant seemed to be fairly assured (an assurance which was, to be
sure, rudely interrupted twenty years later, by the opening of the
“Thirty Years War”), there came a reaction in the educational centres
in these States in favour of the work of higher education. The study of
Greek, and to a smaller extent that of Hebrew, was taken up in certain
of the Protestant colleges. A wide circulation was secured for the
text of the Greek Testament, which had been issued by Erasmus through
the presses of Froben in Basel, and in connection more particularly
with this Testament the study of Greek was carried on with increasing
interest in Wittenberg, Erfurt, and other of the educational centres
of North Germany. The introduction, for the purpose of Greek study, of
the editions of the great Greek classics, prepared by Aldus and one or
two other of the more enterprising printers, naturally brought with it
a renewed interest in the works of the Latin writers. These were no
longer classed as pagan frivolities but were accepted as belonging to
the intellectual property of the world.
This revival of letters, untrammelled by Church censorship, was,
of necessity, seriously interfered with during the ravages of the
“Thirty Years War.” A considerable period elapsed after the Peace of
Westphalia, in 1648, before the disasters and destructions of this long
contest were sufficiently made good to enable the natural interests
and activities of the people to resume their course. By the beginning,
however, of the 18th century, the larger intellectual activities of
the Protestant States of Europe had made themselves clearly apparent.
The literary production of these States not only greatly exceeded in
mass that of the Catholic States, but included a very much larger
proportion of what might be called the world’s books, that is to
say, of books which exerted a continued and increasing influence
from generation to generation. The great works of imagination, the
records of noteworthy scientific discoveries, the histories accepted
as authoritative, the treatises in higher metaphysics, were produced,
of course not exclusively, but in very much greater proportion, in the
countries which had either thrown off altogether the authority of Rome,
or which, as was the case with France, while still classed as faithful
to the Church, had practically refused to accept the supervision of
the Roman Church over their national literature. It may be concluded
that the theory upon which the censorship of the Church was based is
incompatible with the natural and complete development of the literary
potentialities of a people and interferes with the production of higher
literature in direct proportion to the effectiveness with which it may
be applied.
It may further be concluded that, excepting in the case of Spain,
the ecclesiastical censors did not succeed in hampering very
largely the literary production even in Catholic States, although,
as before pointed out, the general influence of the Church appears
always to have worked against the full intellectual development of
the communities that remained in the faith and that accepted the
ecclesiastical authority.
The wider enquiry as to the extent of the influence of the Church
censorship, during the three centuries of its greatest activity, upon
the literary production of Europe, that is to say, the question as to
how far, in case no censorship had been attempted, this literature
would have been different in character from or greater in importance
than, that which actually came into existence, must, I judge, remain
unanswered.
The responsibility for the policy pursued during the centuries since
the advent of printing for a censorship control of literature does not
rest alone with the Catholic Church. In all of the Protestant States,
attempts were made from time to time to control and to restrict the
operations of the printing-press. In the Protestant States of Germany,
the preparation of the local Indexes or lists of books condemned,
and the issue of the decrees for the separate condemnation of any
individual work, were in part placed in the hands of the Protestant
ecclesiastics and in part managed directly by the civil authorities.
The authority, however, under which the orders were issued and the
penalties were enforced was always that of the State. The edicts
were given out in Dresden, or in Berlin, as in Brussels, Madrid, or
in Paris, in the name of the ruler. The series of such decrees or
censorship actions is long and complex.
There can, of course, be no question that from the outset the leaders
of the Protestant Reformation believed as thoroughly in the necessity
and in the rightfulness of the censorship of literature as did the
ecclesiastics of Rome or of Spain. The duty of protecting the minds
of the faithful against the insidious and wrong doctrine was just as
clear to Calvin, to Zwingli, and to Luther, as it was to Loyola or
to Brasichelli. The Protestant ecclesiastics were, however, not in a
position to enforce or even to threaten any such penalties as could
be imposed by the authorities of Rome, and as in fact were imposed
most consistently and effectively by the Inquisition in Spain. They
had under their control no such dread penalty as excommunication. The
leaders of the Protestant faith were compelled to rely upon the civil
authorities of their several States for carrying out the provisions of
such censorship policy as might be decided upon, and concerning the
wisdom of which they had been able to convince the civil rulers.
Irrespective of the censorship initiated by the divines, which had for
its purpose the maintaining of a specific creed and the preservation
from attack of “sound theology,” there is record of a long series of
attempts (attempts which have in fact continued into the 20th century)
to enforce what may be called political censorship,--that is to say,
the control of literary production in the interests of the State and in
support of the authority of the State, against opinions believed to be
inimical to such authority. It may at once be admitted that the series
of Protestant prohibitions, whether ecclesiastical or political in
their origin, do not compare favourably with the similar prohibitions
issued under the authority of the Church of Rome. There is far less
consistency of purpose, and, at least as far as the political edicts
are concerned, there are more examples of bitter and brutal oppression
than can be matched anywhere in the States controlled by the Roman
Church outside of Spain.
The list of books which came into condemnation under such Protestant
censorship during the centuries in question was very much more
considerable than the aggregate of all the lists of the Indexes
issued in Rome or issued under the authority of the Roman Church.
The censorship policy of the Protestants was more spasmodic, and may
be admitted to have been directed on the whole by a less wholesome,
dignified, and honourable purpose. It represented very much more
largely the spirit of faction or of personal grievance, while the
political censorship was, of necessity, influenced by the action of the
party which happened for the moment to be in control or of the minister
who had for the time the ear of the ruler.
While in form this Protestant censorship may, therefore, be considered
as less defensible than that of the Church of Rome, it may be contended
that in fact it has proved on the whole much less serious in its effect
upon intellectual activities. In nearly all of the Protestant States,
the attempts on the part of the divines to exclude religious and
theological literature which was not in accord with their own dogmas
and opinion, were given up in the century succeeding the Reformation.
The censorship action of the State has, as we know, continued in
certain divisions of literature to the present day, but even under
this political censorship, it cannot be contended that literature
has been seriously repressed or even largely influenced. It is not
practicable, under the conditions obtaining in modern States and with
the active intercourse between the residents of such States, to repress
any literary productions for which a circle of readers is waiting. The
books condemned and prohibited in Berlin come into print in Leipsic,
or if the Imperial authority is sufficient to control conditions in
Leipsic, are produced without difficulty in Amsterdam or Leyden. It is
impossible to prevent the books so printed from finding their way back
even into the territory in which their production and distribution has
been absolutely forbidden.
Father Hilgers, whose work on the history of the Index of the Roman
Church constitutes the latest, and probably the best, authority on the
orthodox Catholic view of the purpose and the influence of the Roman
censorship, is able to make a very formidable indictment against the
operations of Protestant censorship, ecclesiastical and political.
Certain of the statistics collected by him are presented in the chapter
on Protestant censorship. He does not undertake to explain, however,
why it is that the literary activities repressed from the time of the
Reformation in the Catholic States have continued to develop and to be
strengthened in all the States which were outside of the control of
Roman censorship. He makes no reference to the very specific example
presented in his own German country of the transfer of literary
leadership and of publishing activities from the States of the South to
the States of the North, a transfer which went on in direct connection
with the success of the Church in controlling the printing-presses in
the territory of such States as remained Catholic.
The concentrated attention given during the period of the Reformation
and by the generations immediately succeeding the Reformation to
controversial issues had an important influence on the intellectual
development of the people. The effects produced upon general education,
and particularly upon primary education, were also important. The
students who had secured from the higher grade schools, established
by the reformers throughout North Germany, a common school education
such as prior to Melanchthon’s time had not been attainable anywhere in
Europe, were, in great part at least, not satisfied to let the work of
education be brought to a close with the end of their school course.
They pressed into the universities which had remained in existence
after the withdrawal of the Catholic instructors. New universities
were speedily required in many of the North German States to meet the
growing demand for higher instruction. The organisation of a number
of the important universities of North Germany dates from the century
succeeding the Reformation. These universities speedily became the
centres of literary activity and of publishing production. With the
relaxation of Catholic censorship, the publishers were free to prepare
for the public reprints of such old-time literature as was now being
called for. The study of Hebrew, discouraged and almost brought to
a close in the Catholic universities after the long persecution of
Reuchlin and his followers, was taken up with earnestness by Protestant
scholars who had so largely based their creed and their conduct on
the teaching of the Old Testament. The study of Greek, discouraged at
least for a time in Catholic France, after the banishment from Paris
of Robert Estienne with his printing-presses, was pressed with fresh
energy in Leipsic, in Leyden, and in Oxford.
It is not easy in this 20th century fully to realise the state of
mind of the individuals, whether ecclesiastics or civilians, whether
of Rome, of Paris, or of London, who have not hesitated to assume
for themselves the wisdom requisite to pass upon all divisions of
knowledge and who have been willing to take the responsibility for the
direction, the restriction, and the continued control of intellectual
activity in all realms of thought. I may recall the eloquent argument
in behalf of the freedom of the press which was made three centuries
back by one great thinker, who was at the time (as it is fair to
remember) protesting against the oppressive action not of the Church of
Rome, but of the Parliament of Protestant England. John Milton writes
in the _Areopagitica_:
“For Bookes are not absolutely dead things, but doe contain a
potencie of life in them to be as active as that Soule was whose
progeny they are; nay, they do preserve as in a violl the purest
efficacie and extraction of that living intellect that bread
them. I know they are as lively and as vigorously productive
as those fabulous Dragons’ teeth; and, being sown up and down,
may chance to spring up armed men. And yet on the other hand,
unlesse warinesse be used, as good almost kill a Man as kill a
good Booke; who destroyes a good Booke, kills Reason itselfe;
Kills the image of God as it were in the eye. Many a Man lives a
burden to the Earth; but a good Booke is the pretious life-blood
of a master spirit, imbalm’d and treasured but on purpose to a
Life beyond Life. ’Tis true, no age can restore a Life, whereof
perhaps there is no great losse; and revolutions of ages doe not
often recover the losse of a rejected Truth, for want of which
whole Nations fare the worse. We should be wary therefore what
persecution we raise against the living labours of publick men,
how we spill that seasoned life of Man preserved and stored
up in Bookes; since we see a kinde of homicide may be thus
committed, sometimes even a martyrdom; and if to extend to the
whole impression, a kinde of massacre, whereof the execution
ends not in the slaying of an elementalle Life, but strikes at
that etherialle and first essence, the breath of Reason itselfe
and slaies an Immortality rather than a Life.”[11]