CHAPTER IX

THE BOOK PRODUCTION OF EUROPE AS AFFECTED BY CENSORSHIP

1. General. 2. The Universities. 3. Italy. 4. Spain. 5. France. 6. Germany. 7. The Netherlands. 8. England. 9. The _Index Generalis_ of Thomas James, 1627.

=1. General.=--Four men, Columbus, Luther, Copernicus, and Gutenberg, stand at the dividing line of the Middle Ages, and serve as boundary stones marking the entrance of mankind into the higher and finer epoch of its development.[88] It would be difficult to say which one of the four has made the larger contribution to this development or has done the most to lift up the spirit of mankind and to open for man the doors to the new realms that were awaiting him. The Genoese discoverer opens new regions to our knowledge and imagination, leads Europe from the narrow restrictions of the Middle Ages out into the vast space of Western oceans, and, in adding to the material realm controlled by civilisation, widens still more largely the range of its thought, and fancy. The reformer of Wittenberg, in breaking the bonds that had chained the spirits of his fellow-men and in securing for them again their rights as individual Christians, conquers for them a spiritual realm and brings them into direct relations with their Creator. The great astronomer shatters, through his discoveries, the fixed and petty conceptions of the universe that had ruled the minds of mankind, and in bringing to men fresh light on the nature and extent of created things, widens at the same time their whole understanding of themselves and of duty. The citizen of Mayence may claim to have unchained intelligence and given to it wings. He utilised lead no longer as a death-bringing ball, but in the form of life-quickening letters which were to bring before thousands of minds the teachings of the world’s thinkers. Each one of the four had his part in bringing to the world light, knowledge, and development.

Before the beginning of the Reformation, the business of printing books, which had originated among Germans, had secured in the so-called Latin countries, Italy, France, and Spain, larger development than in the German lands. It is certainly the case that, irrespective of the facilities afforded by the printing-press, the intellectual development in Italy was, during the 15th and the first portion of the 16th century, far in advance of Germany and for that matter of the rest of Europe. If the Reformation was not in itself an important factor in the transfer of the centre of literary activity, this period certainly coincided with such transfer. After 1518, the centres of literary production and intellectual activities are to be sought rather in Germany and in Holland than in Italy or Spain. France, on the other hand, appears to have been able, while accepting a rather burdensome measure of censorship, to have retained an important intellectual position, the influence of which is, of course, most closely associated with the university of Paris.

During the years immediately following the invention of printing, the Church gave to the new art a cordial welcome. The scholarly ecclesiastics were among the first to recognise the service that could be rendered by the printers in multiplying for general distribution the books of doctrine and of devotion. The Church felt secure in its hold upon the minds of the people and for three quarters of a century, at least, there was no apprehension that the people could be diverted from their allegiance to the true Faith. Many of the monasteries made space for printing-presses, while others placed funds at the disposal of printers who were needing co-operation. It was not only in the scholarly circles of the Church that the new art secured prompt recognition. The Brothers of Common Life, who for a century or more had taken upon themselves the work of teaching the people and who had utilised in this work manuscript copies of books of devotion, were among the first to make use of the printing-press in the work of education for the distribution of their books of devotion. Within eighteen years after the production of Gutenberg’s Bible, the Brothers had printing-presses at work in Deventer (Holland) and in a number of their monasteries in North Germany. In Strasburg, Magdeburg, Nuremberg, and elsewhere before 1470, the monasteries of the Carthusians had established printing-presses.

The work of publishing material for popular circulation begins practically with the Reformation. It was with the great popular demand for instruction and information which had been developed through the work of the reformers, that there came to the people at large the realisation of the value to them of the invention of Gutenberg, and an understanding of its importance for the work of educating and of organising the people and for the securing the right of individual thought production against the oppression of Church and State. The system of censorship, ecclesiastical and political, a system which was to do much to hamper the development of literature and of publishing, dates in substance from the Reformation.

The effect of the censorship of the Church on the activities of publishers and on the production of books varied very materially, even in those States in which the regulations of the Church were, in form at least, accepted as authoritative. The States in which, during the 16th and 17th centuries, the work of the printer-publishers came into conflict, in one way or another, with the censorship edicts, and in which literary production and activity were influenced by censorship policy, were: Italy, France, South Germany, North Germany, Switzerland, England, Spain, the Spanish Netherlands, and Holland.

In Italy, the edicts of the Roman Inquisition and of the Congregation of the Index having to do with the prohibition or the expurgation of books were of course, at least in form, binding equally upon all the States and cities in which printing-presses were at work. As a fact, however, at no time, not even after the labours of the Council of Trent, did it prove practicable to secure any uniformity of procedure or of result in the enforcement of the censorship decrees throughout the territory of the Italian peninsula. The printers of Rome were under obligation to take immediate action in regard to the cancellation or withdrawal from sale of books condemned. Outside of Rome, or at least outside of the States of the Church, periods of from thirty to ninety days were allowed within which the printers were expected to secure knowledge of the prohibitory edicts. The Church authorities assumed that these edicts were binding throughout the entire Catholic world, but, outside of Italy, the printers, booksellers, or readers were not under obligation to have knowledge of the prohibitions until the edicts had been published by the local bishops or the local inquisitors. It was the case that from time to time the local bishops were not in sympathetic accord with the literary policy of Rome, and delayed indefinitely, or declined altogether, to make publication of the edicts. In certain of the Italian cities, of which Venice is the most noteworthy example, the civil authorities took the ground that no regulations concerning printing and bookselling could be considered as in force unless and until such regulations had been confirmed by the civil authorities. The Church claimed not only the right to prohibit pernicious literature, but to authorise and to protect for sale throughout the world the works which secured its approval. The papal privileges conceded, in form at least, to the printers to whom they were issued, exclusive control not only within the States of the Church, but in all the States of the world that acknowledged the authority of the Church. There was, however, practically no machinery for enforcing the authority of the papal privileges. The material advantage belonging to such a privilege was that it carried with it the assurance of the approval of the Church concerning the character of the book. It constituted, namely, evidence that the book had secured the approval of the Church censors and (with an occasional exception) it preserved the book from interference on the part of local ecclesiastical censors, whose prejudices were usually more bitter and whose ignorant dread of heretical scholarship was greater than was the case with the censors appointed directly by the Congregation. The fact that, during the 16th and 17th centuries, Latin was the official language of scholarship and nearly universal as the language of literature, and that the great majority of publications of importance came into print in Latin, served to maintain a certain universality of learning, of literature, and of science and to build up a body of scholars who belonged not to any one State, least of all possible to the “country of origin,” but to Europe as a whole, to the world of literature and learning. The detail of smallest importance that occurs in thinking of the career of a Casaubon, Scaliger, or an Erasmus is the place of his birth. This universality of language furthered also, however, during the same centuries, the operations of the ecclesiastical censors and the enforcement of the policy of censorship. When there came to be a development of national literatures brought into print in the national languages, the difficulties of a standard of censorship and of a general enforcement of such standard, even through the States recognising the authority of the Church, became very much greater. It is evident, in fact, from the fragmentary additions of the lists of the later Indexes that the examiners, acting on behalf of the Congregation or of the Inquisition, had very little familiarity with literature that came into print in language other than Latin or Italian.

The art of printing was one which evidently could not long be restricted to any one locality. It was speedily carried from Mayence to other communities in which literary interests or educational facilities could be furthered by its use.

In 1462, on the 28th of October, Archbishop Adolph of Nassau captured the city of Mayence and gave it over to his soldiers for plunder. The typesetters and printers, with all the other artisans whose work depended upon the commerce of the city, were driven to flight and it appeared for the moment as if the newly instituted printing business had been crushed. The result of the scattering of the printers was, however, the introduction of the new art into a number of other centres where the influences were favourable for its development. The typesetters of Mayence, driven from their printing offices by the heavy hand of the Church, journeyed throughout the world and proceeded to give to many communities the means of education and enlightenment through which the great revolt against the Church was finally instituted.

An important influence in securing for the work of the early printer-publishers of Germany a greater freedom from restriction than was enjoyed by their contemporaries in France was the fact that, in Germany, the beginning of printing, or at least its development, took place, not in a university centre but in a commercial town and was from the outset carried on not by scholars but by workers of the people. This brought the whole business of the production and the distribution of books in Germany into closer relations with the mass of the people than was the case in France. The direct association with the university of the first printers in France (who were themselves the immediate successors of the official university scribes) brought the printing-press under the direct control of the university and rendered easy the establishment by the university authorities, and particularly by the theologians, of a continued censorship.

Hegel, in his _Philosophy of History_, refers to the renewed interest in the writings of the ancients which was brought about through the service of the printing-press. He points out, further, that the Church felt at the outset no anxiety concerning the influence of the pagan literature and that the ecclesiastical authorities evidently had no understanding of the new elements of suggestion and enquiry that this literature was introducing into the minds of men. It may be considered as one of the fortunate circumstances attending the introduction of the art of printing that the popes of the time were largely men of liberal education and intellectual tastes, while one or two, such as Nicholas V, Julius II, and Leo X, had a keen personal interest in literature and were themselves creators of books. The fact that Leo X was a luxury-loving, free-thinking prince rather than a devoted Christian leader or teacher, may very probably have been a favourable influence for the enlightenment and development of his own generation and of the generations that were to come. An earnest and narrow-minded head of the Church could, during the first years of the 16th century, have retarded not a little the development of the work of producing books for the community at large.

It was a number of years before the dread of the use of the printing-press for the spread of heretical doctrines, and of a consequent undermining of the authority of the Church, assumed such proportions in the minds of the popes in Rome and with the bishops elsewhere as to cause the influence of the Church to be used against the interests of the world of literature. As a result of this early acceptance by the Church of the printing-press as a useful ally and servant, the first Italian presses were supported by bishops and cardinals in the work of producing classics for scholarly readers, while at the other extremity of the Church organisation, and at a distance of a thousand miles or more from Rome, the Brothers of Common Life in the Low Countries were using their presses for the distribution of cheap books among the people. Many citations could be made of the approval with which the scholarly ecclesiastics of the time regarded the new art. Felix Fabri, prior of the Dominican monastery in Ulm, says in his _Historia Suevorum_, issued in the year 1459, that “no art that the world has known can be considered so useful, so much to be esteemed, indeed so divine as that which has now, through the Grace of God, been discovered in Mayence.” Johannes Rauchler,[89] the first rector of the Tübingen School, rejoices that through the new art so many authors can now be brought within the reach of students in Latin, Greek, and Hebrew, authors who are witnesses for the Christian faith, and the service of whose writings to the Church and to the world is so great that he can but consider “this art as a gift directly from God himself.”

The favourable relations between the Church and the printers were checked by the Humanistic movement, which, a generation or more before the Reformation, began to bring into question the authority of the Church and the infallibility of the Papacy. The influence of the Humanistic teachers was so largely furthered by the co-operation of the printers that the jealousy and dread of the ecclesiastical authorities were promptly aroused, and they began to utter fulminations against the wicked and ignorant men who were using the art of printing for misleading the community and for the circulation of error. Ecclesiastics who had at first favoured the widest possible circulation of the Scriptures, now contended that much of the spread of heresy was due to the misunderstanding of the Scriptures on the part of readers who were acting without the guidance of their spiritual advisers. The Church now took the ground that the reading of the Scriptures by individuals was not to be permitted and that the Bible was to be given to the community only through the interpretations of the Church. At the same time, the authority of the Church was exerted to repress or at least to restrict the operations of the printing-press and to bring printers and publishers under a close ecclesiastical supervision and censorship. It was, however, already too late to stand between the printing-press and the people. Large portions of the community had become accustomed to a general circulation of books and to the use without restriction of such reading matter as might be brought within their reach, and this privilege they were no longer willing to forego. In Spain, in Italy, and in France, the censorship of the Church soon became sufficiently burdensome to hamper and to interfere with publishing undertakings and to check the natural development of literary production. Even in Italy, however, the critical spirit was found to be too strong to be crushed out, and from Venice, which became the most important of the Italian publishing centres (because it was the freest from papal control) it proved possible to secure for the productions of the printing-press a circulation that was practically independent of the censorship of Rome.

The importance of Frankfort as a centre of the trade in books began with the first years of the 15th century, when the dealers in manuscripts were present with booths at the Frankfort Fair. The manuscript dealers came together once a year also at the fairs of Salzburg, Ulm, and Nordlingen, but the book-trade at Frankfort soon assumed a pre-eminence that it did not lose for two centuries. The earliest date at which is chronicled the sale at the Frankfort Fair of printed books was 1480. For these earlier sales of manuscripts and printed books, there was apparently no censorship or official supervision.

The manuscript trade in the Netherlands was more important both in character and in extent than that carried on in Germany, and it appears to have exerted a larger influence upon the general education of the people than the book-trade of the time in either France or Italy. In France and in Italy, the earlier book-trade, first in manuscripts, later in printed volumes, was connected with the work of the universities. In the Low Countries, on the other hand, and

## particularly in such centres as Ghent, Antwerp, and Bruges, there came

into existence during the first half of the 15th century an active and intelligently conducted business in the production of books, both of a scholarly and of a popular character, the sale of which was made among citizens who were for the greater part outside of university circles. One reason why the trade in books found a larger development in Belgium than in Germany was the greater wealth of the working classes in the Low Countries. With the wealth, came cultivation and a taste for luxuries and among luxuries soon came to be included art and literature. Another factor in the early development of the book-trade was the freedom from the university censorship control which in Paris, Bologna, and other book-producing centres restricted the undertakings of the dealers.

A special characteristic of the literary undertakings of the 16th century is the practice of collaboration. Such works as the great dictionary of the Academy and the _Corpus inscriptionum latinarum_ are instances of undertakings which would have been impossible for individual authorship. The Catholic reformation was also contemporary with an important development in literary form and in literary expression. It is fair to remember, however, that for this development the influence of the Italian writers of the Renaissance may be considered as chiefly responsible.

The Renaissance, the influence of which in Germany had been so large a factor in bringing about the Protestant Reformation, had not succeeded in Italy in revitalising paganism, but the Italian writers of the time broke away from the traditions of Christianity. Their Deity was no longer the sombre avenger invoked by Dante; or the consoler who, in the verse of Petrarch, reunites the souls that have been purified under suffering and have endured the separation of death. It was Art. The religion of Ariosto may be summed up as the development of literary perfection coupled with an indifference to moral ideas.[90]

The rule of Alexander VI (Borgia), 1492–1503, coincided with the beginning of the active work of the printing-presses in Venice, Florence, and in Rome. The influence of the Pope was, however, promptly brought to bear to discourage the undertakings of the printer-publishers. Venice was practically outside of his control, while even in Florence the printers were not prepared to accept dictation from the papal representatives. In Rome, however, the subjection of the press to ecclesiastical censorship, for the initiation of which the responsibility rested with Alexander, proved at once a serious limitation to its activities. It was undoubtedly this restriction which gave to the printers of Venice their great advantage over their early competitors in Rome. Venice was the leader among the cities of Italy in resisting the censorship of the Church, although even in Venice the Church succeeded in the end in gaining the more important of its contentions. In Spain, the control over the printing-presses on the part of the censors of the Church was hardly questioned, but these censors represented the authority not of Rome but of the local Inquisition. The Spanish Inquisition was, for the longer period of its existence under the direction of the Dominicans, and it was frequently the case that the decisions of the Spanish inquisitors, in regard both to the literature to be condemned and to that to be approved, were in direct opposition to the conclusions of the Papacy. In France, after a century of contest, the ecclesiastical control of the printing-press became practically merged in the censorship exercised by the Crown, a censorship which was in itself as much as the publishing trade could bear and continue to exist. In Austria and in South Germany, after the crushing out of the various Reformation movements, the Church and the State worked in practical accord in maintaining a close supervision of the printing-presses. In North Germany, on the other hand, the ecclesiastical censorship never became important. The evils produced by it were, however, serious and long-enduring over a large portion of the territory of Europe, and the papal Borgia, although by no means a considerable personage, must be held responsible for bringing into existence an evil which assumed enormous proportions in the intellectual history of Europe.

=2. The Universities and the Book-trade.= The book-dealers of Paris, beginning their work as part of the organisation of the university, had their first quarters in the immediate vicinity of the college buildings. The foundation of the College of the Sorbonne dates from 1257. The college had been instituted by Robert de Sorbon, chaplain to Louis IX, from whom it took its name. It was at once affiliated to the university, the work of which had begun about half a century earlier. The college assumed the control of the theological instruction in the university and the divines of the Sorbonne exercised from the outset a controlling influence over the general policy of the university. The theological faculty took charge, on behalf of the university, of the censorship of the Paris book-trade and of the productions of the Paris press. It based its authority for this censorship in part on the fact that the book-dealers had from the earliest manuscript period been under the direction of the university, and in part on the authority of the Church. The dealers who did not secure a license from the university occupied as their locality the precincts of Notre Dame on the island of La Cité. Throughout Europe, in fact, the earlier book-dealers carried on their business very frequently under the immediate shadow of the cathedral if not within its portals. In Cologne, for instance, the manuscript-dealers in the early part of the 15th century took possession for their shops or booths of various corners or angles of the cathedral building; while in Münster was allotted to them the court immediately in front of the cathedral. There is a reference as early as 1408, in one of the Strasburg chronicles, to the scribes who sold books on the steps of the Cathedral of Our Lady.

With the invention of printing, the universities (with the exception of Paris) lost their control over the business of book production, and there resulted necessarily a decrease in their influence and relative importance in the community. They continued to lay claim to the control of censorship but this claim could not be supported in the face of the direct action of the Church on the one hand, and that of the civil authorities on the other. Paulsen[91] writes: “The tradition of the universities, and, in particular, their method of instruction in the arts and in theology, were rejected with scorn by the new educator through its representatives, the poets and the orators,” to whom the form and the substance of this teaching seemed alike to be barbarism. The _Epistolae obscurorum virorum_, published in 1516, was the work of a band of youthful poets working under the leadership of Mutianus at Erfurt; it expressed the hatred and detestation felt by the Humanists for the ancient university system. Within a few years from the publication of the _Epistolae_, the influence of the Humanists had so far extended itself as to have effected a large modification in the systems of study in all the larger universities. The ecclesiastical Latin was replaced by classical Latin; and the old translations of the Aristotelian texts were driven out by new versions representing more exact scholarship. Greek was taken up in the faculty of arts, and courses in its language and literature were established in nearly all the universities. This change was coincident with the shifting of the authority for censorship from the hands of the university theologians to those of the direct representatives of the pope or of the State.

The strifes and contentions of the Reformation checked for a time the development in the universities of the studies connected with the intellectual movement of the Renaissance, and lessened the demand for the literature of these studies. The active-minded were absorbed in theological controversy, while those who could not understand the questions at issue could still shout the shibboleths of the leaders. As Erasmus puts it, rather bitterly: _ubi regnat Lutheranismus, ibi interitus litterarum_. The literature of the Reformation, however, itself did much to make good for the printing-presses the lessened demand for the classics, while, a few years later, the organisation in Germany of the Protestant schools and universities aroused intellectual

## activities in new regions and created fresh requirements for printed

books. Within half a century of the Diet of Worms, the centre of the book-absorbing population of Germany had been transferred from the Catholic States of the south to the Protestant territories of the north and the literary preponderance of the latter has continued to increase during the succeeding generations.

Mark Pattison says[92]:

“If we ask why Italy did not continue to be the centre of the Humanist movement which she had so brilliantly encouraged, the answer is that the intelligence was crushed by the reviviscence of ecclesiastical ideas. Learning is the result of research, and research must be free and cannot co-exist with the claim of the Catholic religion to be superior to enquiry. The French school, it will be observed, was wholly, in fact or in intention, Protestant. As soon as it was decided (as it was before 1600) that France was to be a Catholic country and the University of Paris a Catholic University, learning was extinguished in France. France saw without regret and without repentance the expatriation of her unrivalled scholars. With Scaliger and Saumaise, the seat of learning was transferred from France to Holland.

The third period of classical learning thus coincides with the Dutch school. From 1593, the date of Scaliger’s removal to Leyden, the supremacy in the republic of learning was possessed by the Dutch. In the course of the 18th century, the Dutch school was gradually supplanted by the North German, which from that time forward has taken, and still possesses, the lead in philological science.”

As early as 1323, the University of Paris was the most important in Europe for theological studies, as that of Bologna was the authority on jurisprudence, and that of Padua for medicine. The early development of theological studies in Paris was one of the influences that brought about the authority of the College of the Sorbonne in the censorship of the book productions of the kingdom.

An anonymous author of a polemical tract, written in the previous century for the purpose of pointing out the errors of some heretical production, says: _Is autem erroneus liber positus fuit publice ad exemplandum Parisiis anno Domini 1254. Unde certum est quod jam publice predicaretur nisi boni prelati et predicatores impedirent._ (“This heretical tract was openly given to the scribes to be copied in Paris in the year of our Lord, 1254. Whence it is evident what manner of doctrine would now be set forth to the public had not good priests and preachers interfered.”)[93] By the beginning of the 16th century, the University of Vienna had taken a leading place among the centres of education in Europe. It is said to have contained at this time no less than seven thousand students and the work of the Humanists in furthering the revival of interest in the classic authors was in Vienna at this time particularly active. Within a quarter of a century after Luther had begun his protests, the Jesuits secured the controlling influence in matters in Vienna and from this time the relative importance of the university steadily declined.[94]

The jurist Scheurl writes from Nuremberg to Cardinal Campeggi, March 15, 1524: “Every common man is now asking for books or pamphlets and more reading is being done in a day than heretofore in a year.”[95] In Nuremberg, as in other towns, it became the practice to read the books of Luther out loud in the market place. Erasmus complains, in 1523, that since the publication of the German New Testament, the whole book-trade seems to be absorbed with the writings of Luther, and to be interested in giving attention to nothing else. He says, further, that it is very difficult to find in Germany publishers willing to place their imprint upon books written in behalf of the Papacy. As an example of the kind of interest caused by the writings of Luther, it is recorded that the magistrates of Bremen sent a bookseller to Wittenberg for the purpose of purchasing for their official use a set of Luther’s works. The citizens of Speyer are described as having the books read to them at supper, and as making transcripts of the texts. In hundreds of towns throughout Germany, Luther’s writings were brought to the notice of the people by means of the very edict which had for its purpose their final suppression, and after the Diet of Worms, the demand for them rapidly increased. The preacher Matthaeus Zell writes from Strasburg, in 1523: “The Lutheran books are for sale here in the market-place immediately beneath the edicts of the emperor and of the pope declaring them to be prohibited.”

With the beginning of the 13th century, it was realised that the newly organised universities had become the centres of intellectual activity. The popes undertook promptly the institution of machinery for the supervision of the work done in the universities and of the literary productions that came from the instructors. It was the contention of the papal representatives that the appointments of the university officials having to do directly with the work of multiplying books, must rest with the theological faculty, that is to say with the immediate representatives of the Church. This contention was, in the main, sustained in such university centres as Bologna, Paris, Prague, Vienna, and Cologne. A brief, issued in 1479 by Sixtus IV, charges the rectors and the deacons of the university with the responsibility of censorship. The edict in 1486 by Berthold, Archbishop of Mayence, is to be classed not as an ecclesiastical act but as an expression of authority of a German prince. The Archbishop asserted the right on behalf not of the Roman Church but of his State. The censorship exercised by the University of Cologne terminated with the close of the 15th century. The representative of the Archbishop claimed authority, on the strength of the Bull issued in 1486 by Innocent VIII, directed against the printers of pernicious books, to take into his own hands the direction of censorship of the entire principality.

[Sidenote: Early Printers and the Church]

=3. Italy.=--The introduction of the printing-press into Italy was brought about under the initiative of Juan Turrecremata, who was Abbot of Subiaco, and who later became Cardinal. The Cardinal was a Spaniard by birth and his family name (in the Spanish form Torquemada) was, later, associated with some of the most strenuous of the persecutions which the Inquisition brought to bear upon the printers. The great Spanish inquisitor was a nephew of the Cardinal. The Cardinal had been one of the confessors of Queen Isabella and is said to have made to her the first suggestion of the necessity of establishing the Inquisition in order to check the rising spirit of heresy. He did not realise what a Trojan horse, full of heretical possibilities, he was introducing into Italy in bringing in the Germans and their printing-press.

Turrecremata was a man of scholarly interests, and he felt assured that the new art could be made of large service to the Church. He provided funds for the establishment in Subiaco, in 1464, of the first printing-press in Italy, which was placed in charge of the Germans Schweinheim and Pannartz who had learned their art directly from Gutenberg. The two Germans later migrated to Rome and within a few years there was a large invasion of German printers into the capital. The first books printed in Subiaco under the instructions of the Cardinal were a _Donatus_, an edition of Lactantius, and an edition of the _De Oratore_ of Cicero. Until towards the close of the century, when the Church authorities began to realise the risks that were to be incurred by the Church through the popular distribution of printed literature, the German printers found opportunities in Italy for successful and remunerative business.

[Sidenote: Venice]

In 1492, the printing art was introduced into Venice, where it speedily developed into one of the most important of the industries of the city. For nearly a century thereafter, Venice took place among the most influential of the European centres of publishing and literary

## activity. There were various grounds on which the productions of the

Venetian presses aroused criticism and antagonism in Rome. After the beginning of the work of Aldus in 1495, the Venetian publishing lists included a number of productions by Greek scholars. The majority of these books being editions of Greek classics, had of course nothing whatever to do with matters of doctrine or Church policy. The Roman censors of the time had no knowledge of Greek, an ignorance for which they were hardly to be criticised, as, until the books of the Aldine press began to reach the university centres, it was an ignorance that was shared by all the scholars of Europe. These ecclesiastics were, however, very apprehensive of the influence of the doctrines of the Greek Church. They appear to have imagined that the text of Homer or of Aristotle, or the accompanying notes, might be made to carry the contentions of the Greek Church in regard to the old-time issues which had divided Constantinople and Rome. As the censors were unable themselves to examine the texts, and were unwilling to accept the conclusions of any examiners who understood Greek, their only means of defence against this insidious attack on the orthodoxy of Italy was to prohibit the production and the circulation of any volumes printed in this heretical language.

The presses of Venice were dangerous not only because they were being utilised by the scholars of Greece, but because they were bringing into print also works in Arabic, in Hebrew, in Persian, and in Chaldean. In the Index lists as printed in Rome, the term “Chaldean” is utilised to cover the entire group of Oriental tongues which came into print in one form or another from the presses of Venice. The censors who were ignorant of Greek were not likely to have any knowledge of Hebrew, while there was still less chance that they would be able to secure an understanding of the character of the literature presented in other Oriental tongues. The first Hebrew books issued in Venice were editions of the Hebrew Scriptures, of the _Talmud_ and of the _Targum_, which were printed under the directions of the rabbins and at the cost of a publication fund, collected for the purpose from Hebrew congregations throughout South Europe. The doctrines presented in the long series of Talmudic commentaries might very possibly, if they could have been read by the censors in Rome, have been interpreted as antagonistic, at least by implication, to the authority of the Church of Rome. It would have been difficult, however, to point out any measure of doctrinal antagonism in the Arabic books selected for production in Venice. These comprised treatises on mathematics, treatises on medicine, and Arabic versions, with commentaries by Arab philosophers, of certain of the texts of Aristotle. The two or three Persian volumes printed in Venice during the first years of the 16th century included an exposition of the faith of Zoroaster, a memoir of Haroun-al-Raschid, and some specimens of the poets of the 14th century. The actual Chaldean volumes, but one or two in all, were devoted to astrology. It was the repute that came to these volumes that brought about the application of the term Chaldean as a description of any works of divination or magic. Each of the Roman Indexes, from 1559, down, reiterates the prohibition of “Chaldean books of magic.” The date of the publication of the first of the Roman Indexes happened to coincide with the time of the greatest activity of the publishers of Venice. If the censorship policy of Rome could be enforced in Venice, the Venetian printers would be driven out of business. The issue was one that had to be fought out. The victory finally secured by the printers was due, in the main, to the courage and the intellectual force of a priest, Paolo Sarpi.

In 1479, Pope Sixtus IV makes Jenson, printer-publisher of Venice, Count Palatine, the first nobleman among publishers. In 1503, the Venetian Senate charged Musurus (the friend and literary associate of Aldus and professor of Greek in Padua) with the censorship of all Greek books printed in Venice, with reference particularly to the suppression of anything inimical to the Roman Church. This constitutes one of the earliest attempts made in Italy to supervise the work of the printing-press. The action of the Senate was doubtless instigated by the authorities of the Inquisition. It was natural that the ecclesiastics should have dreaded the influence of the introduction into Italy of the doctrines of the Greek Church, while it was doubtless the case that the refugees from Constantinople brought with them no very cordial feeling towards Rome. The belief was very general that if the Papacy had not felt a greater enmity against the Greek Church than against the Turk, the Catholic States of Europe would have saved Constantinople. The sacking of Constantinople by the armies of the Fourth Crusade was still remembered by the Christians of the East as a crime of the Western Church. There were, therefore, reasons enough why the authorities of Rome should think it necessary to keep a close watch over the new literature coming in from the East, and should do what was practicable to exclude all doctrinal writings, and the censorship instituted in 1503 was but the beginning of a long series of rigorous enactments.

The censorship measures undertaken by the Government of Venice (as was true of the measures of other States in which the business of publishing became of importance) were more largely concerned with the supervision of the press for the safety of the State than for the interests of the Church. For the century between 1407–1528, this censorship in Venice was carried on without the aid of any general law, and was based simply upon a series of precedents evolved from the individual action taken by the Government in each instance as it arose. The responsibility for the censorship of the press rested with the Council of Ten, which, in its capacity of a standing committee, assumed a general charge of the morals of the community. An application from a printer for a privilege must, according to the usual routine, be accompanied by a certificate or _testamur_ from the examiners who were willing to certify as to the soundness and the importance of the work in question.

In the year 1508, we have the first example of an ecclesiastical _testamur_ being required by the Council of Ten as a condition for their own _imprimatur_. The work was the _Universalis animae traditionis liber quintus_ of Gregoriis, and the ecclesiastical censor reported that he found in it nothing opposed to Catholic verity.[96] This is the first instance of a religious censorship exercised by the secular government. The case indicates the position the Government of Venice proposed to take in regard to supervision of books touching upon theological matters. The State had a personal interest in protecting the Church against the attacks of books likely to be subversive of the Faith, and the authorities were glad to secure the opinion of the Church in regard to the character or tendency of a doubtful work; it intended, however, to retain in its own hands the final decision as to the permission to print; and it contended that the interests of Church and State could be best protected by the State taking action for both. It was the conclusion that, while there should be a religious censorship, the censor should act only through powers delegated to him by the secular government.

In 1515, an order was issued by the Council of Ten which established a general censorship for the literature of the Humanists. It was worded as follows:

“In all parts of the world and in the famous cities not only of Italy but also of barbarous countries, that the honour of the nation may be preserved, it is not allowed to publish works until they shall have been examined by the most learned person available. But in this our city, so famous and so worthy, no attention has as yet been given to this matter; whence it comes to pass that the most incorrect editions which appear before the world are those issued in Venice, to the dishonour of the city. Be it, therefore, charged upon our noble Andrea Navagero to examine all works in Humanity which for the future may be printed; and without his signature in the volumes they shall not be printed, under pain of being confiscated and burned, and a fine of three hundred ducats for him who disobeys this order.”[97]

This is the first Italian example of a general or prevention censorship, applied to a whole class of literature. The third class of censorship concerns itself with the morals of literature, political morality, the attitude of the writer or of the publisher towards the State, and the probable influence of the book upon decency and _bonos mores_. The political censorship was apparently more effective than the censorship of morals. It was certainly the case that the imprimatur was given to not a few books of a scandalous character. In 1526, the Council of Ten issued a general order decreeing that for future publications, the _imprimatur_ should be given only to works which had been examined and approved by two censors who should make a sworn report that its character was satisfactory.

In 1544, the commissioners of the University of Padua were constituted the permanent censors of Venetian books submitted for the _imprimatur_ of the council. The censorship of the commissioners covered all points excepting those relating to religion or theology, which were still left to be passed upon by the ecclesiastical censors. In 1548, the first catalogue of prohibited books was issued in Venice. In this year were instituted, as an addition to the regular executive, three commissioners on heresy, the _Savii sopra l’Eresia_, who were charged with the new publications having to do with matters of religion or doctrine and also with the examination of imported books. The Lutheran heresy was now being promulgated by means of the press, and the ecclesiastical authorities were especially suspicious of literature coming from Germany. The organisation in this same year, 1548, of the Venetian guild of printers and publishers had for an important part of its responsibilities the checking of the production or the importation of heretical books.

In September, 1573, the History of Venice, written by Justiniani, which had been examined and, to a considerable extent, corrected by the local inquisitor, having been brought into print, was required to submit to a further censorship on the part of the Roman examiners. Fra Marco, the first examiner, writes to Sirleto that he has already written so frequently in regard to this book that he is mortified to trouble him further. He points out, however, that the Venetians are in a state of irritation that the promised papal permission has not been secured, and he asks for a decision in a matter that has already been held up for a long period of months.

In 1547, occurred the first instance of a trial undertaken in Venice by the Holy Office for offence committed through the printing-press. The list is closed in 1730, with the trial of Giovanni Checcazzi. In the 16th century, there were one hundred and thirty-two trials by the Inquisition; in the 17th, fifty-five; in the 18th, but four. It is not clear whether the diminished activity of the Inquisition during the later years was due to the increasingly hostile attitude taken by the Government of Venice towards the Church of Rome after 1596, or to the fact that the vigour of the press prosecutions during the last half of the 16th century had effectively stamped out the publication in Venice of heretical and immoral publications.

[Sidenote: Venice and the Pope]

It is in connection with the Index of Pope Clement VIII and the Concordat that the history of publishing in Venice comes for the first time into touch with general history. The claim of the Church to the control of all publishing undertakings soon became involved in the larger question of the relations between Venice and Rome. Paolo Sarpi, who became the champion of the cause of the independence of the State against ecclesiastical domination, comes into the history of literature as the upholder of the rights of authors and of publishers against the crushing censorship of the Inquisition. The problem presented to the Venetian Government was whether the Venetian press, supported in its liberty by the Government, should continue to maintain its character as one of the freest presses in Europe (and therefore one with the most

## active production); or whether it should be permitted, for want of

the support of the Government, to fall under the repressive influence of the Inquisition and the Index. As early as 1491, Franco, Bishop of Treviso and Papal Legate, had issued a decree prohibiting any one from printing in Venetian territory or from causing or permitting, to be printed, any books treating of the Catholic faith or of matters ecclesiastical without the express permission of the bishop or of the vicar-general of the diocese. The Legate named at once two works, Rosselli’s _Monarchia_ and Mirandola’s _Theses_, which were absolutely prohibited, and all existing copies of which were to be burned in the cathedral or in the parish churches within fifteen days from the publication of the decree. There was no charge that these works were in any way immoral or scandalous. They were condemned simply on the ground of the unsoundness of their doctrine. The contention raised in this order on behalf of the Church was far-reaching. If it were heretical to discuss, in a sense at all hostile to the Curia, the relative powers of the pope and the emperor, there would be an implied right in the Church to censure and to condemn any political writings in which reference was made to the authority of the pope or to the responsibilities of the emperor. It became in fact the keystone of the ecclesiastical position that in the case of the Church no separation was possible between politics and ecclesiastical dogma. In July, 1693, Paruta, the ambassador of Venice at the Vatican, submitted to the pope a vigorous protest against the publication of the Clementine Index, which was then in readiness. Paruta pointed out that the commercial importance of the book-trade in Venice at that time exceeded that of any city in Europe; that the book-trade was in itself deserving of protection and consideration; that a sufficient censorship was already exercised by the _imprimaturs_ of the Council of Ten, who utilised among their examiners the inquisitor; that the publication of this Index would destroy the property, and might cause the ruin, of many who, believing themselves to be safe as long as they kept within the regulations of the Council of Trent, had published books which were now to be prohibited in the Clementine Index; that the new Index not only made many additions to the lists of prohibited books, but proposed a radical change in the standard of prohibition--a great number of books were now, on the ground of some trivial expressions, to be condemned although they were not at all concerned with ecclesiastical or religious questions; that it was important for the Church to keep well affected men of learning throughout the world and that such men would certainly be very much troubled with any measures that interfered with scholarly undertakings and the distribution of the world’s literature. The arguments of Paruta and similar protests that came to Rome from Germany and from Paris had the effect of convincing the pope that some modification of his Index was necessary. The Index, as finally published four years later, was very much altered and diminished. Among the omissions from the first lists were the titles of the whole class of non-religious books printed in Venice, in behalf of which Paruta had spoken. In 1596, the printers and publishers of Venice again found occasion to appeal to the Senate for support against the regulations of the Clementine Index. They found that the works that remained prohibited in the Clementine lists, in addition to those on previous lists the prohibitions of which were still in force, included many that had constituted an important staple in their trade and that this trade, particularly for export, was suffering severely. The Clementine regulations also undertook to take away from the Venetian printers the right to print Bibles and missals and to restrict the printing of such books to Rome. Negotiations between the Senate and the Papacy lasted for some months but in the end the pope gave way on the more important points complained of, and a declaration or Concordat was agreed upon which lessened as far as Venice was concerned the stringency of the most objectionable features of the Index. When this Concordat had been signed, the Senate authorised the publication of the Index. The most important clause in the Concordat was the seventh, which provided that the right of the bishops and inquisitors to prohibit books not on the present Index should refer only to books which attacked religion, or which were printed outside of Venice, or which were issued with a false imprint. This limitation of the ecclesiastical Inquisition to purely religious or theological questions constituted a most valuable precedent in the long fight between the Church and the secular authorities for the control of the press. The Concordat was the last arrangement arrived at until the year 1766 between Rome and Venice in regard to the supervision of the press. During the century and a half following the Concordat, the Venetian republic persistently refused to authorise the publication within its territory of an augmented Index. A list of later prohibitions was, however, finally accepted in 1766, _juxta formam concordatorum_.

The most prominent figure in this long struggle between Venice and the Papacy was Fra Paolo Sarpi. Cleric though he was, he contended vigorously that the Church was embarking upon a wrong course, and he held that the State was justified in resisting, in secular matters, ecclesiastical encroachments upon the rights of the sovereign. The fight made by Sarpi on behalf of the independence of the State, and

## particularly of the right of the State to supervise and control

literary productions, was of first importance for the intellectual

## activities of Europe. The arguments used in Venice were repeated in

Madrid, Paris, Zürich, and Oxford. Time was gained for authors and for printers, until, largely by means of the presses which the Church was endeavouring to throttle, the spirit of resistance to the domination of the Papacy, and the feeling of national independence against the right of Rome to lay down the law for Europe, had gathered so much strength that the claims of the Church had to be withdrawn or very much moderated.

In 1613, two books by the Englishman Thomas Preston, who wrote under the name of Roger Widdrington, _Apologia Cardinalis Bellarmini_ and _Disputatio Theologica_, were placed on the Index by the Congregation. The Government of Venice, acting under the advice of Sarpi, refused to allow the provision to take effect in Venice on the two grounds that the theological doctrines taught by Widdrington were sound and orthodox, and that his arguments against the pernicious doctrine of the temporal authority of the pope over princes were eminently worthy of dissemination.

There were also instances of books that were approved by the Church but the publication of which was considered detrimental to the interests of the State, and their sale in Venice was accordingly prohibited. An example of this class was the _Recantation_ of the Archbishop of Spalato, printed in Rome in 1623. The republic objected to the contention of the Archbishop that the pope had power in things temporal as well as in things spiritual. The republic also prohibited the History of the Council of Trent, by Cardinal Pallavicini, written in answer to the History by Sarpi, on the ground that the work contained sentiments obnoxious to the Government of the republic. In a report written to the Government by Sarpi, he takes the ground that the course of action of the Church during the past few years had produced a series of books whose doctrines were entirely subversive of secular government. The writers taught that no government but the ecclesiastical had the divine origin; that secular government is a thing profane and tyrannical which God permits to be imposed upon his people as a kind of trial or persecution; that the people are not in conscience bound to obey the secular law or to pay taxes; that the imposts and subventions are for the most part iniquitous and unjust, and that the princes who impose these have in many cases been excommunicated. In short, princes and rulers are held up to view as impious and unjust; subjects may have to obey them perforce, but in conscience they are free to do all that in them lies to break their yoke. Sarpi emphasises the importance on the part of the republic in retaining in their own hands the control of literary censorship. He pointed out that unless the burden of papal censorship could be lessened, literary production in Venice and elsewhere must cease. He contended that in the correction of books which are open to censure, it is not advisable to follow the practice of the Church of “raking through the entrails of an author” and altering the sense and the intention of a whole sentence so that the writer is made to say the reverse of what he had desired to say; first, because all the world stigmatises such action as falsification; secondly, because such conduct would bring upon Venice the infamous charge of castrating books; thirdly, because the court of Rome assumes for itself the sole right to alter passages in books. He submitted ten propositions upon which he recommended the Government to take action. The purpose aimed at in these propositions was the retention in the hands of the State of the final decision as to prohibition or expurgation, admitting that the civil authorities could very properly utilise in matters of doctrine the service of ecclesiastical censors. Sarpi insisted that in all Venetian editions of the Index, the Concordat should itself be printed.

It was evident in the course of the controversy that Venice was, ostensibly at least, as anxious as the Church could be for the purity of the press. In fact, judging from the Indexes, this point had not caused the Church any particular anxiety. The unsettled question was, which authority should exercise the censorship over the offences of libel, scandal, and obscenity--the Church or the State? It was the opinion of Sarpi that all such books should be absolutely prohibited. The risk, as emphasised by him, was that the Concordat might fall into desuetude, leaving the Venetian press, deprived of the bulwark which the State had secured for its defence, placed completely under the control of the Inquisition. The future justified Sarpi’s dread. The heat of the argument died away, and the Concordat was substantially forgotten. The Inquisition secured full control of the censorship. The press of Venice came under the influence of the Index and the Rules. Its losses were greater than those of the other presses that the Council of Trent had undertaken to regulate, for the reason that it had so much more to lose. From the middle of the 17th century, the printing-press of Venice, though not destroyed, ceases to hold pre-eminence in Europe. The last contest of Venice with Rome occurred in August, 1765, when the Senate issued a decree instructing the _Rifformatori_ to publish and to circulate the Index of Clement and the Concordat, and providing further that the _Rifformatori_ should appoint as an equal associate with the inquisitor an ecclesiastic who should be a subject of Venice, and whose _testamur_ as to matters of faith and doctrine should have equal weight with that of the inquisitor.

A decree was at once issued by the papal court prohibiting the sale or circulation of all books licensed by the newly appointed Venetian officers and the nuncio demanded the withdrawal of the Venetian decree. The issue between the republic and the Papacy turned simply upon the selection of the authority that should decide what was heretical or dangerous. The republic was prepared to make use of ecclesiastical censors but insisted that these must be appointed by the civil government. The Papacy, on the other hand, maintained that the entire responsibility of keeping the faithful from poisonous food had been entrusted to the Church. The Venetian decree of 1765 was never withdrawn and the place of inquisitor as censor of books upon matters of faith was thereafter held by persons appointed by the _Rifformatori_ of the university. As late as 1794, the commissioners of heresy secured an opinion from these university censors upon the _Institutiones Theologicae_ of De Montazet, Archbishop of Lyons, which had been condemned at Rome in 1792. As a result of their report, the Government refused to sanction the decree of the Congregation of the Index. Such an instance can be accepted as an evidence that the press of Venice had at last secured freedom from the censorship of Rome. The revolutionary spirit which was agitating all Europe, and which in France had for the time completely overthrown both Church and monarchy, must have seriously weakened the control of the Papacy over the Italian States, and doubtless exercised no little influence in this final contest between the ecclesiastical censorship and the printing-press. The Venetian press possessed a greater measure of freedom than had been secured by the printer-publishers of any other Italian State and this was an important factor in its long-continued pre-eminence. The general course, however, of the legislation for the supervision of the press was similar in character to that of the other Italian cities in which attention was given to printing.

[Sidenote: Rome]

The city which undertook the task of at once purifying and revitalising the literature of the Christian world, has itself been curiously barren of literary producers. In examining the lists of the writers of Italy whose names and whose works have survived through the centuries, one is surprised to note how few are to be credited to Rome. It is Florence, Venice, Bologna, Ferrara, Milan, and Naples that are recorded as the birthplaces of the most illustrious of the writers of Italy, and it was also largely in these smaller cities rather than in the capital that their important work was carried on.

In artistic productions, the record of Rome is more important. There was, during the 16th and 17th centuries, a Roman school of art that had influence, while in Rome were produced many of the famous works by artists who were natives of Tuscany, of Venice, or of other regions outside of the States of the Church.

The vision of the cardinal’s hat or of the tiara must have had a powerful effect in attracting to the papal capital the talent of the Christian world, and particularly, of course, of Italy; but the concentration of energies upon ecclesiastical aims and dignities may easily have had a depressing and restricting influence on general intellectual development, at least as expressed in literature or art.

Dejob suggests that the possession of the throne of St. Peter, held as the chief wealth of the country, may possibly have brought intellectual poverty to Italy as the mines of America had caused ruin to Spain.

It is the conclusion of Dejob that the crushing surveillance of ecclesiasticism, in connection with the demoralising influences that opulence had brought upon a society already corrupt, has been the chief reason why the States of the Church produced fewer writers and artists of note than are to be credited to the other Italian States; while the Roman writers whose names are known, such as Leopardi and Caporali, have in their work manifested an aversion rather than a patriotic sympathy for the spirit of their home government.[98]

An examination of the list of the popes shows how seldom the choice has fallen on any one not a native of Italy. Since Adrian VI, who died in 1523, no “foreigner” has been called to the headship of the “World’s Church,” while of the forty-one popes who have ruled the Church since Adrian, no less than twenty were born within the territory of the States of the Church. Dejob (writing in the time of Pius IX) is willing to ascribe greatness to but one pope since the 16th century, namely Sixtus V.[99]

This impresses me as too sweepingly pessimistic, at least if we are to consider the term greatness by the standard attained by the other monarchs of Europe. I should suppose for instance that Benedict XIV was entitled to a high relative position among the rulers of the 18th century for wisdom and for capacity.

In 1561, Pius IV calls to Rome Paul Manutius, son of Aldus, to take charge of the publication of the writings of the Fathers of the Church and of such other works as might be selected. Pius was impressed with the belief that the printing-press, under scholarly management, could be made of service to the cause of the Church in withstanding the pernicious influence of the increasing mass of the publications of the German heretics. These Protestant pamphlets and books were not merely undermining the authority of the Church in Germany, in Switzerland, and in France, but were making their way into Italy itself. The first issues of the Aldine press in Rome were the decrees of the Council of Trent, the writings of Cyprian, and the letters of St. Jerome. The press secured the continued support of Pius V and of Gregory XII.

Pius V, when he was Inquisitor of Como, had made one seizure of twelve bales of books characterised by him as heretical, which had been sent from the Valtelina to Como for distribution in Lombardy and Romagna. The books were detained at the office of the Inquisition, but the application for their release on the part of the bookseller to whom they were consigned, being backed up by the vicar and the chapter, the too zealous inquisitor was compelled to release the books, and escaped only with difficulty payment of damages to the importer whose business had been interfered with.[100] The same inquisitor, when stationed at Bergamo, made seizure of two chests of prohibited books, which were in the possession of a priest who was waiting for a favourable opportunity for their distribution. The inquisitor reports that the priest had become depraved by the reading of heretical literature.[101]

[Sidenote: Milan]

In 1614, the Milan guild of printers and booksellers secured a fresh edict confirming its authority and enjoined, under heavy penalties, strict obedience to its regulations. In the application for this decree, the guild no longer lays stress upon the necessity of upholding the dignity and honourable standard of the book-trade, but emphasises the risk to the Church and to the community of believers if permission to print or to sell books should be given to uneducated and irresponsible persons who could not be familiar with the lists of forbidden works. Experience had evidently made clear to the publishers that with a government like that of Spain (which might be described as a despotism tempered by the Inquisition) this class of considerations would be more influential than any thought of upholding the dignity of the business of making and selling books. The confirmation of the authority of the guild under the direct control of ecclesiastics representing the Spanish Inquisition, had the effect of checking its business in publications outside of the classes of jurisprudence and medicine. These subjects were naturally less affected by ecclesiastical censorship.

[Sidenote: Discrimination in Censorship]

A factor to be taken into account in considering the selections of books ordered to be condemned, was the patriotism of the Italian clergy, in whose hands rested the control of the operations of the Congregation. They were as unwilling to characterise as pernicious noteworthy and representative books by Italian writers, as they were to place any one but an Italian on the throne of St. Peter. This partisan zeal for the literary glory of Italy must frequently have seriously interfered with the aim of securing a consistent and effective Index and have brought upon a conscientious pope not a little embarrassment. An example of the difficulty experienced by Rome in enforcing a consistent censorship in the face of Italian patriotism, on the part of ecclesiastics, no less than of laymen, is afforded by Dante and Petrarch. Of the former, was prohibited the _De Monarchia_, but the _Divine Comedy_, with all its bitter strictures of things ecclesiastical, escaped condemnation and even expurgation.

The _Canzoniere_ of Petrarch were also left untouched by Rome, although the Inquisition of Spain had characterised them most severely in the Indexes of 1612 and 1667. It was not until 1667 that the _Satires_ of Ariosto were placed upon the Index, while the _Comedies_ of the same poet were never condemned although in these the poet had assailed fiercely the trade in indulgences, and had painted a vivid picture of the traffic carried on by the capital of the Christian world with the blood of the apostles and martyrs.

The example of independence set by Venice in its series of contests with the Church for the freedom of the press had a natural influence in other cities of Italy where conditions were favourable for publishing

## activity. In Florence, Pisa, Ferrara, Milan, and other cities in

which scholarship had flourished during the manuscript period, the productions of the printing-press became, during the 15th and 16th centuries, of increasing importance. This work was frequently interfered with and sometimes seriously hampered by the censorship regulations of Rome and by the operations of the local inquisitors, but it was never entirely blocked even in any one city. The feeling of State and municipal independence and the individuality of the people were too strong to be crushed out by Roman edicts or by the threats of the Inquisition. In Italy as in Germany, the fact that there was not one government in the peninsula, but a number of independent States, helped to secure for the work of the printers some degree of opportunity, notwithstanding the censorship edicts of the Church and the repressive measures of the State. The presses of the day were small and in case of trouble in one city, they could easily be moved to another.

An instance of a book the censorship of which caused no little difficulty to the authorities of the Index is afforded by the _Decameron_ of Boccaccio. The book had, under the instructions of Paul IV, been placed upon the Index of 1559, and the prohibition was confirmed in that of 1564. In response to an urgent requirement from the public, an expurgated edition was printed for the needs of the faithful by the Giunti in Florence in 1573, under a special privilege from the Duke of Tuscany and from Gregory XIII, who himself contributed a prefatory word. The volume includes further an authorisation from Manrique, Grand Inquisitor, and one from de Pise, Inquisitor-General of Florence. The introduction states that the work has been purged of its obnoxious passages. It appears, however, that the eliminations were confined almost exclusively to the passages which were tainted with heresy, and to the uncomplimentary references to the clergy and to monastic institutions. The amorous incidents are left untouched, but in all cases in which a monk or a cleric, an abbess or a nun is made by Boccaccio to play an undignified or unworthy rôle, the character is replaced by a citizen, a nobleman, or a bourgeoise.

The edition of the _Decameron_, revised under the instructions of Gregory XIII, did not prove satisfactory to Sixtus V, and the book was therefore replaced on the Index. The demand for copies on the part of readers, ecclesiastics and others, who were prepared to respect the prohibition of the Index, continued urgent, and the Pope authorised the production of a further expurgated edition, which was printed in Florence in 1582 and reprinted in Venice in 1588. The task of expurgation had been confided to two laymen, Salviati, known as a linguist, and Groto, a poet. This further revision still failed to satisfy the Pope and the book remained on the Index, but it continued in general reading, and the authorities appear finally to have decided to close their eyes to this particular instance of disobedience. The record presents a curious example of a book the vitality of which, persisting through the centuries, defied all efforts for its suppression. It is referred to by the historians as the first _chef d’oeuvre_ in prose that had as yet been produced in Italy, whose literature was so rich in great poems.

[Sidenote: Papal Authorisation]

One would suppose that the authority of the head of the Church ought to have been accepted in all cases as adequate to cover the permission required for the printing and continued circulation of a book. It appears, however, that from time to time even the papal authorisations were disregarded or failed to receive continued consideration. Dejob refers to a history of Bologna by Sigone, the publication of which was suspended, owing to the malignancy of certain Bolognese, after the approval had been secured from the examiners appointed by the pope. Baronius, the defender of the most extreme claims for the supremacy of the Papacy, secured for his monograph on Sixtus V the approbation of the papal examiner and of the master of the palace. Notwithstanding this approval, the printing of the book was blocked through some cabal and the work was held up until Cardinal Caraffa intervened to secure its publication.[102]

In the year 1600, was completed, in thirteen folio volumes, the _Annales Ecclesiastici_ of Baronius, the most comprehensive work which the controversies of the Protestant revolt had as yet produced. The series was continued by various writers until, in the edition issued at Lucca in 1738–1786, it had grown to thirty-eight folio volumes, a work of which purchase was difficult and perusal impossible.

A reply to Baronius was undertaken by Casaubon, who published in London in 1604 (as a fragment of the work originally planned) his _Exercitationes_, a volume of eight hundred folio pages. For the great work of Baronius, the authorities of the Church interested themselves in securing through the Church machinery channels of distribution and such reading public as was practicable considering its compass and scholastic character.

The Roman idea of reforming and developing the intellectual life of the State was to follow a policy of official supervision with prohibitions and penalties. Ecclesiastical censors undertook to bring authors under a system of religious and theological obligations, and were willing to give their official approval only to works complying with their standards. Certain writers accept with docility the regulations imposed, but it is not those whose productions will live or will retain influence. The books that have not conformed to the ecclesiastical restrictions must be either reshaped or suppressed. It is not under such conditions, says Dejob, that a great literature can be produced.[103] And yet in spite of an ecclesiastical policy of restriction and repression enforced, or at least attempted, through centuries, the intellectual vitality of Italy was so great that it proved impossible to crush out its independence of thought, or even seriously to limit the expression of its spiritual and literary ideals. A scholarly Catholic of France writing in 1883 says (in substance):

The peculiar conception, that from the earliest times Italy had formed, of the Kingdom of God and of the way in which this Kingdom was to be reached, the astounding freedom of spirit with which (during the middle ages) it handled matters of dogma and of discipline, the serenity that it was able to maintain in the face of the great mystery of life and death, the marvellous way with which it brought into accord faith and rationalism, its indifference for heresies and for the temerities of its mystical imagination, the ardent affection with which it accepted the highest ideals of Christianity, and finally, the indignation with which from time to time it denounced the feebleness, the violence, the corruption of the Church of Rome,--this is the religion of Italy, the faith of Peter Damien, of Arnold of Brescia, of St. Francis, of John of Parma, of St. Catherine of Siena, of Savonarola, and of Ochino; but it was also the faith of Dante and of Petrarch, of Giotto, of Fra Angelico, and of Raphael, of Vittoria Colonna and of Michael Angelo.[104]

=4. Spain.=--In Spain as in Italy, the Church did not at once realise the risks to orthodoxy that were to be associated with the work of the printers. German printers coming to Spain as early as 1474 were received with favour and found opportunities for profitable work. Even Hebrew printers were at the outset welcomed. Between the years 1499–1510, Cardinal Ximenes (following in the footsteps of Turrecremata) paid fifty thousand crowns for the production of a series of classics. It was not until 1510 that the Church began, through the organisation of its censorship, to hamper the work of the printers. Pütter is authority for the statement[105] that for a term of two years (1484–1486) Christopher Columbus served as a bookseller’s apprentice and as a colporteur. An ecclesiastic named Bernaldes writes in 1487: “I have recently seen a man named Christofero Colombo who comes from Genoa and who is a dealer in printed books that he has brought to this city (Cogolludo) from Andalusia.”

The destruction of books classed as pernicious appears to have been, during the 15th century, within the province of any person of position and influence.[106] In 1490, Torquemada burned, under order of Ferdinand and Isabella, a number of Hebrew Bibles, and, later, he made at Salamanca an _auto-da-fé_ of more than six thousand volumes described as books of magic or as infected with Jewish errors. Ximenes, while yet merely Archbishop, burned in the public square of Granada no less than five thousand Arabic books, many of them splendidly ornamented and illuminated. The only books spared from the collection were those on the subject of medicine, which were deposited in the University of Alcala.[107] In 1502, Ferdinand and Isabella enacted an elaborate law, which is referred to as the first of the kind in Europe, establishing a general censorship of the press. In this law, were laid down the principles on which were based nearly all subsequent enactments. To Spain thus belongs the honour of organising the system which was to exercise an influence so incomputable on the development of human intelligence.

“The Spanish people strove earnestly for the maintenance of the faith but it understood by this not the reform of methods of life and the correction of immorality, but the extirpation of heresy.”[108]

“The uncompromising character of the Spanish temperament, which pursued its object regardless of consequences, saw at once what was elsewhere only perceived by degrees, that any endeavours to set bounds to the multiplying products of the press could be successful only under a thorough system of minute surveillance.”[109] It was ordered that no book should be printed or imported or exposed for sale without examination and license. In some places, this duty was imposed upon judges of the royal courts and in others on the archbishops or bishops. The examiners, men of good repute and learning, were to be appointed by these authorities and were to be adequately paid for their work. After a work in manuscript had been licensed for printing, the printed sheets were to be carefully compared with the original to insure that no alteration had been made on the press. Any book printed or imported or offered for sale without such license was to be seized and burned and the printer or vendor was declared incapable of longer carrying on the business.[110] In this first enactment, no reference is made to the Inquisition as having any concern either with the investigation of books for heresies or with the punishment of delinquents; but the Inquisition had not long to wait before its jurisdiction over literature was established on an impregnable basis.

After the beginning of the Reformation in Germany, the operations of the censorship in Spain were carried on with renewed vigour. Special efforts were naturally made to protect the faithful in Spain from contamination through the importation of heretical books from Germany. A letter of June 25, 1524, written by Martin de Salinas, mentions that a ship from Holland bound for Valencia had been captured by the French and then recaptured and brought into San Sebastian. In discharging the vessel, there were found two casks of Lutheran books which were publicly burned. Salinas writes, some months later, that three Venetian galleasses had arrived at a port in Granada, bringing large quantities of Lutheran books. The books were burned and the captains and crews arrested. An edict of the Supreme Council of the Inquisition, issued in August, 1530, urged the inquisitors to increased vigilance in connection particularly with the destruction of certain Lutheran writings that had been introduced under false titles or under the names of Catholic authors. The inquisitors were ordered to add to the Edict of Denunciations, published annually, a clause requiring the denunciation of all who possessed such books or of all who had read them.[111] In spite of the watchfulness of the inquisitors and of the customs officials, it is reported that, in 1570, no less than thirty thousand copies of a Spanish version of the _Institutes_ of Calvin were brought over the frontier.[112]

It is the conclusion of Ticknor that by the end of the 16th century, bookselling in Spain, in the sense in which the term was used elsewhere in the world, was practically unknown, and the Inquisition and the confessional had often made most rare what was most desirable. In March, 1521, papal briefs were sent to Spain, warning the Spanish Government to prevent the further introduction of books written by Luther and his followers, copies of which had, it was believed, been penetrating into the country for about a year. These papal briefs were addressed to the civil administration, which still, in form at least, retained in its own hands the control of such matters. It was, however, more natural and more in accordance with the ideas then prevalent, not only in Spain but in other countries, to look to the ecclesiastical power for remedies in a matter connected with religion. This was certainly the attitude of the great body of the Spanish people. In less than a month (as is evident from the date of the briefs in question) and possibly even before these briefs were received in Spain, the grand inquisitor addressed an order to the tribunals under his jurisdiction, requiring them to search for, and to seize, all books supposed to contain the doctrines of the new heresy. The measure was bold and proved successful.

In the meantime, the Supreme Council of the Inquisition proceeded with this work with a firm and consistent step. By successive decrees issued between 1521 and 1553, it was ordained that all persons who had in their possession books infected with the doctrines of Luther, and all persons also who failed to denounce the holders of such books, should be excommunicated and subject to severe punishments. These decrees gave to the Inquisition the right to inquire into the contents and the character of whatever books were sold and printed. They also relegated to itself the power to determine what books might be sent to the press. This assumption was made gradually and with little noise, but effectually.

While at first there was no direct authority for such action from either the pope or the Kingdom of Spain, it necessarily implied the assent of both, and was carried into effect by means furnished by one or the other. In certain works printed before 1550, the Inquisition began quietly and without any formal authority to take cognisance and control of books that were about to be printed. A curious treatise on exchange, by de Villalon, entitled _Tratado de Cambios_, was printed at Valladolid in 1541. The title-page declared that the book had been “_Visto por los señores Inquisidores_.” In the _Silva de Varia Leccion_, of Pero, printed at Seville, in 1543, the title gives the imperial license for printing, while the colophon adds that of the Apostolical inquisitor. The author was evidently anxious to secure, in addition to a permission resting on law, one which rested on the still more formidable authority of the Church.

A system which should effectually preserve the faithful from the contamination of evil by keeping from them the knowledge of its existence comprised two functions; the first was the examination of all books prior to publication, permitting only the innocent to be printed; the second was the scrutiny of the books that had come from the press and the condemnation or expurgation of those containing errors which had escaped the vigilance of the first examiners. Under the rigid institution of censorship in Spain, the first of these duties was assumed by the State and the second was confided to the Inquisition. The first law in regard to Spanish censorship was enacted in 1502 and forbade the printing or importation of any book without an examination and license. The chancellor Gattinara, writing in 1527 to Erasmus, says that in Spain no book could see the light without a careful preliminary inspection which was rigidly enforced. This statement is confirmed in 1540 by Hugo de Celso. The Inquisition had no legal status in the matter of preliminary licensing, but its growing influence caused its judgment to be frequently appealed to in advance. Ticknor makes reference to books of 1536, 1541, and 1546 as bearing records of examination by the Inquisition.

In 1554, an edict of Charles V confines to the royal council the function of issuing licenses for the printing of books of all descriptions. In the case of works of importance, the original manuscript was to be deposited with the council to ensure detection of any alterations made while the book was going through the press. In 1558, it is ordered under royal edict that no bookseller or other person shall sell or possess any books printed or to be printed which have been condemned by the Inquisition and that such books should be publicly burned. The penalty is death and confiscation of all property. The same penalties apply to the importing of any books in Romance which do not bear a printed license from the council. A later regulation specifies that, in order to prevent any alterations in the printing, the original manuscript shall be signed on every leaf by a secretary of the royal chamber, who shall mark and rubricate every correction or alteration in it and shall state at the end the number of leaves and of alterations. When the printing has been completed, these corrected leaves are to be compared with the printed sheets. The infection of heresy could be communicated by manuscript, and therefore the penalty of death and confiscation is decreed for all who own or show to others manuscripts on any religious subject without first submitting these to the council.[113] Lea goes on to say: “I am not aware that any human being was actually put to death for violating its provisions, unless the offence was complicated with heresy express or implied, but such violation remained to the end a capital crime. The only modification of this ferocious penalty occurs in a revision of the press law in 1752.”[114] It is not surprising that under restrictions of this character, the work of the Spanish printer-publishers during the 16th century was seriously hampered. As an example of the enforcement of the regulations of the Valdes Index of 1559, may be named the case of a French priest named Jean Fesque. He had handed to a bookseller named Trechel a volume without imprint, asking Trechel if he could say where it was printed. The book belonged to the condemned list, being a French version of the Psalms of David, translated by Marot and Bèza. Fesque stated that he had purchased the book from a boy in the street without knowledge of its character. He was brought before the Inquisition, and after five months’ imprisonment and various examinations, he was put to the torture but was unable to give further evidence as to the history of the book. He was finally released after six months’ incarceration, seriously disabled by the torture.[115]

The machinery of the Inquisition was effective even in the farther parts of the empire. In 1795, a priest in the settlement of Hopelcheen in Yucatan published a prohibition of the Inquisition warning his congregation not to read a certain book which had been described by the Inquisition as dangerous and to surrender at once all copies in their possession. The book was entitled _Disengaño del Hombre_, by Puglia, and bore the imprint (possibly fictitious) of Philadelphia. The congregation of Indians and half-breeds was hardly likely to have had knowledge of the book or to have been able to read it even if copies had reached Hopelcheen.[116]

_The Index expurgatorius_ in its literal sense may be described as peculiarly a Spanish institution. In the Roman series, there is record of the publication of but one expurgatory Index, that of Brasichelli, and this was never republished and was in fact promptly recalled by the authorities. The inquisitors of Spain took upon themselves the task of preserving the faithful from contamination, and the successive expurgatory Indexes give evidence of the enormous labour expended by the examiners in the correction of the text of books which they were not prepared absolutely to prohibit, but the circulation of which they were ready to permit if the heresies could be expunged or corrected. The Roman prohibitory Index contained against many works the restriction _donec corrigatur_. This indicated that the book when corrected was to be permitted; the objectionable passages were, however, not specified, although the author could ascertain these on application. As an actual result, it was very rarely the case that it proved practicable to bring into publication an edition in which the corrections in question, having been ascertained from the authorities, could be made. The Spanish censors took credit to themselves for their liberality in securing the use of heretical works of value through the expurgation of the offensive passages. It is true that, under this system, permission was given for the production of the writings of authors like Erasmus, Casaubon, Bertram, and others who were absolutely prohibited in Rome. It does not appear, however, that as far as the publishers of Spain were concerned, this permission brought about for the greater portion of the books in question the production of corrected editions. It is in fact easy to understand how the heavy loss that must be incurred through the suppression of the original edition would have discouraged both author and printer from the task of risking a further investment in a second edition which might itself in like manner be prohibited until again revised. It may safely be concluded that the restricted prohibition in Spain had as far as the production and distribution of books were concerned practically the same result as the absolute prohibition in Rome. In fact, in Spain, the result was more effective simply because the regulations of the Spanish Inquisition were enforced, while for the similar orders of the Inquisition of Rome or of the Congregation of the Index, the enforcement throughout the States of Italy or outside of Italy was but vacillating and fragmentary. An example of the watchfulness of the Spanish examiners is given in the expurgation of a passage from the Second Part of _Don Quixote_. But a single sentence is cancelled. It reads: “Works of charity negligently performed are of no worth.” In the _Divine Comedy_ of Dante, the censors found but three passages for excision. Lea points out that for this work at least the examination can hardly be described as thorough.[117] In 1790, the history of the monastery of Sixena, by Varon, which had been published with the approval of the royal examiners in 1776, was prohibited until the following sentence had been expurgated: “When Philip the Second was despoiling the world to enrich his monastery of the Escorial.” The Inquisition of Spain even assumed for itself the authority to revise and correct the utterances of the popes. The State utilised the censorship of the Inquisition not only for matters theological but for the suppression of writings that were purely political. Instructions of Clement VIII were accepted as the authority for the expurgation of teachings that were derogatory to princes and to ecclesiastics and contrary to good morals. In 1612, for instance, the works of Antonio Perez were placed on the Index because they were critical of Philip II.[118] In 1640, the Inquisition suppressed a manifesto addressed by the authorities of Barcelona to Philip IV, and, in 1642, it prohibited a further manifesto in which the Catalans accused the favourite, Olivares, of causing the misfortunes of Spain. In 1643, on the other hand, after the dismissal of Olivares, the Inquisition prohibited a pamphlet which had been issued in his defence.

[Sidenote: Book-trade and the Inquisition]

Under an edict of 1602, commissioners of the Inquisition were stationed at all the ports with instructions to seize all books by new authors and all new and enlarged editions of new books as they arrived and to allow no one to handle these until they had been inspected by representatives of the supreme council. Prohibited books were detained and burned. The regulations of the Inquisition had at this time rendered very difficult the carrying on of the printing and publishing business in Spain, with the result of very much decreasing the annual production of books. The requirements of scholars and readers could therefore be met only through the importation of books produced in France, Italy, or the Netherlands. The necessity, however, of securing for imported books, in addition to the inspection (onerous enough in itself) on the part of customs officials, an examination, volume by volume, by the representatives of the Inquisition, brought such serious burdens, expenses, and risks upon the business of the importers as to render this unprofitable. It is certainly the case that the circulation of books in Spain during the 17th century became very inconsiderable. An order issued in 1597 gives evidence of some consideration for the property of foreigners. When heretics came to trade, bringing books for their own use, the commissioner was instructed to examine these and to mark conspicuously and indelibly such as belonged to the prohibited list, so that they could be recognised by the faithful. The owners were warned, under heavy penalties, not to bring such books to the shore. In 1631, it was directed that “ships of England should be treated with gentleness so as not to cause offence.”[119] The instructions for the examination of vessels, whether Spanish or foreign, to guard against the introduction not only of prohibited books but of heretics, and to punish any infractions of the faith that might during the voyage have been committed either by the crew or passengers, were very precise and exacting.

Under the fourth article of these instructions, a report is to be given as to what Christian doctrine and prayers of the Church have been recited at sea and what saints have been advocated and invoked in their necessities and perils. Under article six, it is ordered that all boxes and chests of the sailors and passengers were to be opened for evidence of heresy.

Henry C. Lea, in a letter to the writer (under date of October 31, 1898) in regard to the effect of censorship on the literary interests of Spain, says:

“I was chiefly interested in tracing the influence of censorship on the intellectual and political development of Spain, but in many instances a side light is thrown upon the resultant injury to the commercial interests involved,--as for instance the ruin of Portonares, the greatest Spanish printer, as a result of the censorship (_i. e._ the condemnation of the Vatable Bible.) The business of bookselling was in fact crippled in every way. I have met with one case in which a bookseller humbly petitions the Inquisition to come to a decision in regard to certain books which he had imported and which had been in the hands of the _Calificadores_ (examiners) for four years.

“The _prima facies_ was against all books; their innocence had to be proved before their circulation could be allowed and even after this they were still liable at any time to an adverse judgment. Under these circumstances, commerce in books was necessarily crippled and the diffusion of intelligence was reduced to a minimum.”

The books that were published during the 16th century, and indeed for a century later, bore everywhere marks of the subjection to which the press and those who wrote for the press were alike reduced. From the abject title-pages and dedications of the authors themselves through the series of certificates collected from their friends to establish the orthodoxy of works that were often as little connected with religion as fairy tales, down to the colophon supplicating pardon for any unconscious neglect of the authority of the Church or for any too free use of classical mythology, we are continually impressed with painful proofs, not only how completely the human mind was enslaved in Spain, but how grievously it had become cramped and crippled by what it had so long borne.[120] Of the few dramatic pieces written in the earlier part of the reign of Charles V, nearly all except those on strictly religious subjects were laid under the ban of the Church; several in fact being now known to have existed only because their names appear in the _Index expurgatorius_; and others, like the _Amadis de Gaula_ of Gil Vicente, though printed and published, being subsequently forbidden to be represented.[121]

Ticknor writes (with reference to the trial of Luis de Leon, in December, 1576):

“The very loyalty with which Luis bowed himself down before the dark and unrelenting tribunal into whose presence he had been summoned, sincerely acknowledging its right to all the powers it claimed, and submitting faithfully to all its decrees, is the saddest proof that can be given of the subjection to which intellects the most lofty and the most cultivated had been reduced by sinful tyranny, and the most discouraging augury of the degradation of the national character that was sure to follow.”[122]

In 1676, was born Benito Feyjoo, who later became a Benedictine monk. While his life was spent in strict retirement (for forty-seven years he remained in the convent at Oviedo), the activity of his thought made him a fire in the community. He wrote a series of papers published, in 1726, under the title of the _Critical Theatre_. In these, he openly attacked the dialectics and metaphysics then taught everywhere in Spain. Few persons at the beginning of the 18th century were so well informed as not to believe in astrology, and fewer still doubted the disastrous influence of comets and of eclipses. The study of Copernicus was forbidden to be taught on the ground that it was contrary to Scripture. The philosophy of Bacon, with all the consequences that followed it, were unknown. In spite of the opposition of the Inquisition, before which Feyjoo was more than once summoned, it proved to be impracticable to suppress his investigations or his publications. In 1742, he began a series of discussions published under the title _Learned and Enquiring Souls_. The series was finished in 1760. It was impossible for the Inquisition to assail the soundness of his faith. Fifteen editions of his principal works were printed in half a century. It is the conclusion of Ticknor that the quiet monk had done more for the intellectual life of his country than had been done in a century.[123]

Ticknor calculates that the number of _auto-da-fés_ during the reign of Philip V exceeded seven hundred and eighty. It is believed that more than twelve thousand persons were, in different ways, subjected, under the authority of the Inquisition, to be punished and disgraced and that more than one thousand were burned alive. Charles III, with the assistance of his liberal ministers, was able so far to abridge the papal power that no rescript or edict from Rome could have force in Spain without the express consent of the throne. He restrained the Inquisition from exercising any authority whatever except in cases of obstinate heresy or apostacy. He forbade the condemnation of any book until its author or those interested in it had had an opportunity to be heard in its defence. Finally, deeming the Jesuits the most active opponents of the reforms he was intending to enforce, he expelled their whole body from his dominions all over the world, breaking up their schools and confiscating their great revenues. Certain abuses were, however, beyond his reach. When he appealed to the universities, urging them to change their ancient habits and to teach the truths of the physical and exact sciences, Salamanca answered in 1771: “Newton teaches nothing that would make a good logician or metaphysician and Gassendi and Descartes do not agree so well with revealed truth as does Aristotle.”[124] The other universities showed little more of the spirit of advancement. Under Charles IV, in 1805, the Inquisition, grown forcible in the hands of the Government as a political machine but still renouncing none of its religious pretensions, came forth with its last _Index expurgatorius_ to meet the invasion of French philosophy and insubordination. Acting under express instructions from the powers of the State, it instituted against men of letters, and especially against those connected with the universities, an immense number of denunciations which, though rarely prosecuted to conviction and to punishment, were still formidable enough to prevent the public expression of opinions on any subject that could endanger the social condition of the individual who ventured to entertain them.

[Sidenote: University of Paris]

=5. France.=--Duke Philip Augustus in an edict issued in 1200, confirmed by St. Louis in 1229 and by Philip the Fair in 1302, directed that the cases of university members be brought before the Bishop of Paris. The university found disadvantages in being under the jurisdiction of the bishop (whose censorship later proved particularly troublesome for the publishers) and applications were made to replace the authority of the ecclesiastical courts with that of the royal courts. In 1334, letters patent of Philip of Valois directed the Provost of Paris, who was at that time considered as the _conservateur_ of the royal privileges, to take the university under his special protection, and in 1341, the members of the university were forbidden to enter proceedings before any other authority. This action brought the control of literary production in the university directly under the authority of the Crown and constituted a precedent for the contention, maintained through the 15th and 16th centuries, for the direct control by the Crown of the printing-presses. The claim on the part of the university, however, to control as a portion of the work of higher education the business of the makers and the sellers of books, while sharply attacked and materially undermined during the 17th century, was not formally abandoned until the beginning of the 18th. At this time, the Crown took to itself all authority to regulate the press, an authority which terminated only with the Revolution of 1789.

[Sidenote: Paris]

The first printing-office in France was established in 1469 by Gering, Krantz, and Friburger from Constance. At the request of two of the divines of the Sorbonne, space was given for the printing-office in one of the halls of the college. An edict of Louis XII, issued April 9, 1513, confirms and extends the privileges previously acquired by booksellers as officials of the university. In this edict, Louis speaks with appreciation and admiration of the printing art, “the discovery of which appears to be rather divine than human.” He congratulates his kingdom that in the development of this art “France takes precedence of all other realms.”[125] A year later, the King places on record his opinion that dramatic productions and representations should be left free from any restrictions. In 1512, the King writes to the university requesting the theological faculty to examine a book that had been condemned as heretical by the Council of Pisa. In place, however, of demanding that measures of severity should be taken against the writer, the King proposed that the professors should go over the book chapter by chapter and should present a refutation of any of its conclusions that seemed to them to be contrary to the truth. It was hardly possible that so fair a spirit of toleration should long continue. The spirit of the time was stronger than the power of any one king and it was impossible in the 16th century that the Church and the State could permit the free development and the unrestricted expression of thought.

In 1500, the publisher Badius, who had been selected by the theological faculty for printing certain of its censorial works, issued an edition of the _Regula S. Benedicti_, the famous Rule which had exercised so important and so abiding an influence on the literature and the intellectual development of Europe. The leading publisher in Paris between the years 1496 and 1520 was Henry Estienne. The so-called heretical opinions of Estienne rendered him obnoxious to the doctors of the Sorbonne and if it had not been for the special interference of Francis I, by whom his learning and his merits were held in high esteem, his life would more than once have been in jeopardy. His opponents succeeded, however, in procuring his expulsion from the university, and, driven from Paris, he was compelled to seek the protection of the Queen of Navarre. The case is one of a long series of instances in which the liberal views and scholarly interests of King Francis brought him into conflict with the doctors of the Sorbonne. In the end, however, the theological faculty, backed by the majority of the ecclesiastics of France and by the influence of the Papacy, proved too strong for the liberal tendencies of the Crown. With the triumph of Catholic orthodoxy in France, the leading publishers and their scholarly editors found so many difficulties placed in the way of their undertakings that these could no longer be carried on to advantage in Paris. The chief trouble was due to the ignorance and suspiciousness of the doctors of the Sorbonne. These doctors possessed at this period little or no knowledge of Greek and were inclined to imagine that any Greek sentence must contain or might contain some dangerous heresy.[126] Any critical analysis of Latin texts which, in some earlier, and usually imperfect or defective, form, had received the approval of the Church, also seemed to the divines likely to prove dangerous, and in any case, constituted a reflection upon the orthodox scholarship of the previously accepted versions. Their apprehensions became most keen and their indignation most active when the “new criticism” (as they probably called it) was applied to the text of the Scriptures, whether for the purpose of correcting the early clumsy Latinised versions of the New Testament or of securing more accurate rendering of the texts of the Hebrew books. During the first half-century of printing, however, the production of editions of the Scriptures constituted the most important division of publishing undertakings. It is not surprising, therefore, that the printers who were giving their time and their capital to the preparation of these editions, and who found themselves hampered and harassed by ignorant and bigoted censorship, came to the conclusion that the advantages of Paris as a literary and commercial centre were not sufficient to offset the continued difficulties and annoyances of such antagonism.

By 1540, the ecclesiastical control of the printing-press (exercised through the authority of the university) had become an established and an obstructive fact. A necessary result of the antagonism of the Church to critical scholarship was to drive into the ranks of sympathisers with the reformers, if not into Protestantism itself, very many of the scholars who at the outset were not reformers and who were not keenly interested in the theological issues of the period, but who felt a natural indignation at the reiterated interference with scholarly undertakings on the part of very ignorant men. The scholars engaged in preparing for the public critical editions of the world’s literature asked to be let alone, but they asked in vain.

In 1546, the doctors of the Sorbonne secured the insertion in the prohibitory Index of Louvain of the edition of the Bible that had just been printed by Robert Estienne; but later in the same year, the King prohibited the printing or the circulation in France of the Index of Louvain. The King also issued a brief ordering the divines to withdraw their strictures upon the Estienne Bible. With the death of the King in 1547, the prohibition of the Bible was, however, renewed. In 1552, Estienne, deprived of the protection of King Francis, is finally compelled to close his printing office and to remove to Geneva. Estienne did not, however, find Protestant Geneva a place of liberal toleration. The year after his arrival, he witnessed the burning, under the authority of Calvin, of the heretical scholar Servetus, and more than once during the later years of his work in Geneva, the Estienne publications came under the condemnation of the Calvinistic censorship. Henry Estienne (the second) completed, in 1562, the publication of certain theological works which had been left unfinished in Geneva at the time of his father’s death. Among these, were an Exposition of the New Testament and an Exposition of the Psalms. The editor, a certain Marloratus, a Huguenot minister at Rouen, was unfortunately, before the printing was completed, hanged as a heretic, under the direction of the Duke of Guise, but the books themselves were not suppressed nor was the publisher interfered with. The faculty of the Sorbonne appears for the time to have suspended its censorious watchfulness over heretical publications, perhaps because it found its hands sufficiently full with the active work of suppressing, by fire, gibbet, and sword, the heretics themselves. Henry found it later, however, good policy to divide his publishing undertakings, executing at Paris reprints of the classics and works in general literature, and reserving for his press at Geneva theological works which were likely to give offence in a period of “religious irritation.” This term is, I may mention, Maittaire’s, and it is perhaps not too strong a description of a period in which a divine who had taken no part in politics could be hanged simply for editing a Protestant commentary.

[Sidenote: Geneva]

In 1589, the city of Geneva was being besieged by the Duke of Savoy. The city contained at the time a population of about 12,000 and was able to muster for its defence 2186 men capable of bearing arms. Against this little force, the Duke brought up an army of 18,000 regular troops with the determination of destroying once for all this “nest of heretics.” The destruction of the city was earnestly urged by St. Francis de Sales. The schools and the printing-presses were

## particularly pointed out by St. Francis as instruments of mischief.

The powers that determine events were this time not in accord with the saint. The city survived a siege lasting for nine years, although at its close it had lost out of its little levy nearly three fourths. Casaubon tells us that in his time (he is writing in 1595) the ministers of Geneva exercised a strict surveillance over both the work of teaching and that of publishing. A professor in the academy was not permitted to publish until his book had passed through the censorship of the divines. It seems probable that the Calvinistic scrutiny in Geneva, during the last ten years of the 16th century, may easily have proved in its narrowness and persistency a more serious obstacle in the way of publishing undertakings and of scholarship than the censorship of the Catholic theologians of Paris.

Casaubon secured, in 1600, at the instance of his friend De Vic, appointment as Keeper of the Royal Library. This library contained at the time about nine hundred works, a large proportion of which were in manuscript. The collection of Greek manuscripts was said to be second only to that of the Vatican.[127] The new librarian found favour with the King although Henry IV was by no means a scholar. Scaliger says of him that he could not keep his countenance and could not read a book. The great minister Sully was, however, critical of any expenditure for literature. “You cost the King too much, sir,” said Sully to Casaubon; “your pay exceeds that of two good captains, and you are of no use to the country.”[128]

A letter from the papal nuncio at Paris, written in 1562 to Pius IV, makes reference to a statement made to the nuncio by Monsieur de Bourbon, to the effect that a few days earlier he had confiscated from a vessel a quantity of heretical books “of the most distressing character that can be conceived.” These books were packed in wine casks and had been sent from Geneva. He had consigned them to the flames. No reference is made to the importer.[129]

Sacchino, historian of the Jesuits, writing in 1526, refers to the heretical city of Geneva as responsible for the introduction into Lyons of _vim infinitam librorum pestiferorum_ (“a great mass of pestiferous literature,”) prepared for circulation not only in France but in Constantinople. He states further, however, that owing to the efforts of the zealous Possevinus, the books were seized and burned (_Ut pestilentium illa farrago voluminum flammis aboliretur_).[130]

The interest of Francis in scholarship and the influence of Budaeus and other scholars led him to approve the scheme for a Royal College to be devoted more particularly to instruction in the ancient languages. The authorities of the university were, with hardly an exception, bitterly opposed to the plan of the new college. The argument on the part of the university was presented before the Parliament of Paris by Galliard. He urged that “to propagate the knowledge of the Greek and Hebrew languages would operate to the absolute destruction of all religion.” “Were these professors theologians,” he asked, “that they should pretend to explain the Bible? Were not, indeed, the very Bibles of which they made use, in large part printed in Germany, the region of heresy? Or at least were they not indebted for them to the Jews?” The rejoinder on the part of the new professors was made through Marillac. “We make no pretensions,” said the professors, “to the name or the function of theologians. It is as philologists or grammarians only that we undertake to explain the Greek and Hebrew Scriptures. If you, who are criticising our teachings, possess any knowledge of Greek or Hebrew, you are at liberty to attend our lectures and, if you find any heresy in our instruction, to denounce us. If, however, you are yet ignorant of Greek and Hebrew, on what grounds can you base your fitness as censors or your claims to forbid us to teach in these tongues?” The victory rested with the scholars and the Collège Royal maintained its ground and increased in influence and importance.[131] Maittaire quotes in this connection the testimony of Heresbach, who says that, in 1540, he heard in a sermon delivered in Paris the following statement: “A new language has been discovered which they call Greek. Against this you must be carefully on your guard for it is the infant tongue of all heresies. There is a book written in that language called the New Testament. It is _un livre plein de ronces et de vipères_. As to the Hebrew tongue, it is well known that all who learn it presently become Jews.”

In 1685, a royal edict was issued by Louis XIV, ordering the destruction of all heretical books and the punishment of those who should retain copies of the same. As a result of the edict, the Parliament of Paris issued a decree appointing the Archbishop of Paris to prepare an _Index prohibitorius_ of books which in his judgment ought to be suppressed, an instruction which was carried out with all promptness. The list of the archbishop comprised the names of about five hundred authors. The books condemned were those of the Lutherans, Socinians, Arminians, and Greeks. Included with these were all versions of the Scriptures. The Parliament published at once a decree enforcing the prohibition and commanding a strict search to be made for such books in the bookshops and printeries and also in private houses. Many books were burned, including a large number of copies of the Scriptures. The protection, or toleration, heretofore, in form at least, extended to Protestants was during the same year, 1685, withdrawn by the Edict of Fontainebleau, repealing the Edict of Nantes.

[Sidenote: Lyons]

The printers of Lyons succeeded in building up, within a very few years after the introduction of printing into France, a profitable business. They had the advantage of being well out of the way of both ecclesiastical and political censorship. They were quite prepared to take up promptly editions of books which had been prohibited in Paris and in Rome, or later in Geneva. They were also among the earliest to develop the art of what may be called piratical printing. The great expense of the production of earlier editions, more particularly of the classics, was the outlay for scholarly editing. The printers of Lyons promptly discovered that they could make money by utilising the expenditures of Aldus in Venice, or of the scholarly printers in Paris, through the appropriation of editorial material. They brought out editions printed with the text that had been shaped in Venice and in some cases in direct imitation of the typography of these first and so to speak authorised editions. By the year 1495, there were no less than forty printers doing active work in Lyons, a number considerably in excess of those who were then carrying on business in Paris.

* * * * *

In 1526, the university of Paris had authorised the printing of certain dissertations written by the rector Noël Béda against Fabri and Erasmus. King Francis wrote to the Parliament directing it to cause the sale of these books to be prohibited. He added the general instruction that no books, even such as might have been written by members of the university, were to be printed or sold which had not first been examined and approved by the members of the court deliberating together. It would appear from the King’s letter that he had sufficient sympathy with the reformers to be unwilling to have Erasmus attacked, and also that even in matters of theological doctrine, the final decision was entrusted, not to the faculty of theology, but to the court of Parliament. By 1531, however, the King had decided that, for theological questions at least, the responsibility for the control of literary production had better be left with the Sorbonne. In this year he gave a direct royal authorisation to the publisher Badius for the printing of the big treatise of Alberto Pio against Erasmus, which treatise had been duly approved by the divines. The fury of civil war and the bitterness of religious dissension gave a special character to the laws affecting printing and publishing and to the enforcement of these. In 1545, Etienne Polliot was sentenced for importing and selling heretical books. He was compelled to carry a bundle of his publications to the market-place, where he and his books were burned together. In 1546, the publisher Etienne Dolet, himself the author of a number of books, was burned in the Place Maubert, for his obstinate persistence in heresy. The ordinances of 1557 and 1560 punished with death, as guilty of treason, the printers, authors, sellers, and distributors of books which had been condemned as pernicious or libellous. The letters patent of 1563 fixed the penalty of hanging or strangling for the offence of printing a book without a royal authorisation. The ordinance of Moulins, of 1566, renews the same prohibition. Vitet[132] points out that the wars of the League had influence in securing a certain freedom for publishing. The government of the League did not undertake to free from restrictions the printing-presses of Paris. It prohibited them, however, only from such undertakings as seemed likely to prove of service to the enemies of the League. On the other hand, there was at Tours a government which was hostile only to such writings as were not royalist, and at Geneva another government the censures of which affected only that literature which was not Protestant. Through these three limited censures came into existence three fragments of publishing freedom. The power of the printing-press in influencing public opinion may, as far as France is concerned, be said to date from this period. Under the provisions of the Edict of Nantes, which bears date 1598, the production and sale of Protestant books were restricted to certain specified States and districts in which the public exercise of said religion was authorised. These Protestant books, while permitted to exist, are, however, classified as “libels and as inflammatory writings.” It does not appear that any provision was made for the circulation of such publications between the cities in which they were permitted to be printed, as such circulation must, of course, have taken them across the “good Catholic” territory, within the boundaries of which the Protestant books were incendiary libels. The difficulties in the way of authors and publishers of such books must, therefore, at this time have been very considerable. In 1624, four royal censors were instituted by letters patent. The first four were all doctors of the theological faculty, but notwithstanding this selection of the board from the members of the Sorbonne, the university was dissatisfied with losing its ancient privileges of controlling directly the examination of religious literature. In 1629, it was ordered that works submitted for publication were to be passed upon by censors particularly designated for each work by the Chancellor or Privy Seal. It is probable that the volumes had to be put into type before the examiners were willing to give the time for examination. In 1702, an issue arose between the chancellor and the higher clergy on the question of certain general privileges in regard to printing which the bishops claimed to be still in force. It was the contention of the bishops that, being themselves the final judges of the doctrines of the Church, utterances made by them or utterances accepted by them could not with propriety be passed upon by others who were not authorities on points of doctrine. Madame de Maintenon gave the weight of her influence in favour of the bishops. The King dreaded exciting the ire of the Jesuits and dreaded also, says the chronicle, the risk of putting Madame de Maintenon into a bad temper. He avoided making a decision and an adjustment was finally arrived at in which the bishops withdrew their main pretensions. Bossuet made an indignant protest against what he called the attempt of the chancellor to control the utterances of the Church. It is not to be thought of, says Bossuet, that the Holy Church of Christ shall be compelled to submit, for the examination of magistrates, its decrees, catechisms, and spiritual teachings upon matters which should be confined strictly to the instructors of their flock. The King, influenced by the pleading of Bossuet, finally brought himself to decide that for the works which were at the moment in question, the authority should be left with the bishops.

The reports concerning the extent of the influence of censorship, from one authority or another, on the literary activities of France are, as we have seen, conflicting. The authority of the Sacred Office was, as stated, not accepted in France, and the work of the French writers of the 16th century was not seriously affected by the condemnations and expurgations, sometimes severe and sometimes indulgent, with which was supervised and restricted the literature of Italy. It is contended nevertheless (at least by French historians) that the productions of the French writers of the century, freer from the trammels of censorship as these writers were, represented a higher standard of morality and of refinement than characterised the contemporary literature of Italy.

During the 17th century, persistent attempts were made in France as in other Catholic States to enforce throughout the realm a policy of censorship. By one set of authorities, investigations are carried on in the bookshops and in public and private libraries, and copies of obnoxious or suspicious books are burned at the hands of the hangman; by another, St. Cyran is placed in prison and Arnauld and others of his group are driven into exile. The _Lettres Provinciales_ of Pascal are indeed brought into print, but only by cleverly eluding the vigilance of the inspectors. It is nevertheless the case that at no time during the century did it prove to be practicable to keep in force, through the entire territory of the State, any consistent or effective policy. The authority to order proceedings against authors or to make condemnations of books is not, as was the case in Spain, in the hands of a special tribunal, all-powerful and irresponsible. In the place of an Index which preserves the record of a condemnation that has once been pronounced, we have individual edicts or orders which easily fall into oblivion; and in place of a Congregation or of an Inquisition, we find distinct authorities, and sometimes simple local authorities, the actions of which are more or less conflicting and lack permanency of influence. There is also throughout the century, as later, among the ecclesiastics themselves, a strong national feeling of protest against the exercise within the territory of France of censorship authority directed by Italians or Spaniards.[133]

While in Italy, the Church labours single-handed at the task of reforming the people, in France it is the entire nation, without distinction of ecclesiastics and laymen, that undertakes the reformation of itself. Frenchmen of the 17th century, equally assured of their devotion to the true faith and of their intention to maintain the virtues of Christianity, refuse to admit the necessity for submitting to a theocracy, a religious dictatorship, and for putting literature, so to speak, into a state of siege.

Dejob cites, on the authority of the Benedictine editors, a number of the absurdities introduced into the St. Ambrose text by the Roman editors, and concludes that “editorial methods so naïve and so unscrupulous were certainly in need of the aid of the Index in order to prevent, through the collation of their text with the work of more faithful scholars, the unmasking of their pious infidelities.” “What,” he exclaims, “would have been the result for scholarship, for literature, and for the thought of the world, if the Inquisition had succeeded in establishing its domination throughout Europe, and in placing all the manuscripts of the Fathers under the keys of the Vatican?”[134]

Dom Petra, one of the learned editors of the _Acta Sanctorum_, writes in 1649: “If Rome condemns our books, the Jansenists will have a text for saying that this is brought about by intrigue and corruption.... The Congregation [of the Index] appears to object to the work done by the editors of our _Acta_ in the correction of errors; but the Congregation should understand that, rather than to confirm a record of impostures, we prefer to write nothing; the Congregation is giving an opportunity to the heretics to point out the unwillingness of the Papists to make corrections or to remedy abuses.”[135]

Theophile Raynaud, in order to revenge himself for a condemnation issued against his books by certain Dominican inquisitors, undertook the defence, against the Dominicans, of the memory of Reuchlin and of Erasmus, victims, as he contends, of Dominican ignorance and calumny.[136]

Writing in 1661, in reference to certain copies of his books that had been seized in Italy, Raynaud says: “The sovereign pontiff gives authority, it appears, to his ministers to carry on robbery.”[137]

The only portion of the writings of Rabelais that came under the ban of the French censors was the fourth book of the _Pantagruel_, which was prohibited by the divines of the Sorbonne.

The writings of Montaigne were prohibited in 1576 by the Congregation of the Index but the prohibition was not confirmed in France. In 1595, an expurgated edition of the _Essays_ was published at Lyons, from which was omitted, together with certain other passages, under the instructions of the censors, the fifth chapter of the third book. The twenty-ninth chapter of the first book, apparently equally reprehensible, escaped condemnation.

“I find,” says Dejob, “no book of importance, excepting the _Tartuffe_ of Molière, that the national authorities attempted to suppress. Molière, Racine, La Bruyère, were from time to time assailed, but there were always influences working on their behalf strong enough to prevent any serious or continued interference with their work. Once, it may be remembered, Richelieu _se ligua contre le Cid_, but the immediate protest of the public made clear to the minister that he was on a false track.”[138]

It is certain that the authority of the Church exercised in France a much smaller influence over literature than either in Spain or in Italy. In fact, under Louis XIV, the Church found it necessary to resort to raillery rather than to discipline in the cases in which it found ground for criticism.

The learned historian of the Benedictines, Mabillon, brought himself into criticism on the part of the Papacy through proving that the bones taken from the catacombs, which were being distributed as relics for the faithful, had belonged neither to saints nor to martyrs.

Dejob is of opinion that the acknowledged superiority of the theological writers of France during the 17th century over those of Italy and Spain was chiefly due to the greater freedom possessed by the French scholars in carrying on their investigations and in bringing their books into print.[139]

The intellectual work of the orthodox clergy owes not a little to the feeling of obligation that rested upon them to offset the influence of the Huguenot controversialists and to secure for orthodox literature a prestige to balance that of Arnaud and of Pascal. It may fairly be claimed that the Church of France showed itself equal to the task. Any nation may have been proud to produce within the term of a century five writers or scholars whose names could be compared with those of Bossuet, Fénelon, Bourdaloue, Malebranche, and Mabillon. No religion has counted among its ministers during any one generation men superior to these in intellectual force. Catholicism can refer to this group as an evidence that orthodoxy does not stifle originality of talent. It can claim further that the acceptance of dogma does not of necessity involve the renunciation of scientific and philosophical investigation. The lay writers of this famous century were hardly less influenced by the spirit of religion. It is this that inspired Corneille and Racine, not only in such creations as _Polyeucte_ and _Athalie_, but in the moral conception with which they handle the subject of love; it is this which retains within wholesome limits the satirical verse of Boileau and of La Bruyère and which keeps within bounds even the bitter personalities of St.-Simon; it is this which raises far beyond the level of feminine curiosity and maternal egoism the writings of Mme. de Sévigné, and which imbues with eloquence the work of Mme. de Motteville.[140]

The religious spirit may be said to have influenced also the work of Molière, who uses his trenchant pen to emphasise our obligations to morality. Save in an occasional instance where the manners of the comedian get control of the pen of the poet, these obligations are set forth with the certainty of an infallible moralist, while the dramatist succeeds in securing for his readers (or hearers) full sympathy for those of his characters which show themselves faithful to wholesome ideals.

If it had been possible for the fathers who directed the work of the Council of Trent to have knowledge of this wonderful body of literature, which gave to Catholicism an incomparable intellectual éclat, they would surely have admitted that their pious expectations were surpassed.[141]

The classical literature of France retained, therefore, freedom of thought and of expression. The eulogies addressed to the rulers, even when extravagant in form, bore the stamp of sincerity. It was a saying of La Bruyère that the use of satire in really great subjects was denied to writers who were at once Frenchmen and Christians. But it is fair to remember that such an interdiction is confirmed by the opinion of the public itself, and also that to one who is himself a witness of great things, the dazzle of their brilliancy may easily prevent a clear perception of their blemishes. It is certain that the record of the work done by the great writers of France does not give any evidence of serious interference by the Church either for praise or for blame. Apart from the _Lettres Provinciales_ (which after all secured a wide reading and a general appreciation), no work of the first importance was brought under condemnation by the authorities either civil or religious.[142]

=6. Germany.=--Within half a century after the invention of printing in Mayence, the business of publishing was established in a number of towns, such as Frankfort, Strasburg, Basel, Cologne, and Nuremberg; and by the close of the 16th century, the work of the printers became important also in many towns of North Germany, such as Leipsic, Magdeburg, Wittenberg, etc. The development of the production of printed books followed very largely the lines of the trade in manuscripts which it superseded. The sale of manuscripts had, for the century before printing, constituted an important item in the business of the Fair at Frankfort, and after 1480, we find entries in the annual records of the Fair of sales of printed books. The organisation of the book-trade of the empire dates from about 1525. Frankfort was established as the centre or headquarters of this trade, and the Fair brought to the city twice a year representative publishers and dealers not only from the towns of Germany but from Italy, France, and the Netherlands.

The establishment of a centre or headquarters for the book-trade of Europe was, of course, of immediate advantage in furthering the knowledge and the distribution of the literature that came into print, and particularly of the books published in Latin. Latin was generally accepted throughout the world as the language not only of scholarship, but of literature, and it was therefore selected by the publishers of the time for the larger portion of the books brought into print. It is true that the work of the early printers of Germany was, unlike that of France and the Netherlands, carried on not in university centres, but, very largely at least, in commercial towns. The lists of these German printers contain a much larger number of books addressed to the general or unscholarly public than was the case with those of their competitors in Paris, Venice, or Leyden, but in Germany also the production of works printed in Latin, for the trade of the world, became each year of increasing importance.

For the operations of the general censorship of the Church, the organisation of the book-trade presented certain advantages or at least conveniences. The compilers of the earlier Roman Indexes utilised the bulletins and catalogues of the Book-Fair in securing for their lists information concerning new and forthcoming books of heretical writers or on controversial subjects. As is mentioned in the separate record of certain Indexes, the censors were not infrequently prepared to condemn a book without any examination whatever, simply on the repute of its author, or even on that of its publisher. It occasionally happened, as a result of this method, that a work was prohibited which never came into existence, some obstacle having prevented its completion or its publication after the title had been announced.

The first instances of books issued with _Imprimaturs_ are two printed at Cologne in 1479 and sanctioned by the university, and a third printed at Heidelberg in 1480, under the authorisation of the Patriarch of Venice.

The earliest mandate of which there is record for the appointment of a censor of books was issued in 1486 by Berthold, Archbishop of Mayence. The Archbishop forbids the translation into the vernacular of any books from Latin, Greek, or other languages, or the sale of translations brought in from without, until these have been examined and approved by censors appointed for the purpose from the university of Erfurt.[143] He instructs the Burgomaster of Frankfort to make examination of all books at the Frankfort Fair before the permit should be given for their sale. In 1524, the Archbishop of Mayence claims, on the double ground of his position as High Chancellor of the empire and as a representative of the authority of Rome, the right to supervise the book-trade of the empire, and he makes immediate application of this authority to the control of the sale of books at the Frankfort Fair.

[Sidenote: Frankfort]

In 1648, the year in which the Thirty Years’ War came to an end, the magistrates of Frankfort gave up formally the attempts to supervise the book-production of the city. In 1662, the magistrates found occasion for protests against the imperial regulations for the control of the book-trade. The emperor, in his edict of March 18, 1662, was acting under the counsel of his Jesuit advisers. The magistrates were speaking as the representatives of the publishers, and, as they contended, for the interests of the community as a whole. In 1665, under some counsel which proved to be very ill-advised, the imperial commissioners undertook to fix the prices of the books presented for sale at the Frankfort Fair. It was contended that the commissioners who had been charged with the work of censorship had no authority to take upon themselves the determination of a business detail. It was very certain that they did not have the expert knowledge required for the task, but it was, of course, the case that no commissioners could have carried out successfully any such system. This price regulation proved to be one of the most effective of the various factors which caused the replacing of Frankfort by Leipsic as the centre of the publishing and bookselling interests of Germany.

[Sidenote: Strasburg]

In 1488, the city of Strasburg established under the directions of the emperor a local censorship supervised by the magistracy. The first book prohibited under this regulation was the _Germania Nova_ of Murner, issued in 1502.

In 1501, Alexander VI publishes a bull prohibiting the printing, within the territories in question, of any books that have not secured an approval, in the form of a privilege, from the Archbishops of Cologne, Mayence, Treves, and Magdeburg, or from their vicars-general.[144]

[Sidenote: Leipsic]

By the year 1495, the book-trade of Leipsic had assumed very considerable proportions and was already beginning to rival that of Frankfort. The Booksellers’ Association, organised (in Frankfort) in 1525, is at the present time, four centuries later, the most effective and intelligently managed trade organisation that the world has known. Leipsic publishers gave from an early period special attention to the printing of the controversial literature of the Reformation, and, as was natural from their close relations with Wittenberg, the sympathies of the larger proportion of the printers were in accord with the Lutherans. In 1524, Duke George, who was a Catholic, came to the throne and during his reign, which continued until 1533, the writings of the reformers were repressed by a rigorous censorship. The Duke utilised the machinery of the trade organisation for putting into effect the ducal regulations for supervision and censorship, and two ecclesiastical censors, appointed under the ducal authority, secured the aid of the city officials in making examination of all the books printed and in confiscating or cancelling all heretical works found in the shops of either Leipsic or Dresden. The immediate result of these anti-reform operations of the Church and of the Duke was the practical destruction for the time being of the book-trade of Leipsic. Many of the printers transferred their presses to Wittenberg or Magdeburg.

In 1526, occurred in Leipsic an extreme instance of the application of Catholic censorship. Under the instructions of Duke George, Johann Herrgott, a printer and colporteur, was burned, with certain of his books, for the crime of distributing Protestant literature. In the next year, Hübmayer, the leader of the Baptists in Southern Germany, was burned in Vienna for a similar offence. In 1571, the Duke of Saxony ordered that the work of the printers should be restricted to three towns, Leipsic, Dresden, and Wittenberg. The purpose of this regulation was the facilitating of censorship control.

[Sidenote: Wittenberg]

In advance of the aggressive Protestant measures of Luther, Wittenberg had already become an important place for book-production, having secured, among other favourable influences, the advantage of the transfer of certain of the printers and their presses from Leipsic. After 1515, Wittenberg was the most important of the centres from which were distributed throughout Germany the books and pamphlets (_Flugschriften_) of the reformers. It was in Wittenberg also that was brought into print the great Bible of Luther.

[Sidenote: Magdeburg]

At an early date in the period of the Reformation, Magdeburg, in which the printing business had already secured an assured foothold, had taken an important place among the centres of distribution of Protestant literature. The work of the printers was interrupted for a time in 1518 by the repressive measures of the Catholic Albert of Brandenburg, but after 1528, the presses were again left practically free from civil authority, while the ecclesiastical influence in the city was never important. The book-trade was crushed out for the time by the destruction of the city by Tilly in 1631.

[Sidenote: Münster]

The city of Münster was another centre for Protestant publications. The excesses of the Anabaptists, who, under John of Leyden and his associates, had possession of the town for a number of months in 1535–36, were, however, well-nigh destructive to its Protestantism and proved fatal to its publishing business. In 1562, an edict issued by the bishop ordered the destruction of all Protestant books in Westphalia and made it a misdemeanour to print, sell, or possess any such books.

[Sidenote: Basel]

The city of Basel secured at an early date an important position among the centres of publishing. The university, founded in 1460, brought to the city men devoted to scholarly pursuits many of whom took an early interest in the work of the printing press and were ready to give coöperation to the publishers. In 1501, Basel broke away from the imperial control. At that time, there were in the city no less than twenty-six important publishing and printing concerns.

During the most active period of its publishing interests, Basel had the advantage over the majority of the German towns in its comparative freedom from censorship either ecclesiastical or civil. The authority of Rome was permitted to exert practically no restrictions upon the productions of the printing-presses; while as a free imperial city, it had the right to claim exemption from any authority other than that of the emperor, whose examiners were too far distant to be able to bring their influence to bear, to any extent, upon the operations of the Basel publishers. It was this freedom that constituted the most important cause of the great development of the book-trade of the city during the 15th and 16th centuries. The leader among the great publishers of Basel, who ranked at the time with Aldus as one of the great publishers of the world, was Johann Froben, the publisher, friend, and close associate of Erasmus. It is the imprint of Froben that is associated with the most important of the volumes of Erasmus, including not only those that secured the approval of Leo X and of other of the Church authorities, but the group which brought the author into sharp criticism with the ecclesiastical censors. During the years between 1460 and 1500, the popes themselves sent to Basel for printing certain books which required more trustworthy work than could be secured in Rome.[145]

In 1523, the first application for censorship in the city of Basel was made by Erasmus in connection with the reprinting of certain French writings which he claimed to be libels of himself. The censorship of the city was under the direction of the magistrates. The magistrates forbade the printing of books in any other languages than Latin, Greek, Hebrew, and German. In 1598 the censors of the city required that there be placed in their hands catalogues of books that were forthcoming in order that they might designate those calling for special attention.

[Sidenote: Zürich]

Between the years 1520 and 1580, the presses of Zürich were busied with the production of the works of the Calvinist reformers. Froschauer, who was one of the first of the Zürich printers, was a close friend of Zwingli, whose special tenets he had adopted, and he placed at the disposal of the Zwinglians the machinery of his printing concern for the production and distribution of the Zwinglian treatises and tracts. Zürich presents also an example of early and strenuous Protestant censorship. Zwingli brought about a prohibition on the part of the civil authorities of Zürich for the sale within the city of the Lutheran publications.

[Sidenote: Augsburg]

The city of Augsburg occupied a similar place among the centres of Catholic book-production to that held by Basel and Zürich for the works of the Protestants. The presses of the great publisher Koberger and his associates were devoted during the last third of the 15th and the first half of the 16th century to the production of editions of the works of the more scholarly of the Catholic theologians. The books were addressed to scholars and were comparatively high in price. The work of the German reformers had as one result the checking of the

## activities of the Augsburg publishers. In 1520, the civil authorities

of Augsburg, at the instance of the local ecclesiastics, issued prohibitions for the sale in the city of the works of Luther and of Zwingli. It was the multiplicity of prohibitory authorities in the

## book centres of Germany that actually worked against the influence of

the prohibitory system. There was also in these German cities a lack of any effective censorship machinery such as existed in Spain either for the examination of texts in advance of printing, or for the seizure of books and the punishment of printers after publication. There were, during the century after the Reformation, instances (aggregating a considerable number) of writers who on the ground of their heretical utterances had been punished in one way or another and some of whom had even suffered death, but there was no general or effective repression of literary production and distribution throughout Germany, either on the part of the Catholic censors working against Protestant writings or under the influence of the Protestant divines utilising for the prohibition of Catholic books the civil authority.

[Sidenote: Nuremberg]

In Nuremberg, under a regulation of 1513, the printers were to be sworn each year as holding the orthodox Catholic faith and as agreeing to print no books contrary to that faith.[146] The magistrates issued in 1518 a special prohibition against the printing of the writings of the Hussites, and in 1521, a similar prohibition against the writings of Luther, Calvin, and Zwingli. This edict was withdrawn in 1535 when the magistracy of the city had become Lutheran. In 1527, the poet-cobbler, Hans Sachs, came under censorship for certain rhymes attached to an illustrated record of the Tower of Babel. In this case, the trouble appears, however, to have been not religious, but a matter of guild prejudice. Sachs, being licensed only as a cobbler, had no authority to do work as a poet. After 1535, when the control of Nuremberg had passed into the hands of the Protestants, there is a rapid development of the

## activity of its printing-presses and book-trade.

[Sidenote: Tübingen Breslau]

The works of Melanchthon were first printed in Tübingen in 1511. Later, Melanchthon used for his theological treatises and also for his long series of text-books the presses of Wittenberg. The statutes of the University of Tübingen in regard to the _Libelli famosi_ were, in 1500, made binding throughout the electorate of Würtemberg. In 1557, an edict of the Duke called for an annual visitation of the bookshops for the search for heretical publications. In 1593, a ducal permission was given to one bookseller in Tübingen, Gruppenbach, to buy for the use of the professors two copies of any heretical books called for. In 1601, an ordinance was published in Tübingen prohibiting the sale of all sectarian or controversial books, Catholic as well as Protestant. In the three ecclesiastical principalities of Mayence, Cologne, and Trier, the ecclesiastical censorship became, after 1525, particularly rigorous with the result of a material checking in the business of the printers and booksellers. In Silesia, Breslau became the centre of Catholic influence and the Protestant printers were, after 1577, largely driven out of business.

[Sidenote: Heidelberg]

In Heidelberg, under an edict of the Elector of Baden, the censorship control was, in 1651, placed in the hands of the university and came under the direction of the theological faculty.

[Sidenote: Vienna]

The printing business in Vienna had during the first years of the 16th century made a good start, but with the beginning of imperial censorship under the edict of Ferdinand, in 1523, the work of the printers received a check. In this edict the printing, sale, and possession of the books of Luther is prohibited under heavy penalties. Ferdinand permitted the ecclesiastics to exercise directly (that is to say without reference of individual cases to the civil authorities) the supervision of the work of the printers. These censors made effective opposition against scientific education and their repressive measures for literature other than theological was so far effective that, after the year 1560, the printing in Vienna of editions of the classics was brought to a close. In the year 1572, the printing-office and bookshop of Creutzer, who had for some years acted as the publisher of the university, was closed. In the year 1587, the book stock of Necker, who was at that time the leading bookseller in the city, was confiscated and in large part burned. By 1600, the control of the book business was placed almost exclusively in the hands of the Jesuits and as a result of their “supervision,” the business practically came to a close.

Kapp points out that the prohibitory lists issued in Germany contained, in addition to the titles of the Protestant controversial writings and religious writings other than controversial, the titles of a number of books which were really in character _contra bonos mores_. The advantage of the advertisement given to the books deserving of existence was unfortunately shared by not a few volumes which were really scandalous in character.

The Thirty Years’ War in Germany (1618–1648) may be considered as an extreme application of the principle of censorship. The power of the emperor and that of the Catholic princes who associated themselves with the emperor, was directed to the suppression of Protestantism in Germany and with this to the control under the direction of the Roman Church of German thought and of German intellectual development. This was, of course, an attempt to do something much wider than to control and restrict the printing-press, but the control and restriction of the operations of the printers constituted an essential part of the purpose of the pope, the emperor, and their allies the Jesuits and Dominicans. In so far as the Catholics held their own, succeeding in maintaining their control in the States of South Germany, the printers had to accept the continued authority of the ecclesiastics backed by the power of the State. The States of North Germany, on the other hand, with the all-powerful aid of Gustavus Adolphus and his sturdy Swedes, were able to maintain by force of arms their independence as citizens, and secured also the right to think and to speak, to print and to read for themselves, free from decisions to be arrived at by the Dominican Congregation of Italy or the Jesuit censors of Vienna. The waste of life and of treasure brought upon Germany through the thirty years’ strife was enormous, but even as a matter of material advantage, the contest was for North Germany worth all that it had cost.

=7. The Netherlands.=--The work of the printers in Holland was begun in Utrecht in 1473. The Dutch printers had from the outset the enormous advantage in their business of a practical freedom from interference by censorship, whether ecclesiastical or political. This was also true for a quarter of a century or more with the printing centres of Flanders, where, under the initiative of Mansion, Caxton, and their successors, the work of printing was begun, in 1474, in Bruges and in Louvain. In 1476, Caxton migrated from Bruges to London, setting up his first press in the courtyard of Westminster Abbey. The Dukes of Burgundy had, for several generations prior to the introduction of printing, been noted for their liberal interest in literature, and for their great collections of manuscripts, and this sympathetic relation of the Burgundian rulers to literature continued through the first half-century of printing.

During the first three fourths of the 16th century, the Netherlands, with Antwerp as a centre, present the type of a most enlightened community. At the time of the great siege of 1585, Antwerp was at the height of its prosperity, and in the extent and the varied character of its commercial relations it was possibly the leading city of Europe. Antwerp possessed exceptional advantages as a centre of book-production and by the close of the 16th century, out of the sixty-five printers who were at work in the Netherlands, no less than thirteen were in Antwerp. The neighbouring University of Louvain supplied scholarly coöperation which was essential for all the publishing undertakings of the age, while not a few scholars, who, some years later, found themselves with the exiles in Leyden or in Amsterdam, were at this time resident in Antwerp, and were already largely associated with the work of the printing-press. In 1556, at the time of the beginning of the work of the great publisher Plantin, an entire quarter of the city was devoted to the making of books, a circumstance without a parallel among the cities of Europe. The result of the censorship of the Spanish Government was practically to crush out the book business of Antwerp. The presses were largely destroyed and the scholars and printers alike were scattered among the towns of Holland. Plantin placed his imprint upon a number of books of theology, for all of which it was necessary to secure the approval, with the “royal privilege,” of the Duke of Alva and of the successors of the Duke who represented the Spanish Throne.

[Sidenote: Book Regulations, 1560–1570]

The ordinances issued by Philip II concerning books were for the most

## part merely a confirmation, with some increase in severity, of the

edicts of Charles V. The modifications in these ordinances brought about by the States-General in 1566 provided that those books only should be prohibited that contained heretical or pernicious opinions; and that the responsibility for the examination and decision should be shared with the theologians by the scholars of the other university faculties; that instructors should be at liberty to utilise all books not on the prohibited lists; and that the visitation to the bookshops should be made only under the direct authority of the magistrates. Under Alva, the routine for such a visitation was to instruct the magistrates on a specific day (not announced in advance) to place seals on the doors of all printing-offices and bookshops; the examination of the books was then carried out by the suffragan bishop and the local head of the Franciscans. In the years 1566 and 1567, four printers were sentenced to banishment for from four to six years, one was sent to the galleys, and one was hanged.[147]

In 1570, Philip II instituted the office of “proto-typographer” or supervisor of printing for the Netherlands, and appointed as the first occupant of the office the printer Plantin. Master-printers applying to the supervisor for authorisation for a work to be printed must show the certificate of approval of the diocesan bishop or of his vicar, and also of the local magistrate. Printers were required to take an oath of conformity to the doctrines of the Church as set forth by the Council of Trent. No remuneration was attached to the office of proto-typographer, but the incumbent was freed from the duty of lodging soldiers. The important service of the post for Plantin was, of course, the increased facility it secured for him in obtaining approvals and privileges for his own publications. The theologians of Louvain (through whom the ecclesiastical censorship for Antwerp was, in the main, carried on) were not likely to raise question concerning the undertakings of the literary representative of the King. It was suggested that one ground for his selection was the wish of the King to make good to Plantin the loss that had been caused to his business by his arrest in 1562 on a charge of heretical publishing, a charge which proved to be unfounded. It may also be recalled that Philip had promised, in 1568, to pay to Plantin the sum of 21,000 florins as a subvention for the polyglot Bible, edited by Montanus. This payment was, however, never made, and the failure to receive it was one of the causes that had, in 1570, brought Plantin into financial difficulties.[148]

Under the ordinance of 1570, the censorship is lodged with the council, the bishop, and the inquisitor. Each book that may secure their approval is to be referred to the stadtholder, by whom its selling price shall be fixed. Inspection of the printing-offices must be made from time to time by the bishop, the inquisitor, and the proto-typographer, and not less than twice a year by the magistrates. The booksellers must take oath that without permit from the censors they will bring in no book from abroad; that they will sell, except to a buyer with a written permit, no copies, printed in the vernacular, of the Scriptures or of controversial writings; and that they will faithfully obey all the regulations of these ordinances and of the Roman Index (that of Trent, printed as an appendix to the ordinances); all packages of imported books are to be opened only in the presence of the bishop or of the inquisitor.

In 1573, it was ordered that of all the books printed in the Netherlands, one copy should be delivered to the royal library at Antwerp, and a second (to be paid for) to the Escurial.

[Sidenote: 1569. Liège (Lüttich)]

Henricus Hovius printed in Liège, in 1569, an edition of the Index of Trent in which (without any reference or specification) certain additional names and titles have been inserted in the alphabetical lists. The title-page states that the Index has been prepared under the authority of King Philip, and in accordance with a decree of the Duke of Alva. The new titles, probably added at the instance of the divines of Louvain, are for the most part repeated in the Antwerp Index of 1570. Reusch points out that this Liège Index is very carelessly printed and is full of errors.

The prohibitions of the Trent Index were confirmed under the authority of the diocesan synods of the Spanish Netherlands. One of the diocesan edicts required the printers and booksellers each year to take an oath of fidelity to the faith of the Church, in default of which the license to print was to be forfeited. In 1589, the Synod of Tournai prohibited the booksellers from possessing a copy of the _Index librorum haereticorum_, a catalogue printed yearly for the use of the Frankfort Book-Fair, which was based upon the lists of the Index of Trent, but the titles in which were from year to year brought down to date. The book-dealers were already beginning to realise the value for their business of the labour expended by the Church in the preparation of bibliographies of the books which were most likely to prove of interest to the active minded people of the world. This Frankfort catalogue of heretical books was the beginning of a series of such catalogues in which the work of the Congregation of the Index and of the Inquisition was taken advantage of (with material improvements in the accuracy of the bibliography) to emphasise the value and to further the circulation of the books which had been condemned by the Church. The edict of the bishops who met at Tournai in 1589 appears to have been the first expression of doubt on the part of ecclesiastical authorities as to the effectiveness of the condemnations of the Index in lessening the circulation and the influence of heretical literature.

In 1585, through the recognition of the independence of the Dutch Republic, the long contests in the Netherlands were brought to a close. The authority of the Spanish King was restored in Antwerp but the city was impoverished as to both men and resources. Irrespective of the loss of life in the great city, Antwerp had suffered the loss of some of the best and most enterprising of its citizens who had preferred to make their home in the Protestant communities of Holland. The departing Protestants took with them much of the intellectual life and literary activity in the city, while Amsterdam and Leyden, free from the hampering restrictions of Catholic censorship, presented many advantages for publishing undertakings. In 1585, there was but one book printing-press in activity in the city in which a few years earlier there had been no less than forty. Plantin’s first publication for the new year was an official list of the books at that time under prohibition, the list comprising some six hundred titles.

It is not surprising, in view of the hampering regulations and restrictions above specified, that the book-trade of the Spanish Netherlands should have become demoralised and that the centres of publishing activities should have been transferred from Antwerp and Louvain to Amsterdam, Utrecht, and Leyden.

Among the Protestants who during this war period migrated from Flanders was Louis Elzevir, who removed from Louvain to Leyden and began there the business which developed later into one of the greatest publishing houses of the world. The coöperation of the scholars of the university, together with an absolute freedom from any censorship restrictions, gave to the new publishing concern advantages which were at that time possessed by no printer-publishers outside of Holland. The development of the book-trade of Holland was furthered thirty years later through the influence of the Thirty Years’ War in Germany. During this period, 1618–1648, the territory of the Seven United Provinces was free alike from invaders and from civil strife. Much of the work of the scholars of Europe that had heretofore been brought into print through the presses of Frankfort or of Leipsic was now transferred to Amsterdam and Leyden. The theological discussions which became active in Holland, more particularly after the time of the Synod of Dort in 1618, furthered the work of the printing-presses. The Hollanders were also shrewd enough to realise the opportunity given to them for bringing into print the books which had been prohibited or cancelled in Spain, in France, or in Italy. With a few exceptions, these books had been written in Latin and the editions printed in Leyden or in Amsterdam were, therefore, available for the use of scholarly readers throughout Europe.

Andrea Schurius writes[149] that he has been told that the Amsterdam publisher of the _Bibliotheca Fratrum Polonorum_ took special pains to secure the formal prohibition of his work, considering this to be the most effective means of bringing it into active sale.

During the 17th century, the press of the Dutch Republic continued this work free from restrictions which hampered publishing in all other States of Europe. The censorship measures in Holland were restricted to certain edicts and regulations issued by the States-General prohibiting the printing of libellous material or of works directed against princes or governments which were allied with the Republic. There is also an occasional edict against the circulation of publications classed as “irreligious” or “obscene.” The machinery for the enforcement of these regulations appears, however, to have been very inconsiderable; and there is no record of any general inspection for the purpose of censorship of the productions of the printing-press. Among the earlier noteworthy publications of the Elzevirs were certain books that could not at that time easily have come into print elsewhere, such as _The System of the Universe_ by Galileo and the _Defensio Populi Anglicani_ of Milton. Galileo, writing in 1638, gave testimony to the excellence of the work done for him by his Dutch publishers. The list of scholars under censorship either ecclesiastical or political in their persons or in their books who had been exiled from their own countries and whose names are brought together on the catalogues of the Elzevir house is a long one. We may mention, in addition to Galileo, Scaliger, Hobbes, Pascal, Descartes, More, etc.

The Roman, Spanish, and French Indexes served as guides to the Dutch printers for the selection of books likely to prove of interest and to secure circulation. In not a few instances, the scholarly writers themselves who had been banished from Spain or from France in connection with their so-called heretical teachings, or who, irrespective of banishment, had decided that they could carry on their work to better advantage in a territory which was outside of the control of the Catholic Church, had taken up their residence in Holland. The influx of these scholars made Holland for a century or more the centre of scholarly activity in Europe and gave to the Dutch publishers, in the use of these scholarly pens for original work and for editorial work, an enormous advantage. The ethics of publishing were at this time not recognised or certainly at least not recognised outside of national boundaries. The Dutch publishers were quite ready, therefore, in the case even of books which had not been prohibited in the country of origin, to utilise texts that had been edited or shaped by competitors in Venice, in Paris, or in Frankfort, for the production of competing editions. The printers of Holland secured for themselves a final advantage in developing after 1525 a better standard of typography, both for accuracy and for beauty, than had as yet been known in Europe excepting with certain of the issues of Aldus and of Froben. The preëminence obtained under these several influences by the printers of Holland continued until the middle of the 18th century.

=8. England.=--The work of printing in England began with Caxton, in 1476. His catalogue speaks of his books as being “printed in the Abbey of Westminster.” His presses were as a fact placed in the almonry, a space within the Abbey precincts. Sir Thomas More has shown why Caxton could not venture to print a Bible in the vernacular, although the people would have greedily bought the Wyclif translation. Wyclif’s translation was interdicted and More says: “On account of the penalties ordered by Archbishop Arundel’s constitution, though the old translations that were before Wyclif’s days remained lawful and were in some folks’ hands, yet he thought no printer would likely be so hot to put any Bible in print at his own charge, and then hang upon a doubtful trial whether the first copy of his translation was made before Wyclif’s days or since. For if it were made since Wyclif, it must be approved before the printing.” This was a dilemma that Caxton was too prudent to encounter.[150]

In England, during the first half of the century, the printers, while having various other difficulties to contend with, such as lack of communication with a public, the small extent of the public that was ready to be interested in the printed book, and the serious interference that was caused to all trade by the events of the Civil War, were practically free from any burdens of censorship. Even if the ecclesiastics in England had been in a position to make their censorship troublesome, they would have had small occasion for interference with the first literary undertakings of the English printers. The lists included hardly any works having to do with theology, religion, or controversial subjects of any kind. Caxton and his immediate successors realised that at this period the interest of English readers could be depended upon much more safely for books of romance and for chronicles. It was nearly a century after the introduction of printing into England before any attempt was made to produce English editions of the Scriptures. It was in Germany that during this period the attention of the printers was given largely to the production of Bibles, theological treatises, and controversial tracts. The lists of the printers of France were devoted mainly to classics, with some titles under the headings of romance and poetry, while in Italy the earlier lists were made up chiefly of classics and science.

The Stationers’ Company received its charter by royal decree in 1566, two years after the marriage of Queen Mary (to Philip of Spain). It constituted an organisation of the publishing and printing trade of London which assumed to represent the publishing interests of the country. The basis of the authority of the Stationers’ Company was the theory that all printing was the prerogative of the king. The Stationers’ Company had, under its charter, summary rights of search, seizure, and imprisonment, and these powers were confirmed or renewed by the licensing acts. It seems probable that the purpose of the institution of the Company was not so much the furthering of the business of book-production, as the organisation of this business in such shape that it could be reached effectively and promptly by the censorship authorities of the Crown. No question appears to have arisen in England in regard to any conflicting authority on the part of the Church to control such censorship. The Crown utilised the services of bishops and of other ecclesiastics for the examination of works in the division of theology which came under the suspicion of heresy. The selection of the examiners and the decision concerning the disposition of the books so examined was reserved, however, for the direct action of the Crown or of the representatives of the Crown. Such censorship as came into action in England proved to be more important in connection with political literature than with works on religion or theology. In 1644, the Long Parliament enacted certain regulations for the control of printing which provided that “No book, pamphlet, or paper shall be henceforth printed unless the same be first approved and licensed by censors that shall be thereto appointed.” Milton had been a persistent opponent of the policy of censorship and of licensing, and one result of the enactment was the publication of the famous _Areopagitica_, an oration in the form of a pamphlet, which presented with fierce eloquence a protest against the whole theory of the exercise by Government licensers of a supervision and control of literature, or of the delegation of such control to a commercial company (the Stationers’ Company) which was the creation of Government.

=9. Oxford. Index Generalis. James. 1627.=--In 1627, Thomas James, the librarian of the Bodleian Library in Oxford, brought into print, under the title of an _Index Generalis_, a summary or catalogue which had been made up from the Church Indexes that had thus far come into print and of which James had been able to secure copies. It was his purpose to present in this general catalogue the titles of the more important of the books condemned under the censorship of the Church, copies of which books it was, as he pointed out, important to secure for the Bodleian collection. The so-called James Index came to be a working guide for book-buyers and its publication had a direct effect upon the circulation in England of the books specified. It has, therefore, seemed in order to make reference to it in this chapter on the influence of censorship on the book-trade of England.

This catalogue of James was utilised during the succeeding years by English scholars generally, as a convenient guide to the literature condemned by the Church and which on the very ground of its condemnation might be assumed to possess interest and value for scholars who were not troubled by the dread of ecclesiastical penalties. The recommendation of James that copies of these works should be secured for the Bodleian has been carried out quite effectively. The copy of the James Index which has been preserved for the reference library of the Bodleian has been checked by successive librarians as copies of the books recommended have been secured and the list is now very nearly complete. The copies secured for the Bodleian represent in large part editions printed in Holland; as before pointed out, the publishers of Amsterdam, Leyden, and Utrecht had, from the date of publication in 1546 of the Index of Louvain, interested themselves in bringing promptly into print works condemned by Roman authorities and in furthering the distribution of these books throughout Europe.

The full title of James’s Index reads as follows: _Index Generalis Librorum Prohibitorum a Pontificiis; una cum editionibus expurgatis vel expurgandis juxta serium literarum et triplicem classem. In usum Bibliothecæ Bodleianæ et Curatoribus ejusdem specialiter designatus. Per Tho. James, S. Theol. D. Coll. B. Mariæ. Winton. In Oxon. Vulgo. Novi dicti quondam Socium Oxonæ Excudebat Gulielmus Turner. An. D. 1627._

I add a rendering of his preface (the original of which, according to the custom of the time, is in Latin) which is interesting as indicating the attitude of the Protestant scholar of the day towards the censorship of Rome. James includes in the volume of his Index an announcement (addressed to students of theology) of another work that he had in preparation which he entitles _A Universal Index of the Sacred Fathers of the Church_. He speaks of having published a sample of this and goes on to say,

[Sidenote: Bull appended to the oath at the Council of Trent.--“I will never accept or interpret Holy Scripture except according to the unanimous opinion of the Fathers.”]

“If my friends tell me that this sample which I have published is not displeasing to them, there will shortly after follow the other books of Scripture, if not in their own order, at least in a series which has the support of other authorities. My method of procedure will be as follows: The text before us will be the Vulgate, and no one who has read any of the works of Cyprian or Tertullian or of the other ancient Fathers of the Church, has ventured to say that this text is Hieronymian, and thus the various readings which do not agree with this Vulgate edition will be added, and the passages which have been disputed by Bellarmin and his school (of which there are more in this fifth chapter than in any other) carefully noted in the margin. By these means, the younger students to whom God has given the necessary leisure and inclination, may see whether the Fathers take the side of the Pontifical writers with their shrill unseemly clamour, or are ranged under our banners: for a careful inspection of the Company here drawn up will support opinions of the Eastern as well as the Western Churches one after another,--a support which is claimed falsely by the Papists, in direct opposition to the rules laid down by the Council of Trent, as they would see if they would but face the facts.

“If the opinion of those who have declared that these Books ought not to be published, or ought to be suppressed, wins the day, I shall not fall claiming to have championed in the struggle the fortunes of the Church or any great issue. No! but relying on conscience and on the conviction that I must promote the cause of God to the best of my poor ability, I shall preserve my writings of whatsoever sort in my own house under my own roof; with the hope that if I can but present a willing and ready spirit I shall be not unworthy to serve the world, even though opportunities and resources fail; for has not the Poet said,

‘In magnis est voluisse satis.’

“In everything I have tried to follow the counsel of S. Paul,--neglecting my own conscience, taking no care for my bodily health, not seeking your money, but yourselves, not trying to profit myself but to benefit the world.

“Finally, that there be no mistake as to the editions which I have used in the compilation, I have appended the following Index. Lest you experience difficulty in perusing it or strike upon the rock which has proved fatal to others, I would have you remember (being desirous of removing the obstacle which has long troubled many readers) that I have devised a way by which all future Editions may be referred to my pages, thus saving readers the expense and trouble of buying Edition after Edition. With these words of instruction, learned Reader, I would bid you farewell. May God direct and preserve us and our studies to the glory of His name and to the advancement of His Church.

“For the State and the Catholic Church of God these labours.

TH. JAMES, D.D.

“OXFORD, 1627.”

The preface to the Index itself reads as follows:

TO BE NOTED IN THIS CATALOGUE

“First, as regards the numerals 1, 2, 3, occurring throughout the book.

“1. Denotes condemned authors, that is, authors whose religious opinions are orthodox and pious, but whose books are prohibited.

“2. Denotes pontifical authors, in whose case caution or expurgation is prescribed.

“3. Denotes works of doubtful authorship which are prohibited.

“But it must be understood that the inquisitors (if one may say so) made a rather imperfect classification under these heads. For the authors Aventinus, Erasmus, Palingenius, Bruciolus, etc., were placed in the first class, whereas they belong rightly in the second; and on the other hand, Adolphus Metkerchus, Lavinus Lemnius, and others, who ought to be in the first class, are placed in the second. And the third class, which should consist of doubtful works, contains a good many known authors whose names and surnames are clear as day to any one looking at the title-pages with one eye. This appears plainly, for example, in the case of two books, _Bello Papali_, and another of which the title is, _Beliae, sive consolatio peccatorum_.

“Secondly, it ought to be clear to everybody that books prohibited by the _pontificii_ (_i. e._ the Congregation of the Index, acting as the representatives of the Pope) ought to be sought with the more zeal and read with the greater avidity. For what the papists prohibit, God grants for our use and benefit, and the memory of those condemned by our adversaries is and should be blessed, since their names are doubtless inscribed in the Book of Life.

“Thirdly, a star(*) indicates editions or authors hitherto contained in the _Bibliotheca Oxoniensis_, which is to be set down as our gain since we need take no further trouble to make them known.

“Fourthly, the Greek letter denotes authors of the second class (almost all _pontificii_) who (unless they are emended and expurgated as the Indexes direct) set forth more clearly than the noonday sun the very doctrine of the Protestants, so that the _pontificii_ do not venture even to mutter against it. This is doubtless the work of God’s finger and of the inspiration of the Holy Ghost, who armed Midianite against Midianite, to their mutual slaughter.

“Fifthly, we have arranged all authors of whatever class in strict alphabetical order. Their names cannot be found so easily in the _Sandovillian_ or _Roman Index_, in comparison with which other Indexes are rubbish.

“Sixthly, in this alphabetical revision are included books, written whether in Latin or in French, Italian or Spanish, chiefly on religious subjects, by men who were in their own day not subject to condemnation at the hands of either God or men, but who, if they were now alive, could hardly, or not at all, escape the Inquisition and damnation to the shades of deeper hell. Moreover (to speak more plainly and to make the thing clear by examples taken from this book) the _pontificii_ are so far from being consistent that books hitherto praised and approved by worthy men are now transformed into prohibited books of the second or third class. In this way was treated even the _Evangelium Romanum prout a Clementis octavi manu Jacobs Davis Episcopo traditum est_; for after the book had (if the stories may be believed) worked miracles on the return of Perron to France, it was not only left neglected, but the possession of a copy was prohibited under penalty of excommunication.[151] Capucinus, inquisitor in the diocese of Naples, has his doubts about the Index of Quirogus (Madrid, 4VO, 1584), and for this reason he incurs censure in the Sandovillian Index, p. 365 (consult our catalogue) and the _Enchiridion Ecclesiasticum_, Ven., 1588 (see our catalogue) is by no means to be read unless _corrigatur_. In the same way, Gabriel Pentherbeus’ book on The Destruction of Evil Books is not always free from the censure of others. What need of more examples? The Defence against the Reformers, according to the principles of S. Francis, S.D.N., by Manfred (and, good God, what a man) is altogether prohibited, unless I have overlooked something. If so many and such men do not escape the hands, or rather the claws of their own party, who can guarantee safety to a book composed by any author whatever? Not Aesculapius himself, their God, their lord Pope, ventured to promise this, since Clement VIII changed the books of his predecessor, Sixtus V, with no consideration for the industry involved, on the ground of typographical errors, a most glorious lie. There are many more cases of this sort worthy of notice, but it has seemed best to mention but these few facts at present. Let the rest be left in the hands of the intelligent reader, or postponed to another time.

“Finally, it must be carefully noted that the censures sometimes recoil upon the censors themselves, for no law is juster than that the very inquisitors should be revised, corrected, and altered, under the rod. The complete works of Beatus Arias Montanus for one were most severely castigated by the first inquisitors and expurgators. This is done (strange but true) on page 55 of the Index Sandovilliano and on page 39 of the Roman Index, to say nothing of the Indexes named above. Are more instances wanted?”

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