CHAPTER VIII

THE CENSORSHIP OF THE STATE AND CENSORSHIP BY PROTESTANTS

1. General.

2. Catholic States: Catholic Germany, France, Spain and Portugal.

3. Protestant States: Switzerland, Protestant Germany, Holland, Scandinavia, England.

4. Summary.

=1. General.=--In this chapter, I am undertaking to present, not any comprehensive summary of political censorship, a task which would in fact require many volumes, but merely certain noteworthy examples of regulations issued under civil authority which will serve to indicate the general character of the censorship supervision of literature that was attempted by the State.

I have grouped together here instances of Catholic censorship in which the ecclesiastics carried out their prohibitions under the authority of the State, or in which the State censorship regulations had been put into shape by the ecclesiastics. In the record of the so-called Protestant censorship, that is to say of the regulations adopted in Protestant States for the control of theological or religious literature, it is not practicable to separate the acts and utterances of the theologians from those emanating from the civil authorities, whether municipal or national. The larger number of the prohibitions of books having to do with theology or religion were naturally initiated by the divines, although even for this class of literature the civil authorities frequently did not hesitate to take into their own hands the responsibility of selecting the works to be condemned.

The chief distinction, however, between the censorship methods of Protestant communities and those which came into force in Catholic States was the fact that for the former the censorship authorities were dependent for the enforcement of the prohibitions and penalties upon the machinery of the civil authority. The Protestant divines had at their command no such dread penalty as the ban of excommunication by means of which the Catholic ecclesiastics were able to enforce upon the faithful obedience to the commands of the Church. In the Protestant States, it was necessary for the divines, first, to convince the rulers of the essential importance of their particular creeds or forms of “orthodoxy,” in order to secure the enactment of the necessary laws or the issue of censorship edicts; and, secondly, to keep the magistrates up to the mark in the enforcing of the penalties prescribed.

It is true that in Catholic States, such as France, Austria, or Bavaria, the authority of the Crown and the machinery of the civil power were frequently utilised to carry out censorship regulations that had been framed by the ecclesiastics; but even with the citizens of those States (as far at least as they were Catholics) the most pertinent influence in insuring obedience for the prohibitions of the Index was the dread of being deprived of the rites of the Church. Excommunication meant that the adults were prohibited from marriage and their children were deprived of baptism; it meant that for the living there was no communion, for the dying, no absolution, and for the dead, no burial in consecrated ground. Life without the sacraments was full of fears, and with the deprival of absolution and of Church burial, death took on new terrors. These same influences were, of course, all-important also in securing the active co-operation even of the most worldly and most skeptical of the civil rulers in creating and in maintaining the machinery for controlling the operations of the printers and booksellers and for enforcing adequate civil or criminal penalties against heretical delinquents who were not amenable to the authority of the Church.

In the States in which in this fashion the co-operation of Catholic rulers could be secured in support of the censorship policy of the Church universal, the administration of such censorship was, of course, more consistent, and it is fair to say less arbitrary (at least outside of Spain) than in the Protestant States in which the principles of prohibition changed from decade to decade with the changes of administration or as one theological faction or another secured influence with the rulers.

In 1904, the Jesuit Father, Joseph Hilgers, published, under the title _Der Index der verbotenen Bücher_, a treatise presenting, from the point of view of an earnest upholder of the authority of the Roman Church, an historical study of the Roman Index. The immediate text for the production of this treatise of the learned Father was the publication, in 1900, of the second Index of Leo XIII, of which Index the Father gives a comprehensive description and analysis. Father Hilgers takes the ground that it was impossible for the Church, without neglecting its manifest duty, to avoid accepting the responsibility for the supervision and control of literary production and of the reading of the faithful. The pope, says the Father, is, as the head of the Church on earth, the direct representative of God. It is through him that God makes known his wishes and the principles upon which the life of the faithful is to be guided. It is for the shepherd of the flock to preserve the flock from poison. The shepherd is charged not merely with the right living of his sheep during their earthly career, but with the much larger responsibility of seeing that their lives are so shaped that they shall secure a blessed hereafter.

In the historical sketch of the operations of the Index, Hilgers touches but lightly upon the examples of inconsistencies or difficulties in the enforcement by the Church of the control over literature. He makes no mention of the many contests that arose between the different ecclesiastical bodies. He hardly touches upon the fact that the Index came to be from time to time an expression of theological differences between the great Church bodies or Orders such as, for instance, the Jesuits and the Dominicans or the Jesuits and the Franciscans. He has nothing to say about the instances in which the utterances of successive popes came into conflict with each other. He also barely makes mention of the contentions, maintained in Spain as in France, of the right of the national Church, acting in co-operation with the national Government, to decide what principles should be maintained for the supervision of the literature of the nation. His big treatise, comprehensive in many respects, is very curious in its omissions. In dwelling upon the beneficent influence of this Church censorship, he omits altogether the record of the control of this censorship by the Inquisition in Spain. He has nothing to say about the imprisonment or execution of Spanish heretics whose crime had consisted in the production, the selling, or the reading of books classed as heretical. If the reader had no other knowledge of the Index than that which came to him by the history as presented by Hilgers, he would have before him simply a record of an administration of fatherly beneficence on the part of wise advisers, of a pleading with the perverse that they should be saved from the consequences of their own perversity; of actions furthering all scholarship that was in itself wholesome and sound, and of the discouragement simply of such perverted intellectual efforts as tended to lead men away from their duty to their Creator and to undermine the moral conduct of their own lives.

Hilgers is not prepared to admit that any of the works repressed by the Church, or the repression of which was undertaken by the Church, could have constituted, if permitted free circulation, or do actually constitute as far as, in spite of the opposition of the Church, they secure such circulation, any additions of value to the intellectual life of mankind. He would probably, if the question had been put to him directly, have taken the ground that no intellectual gain could sufficiently offset the moral or spiritual loss. In maintaining the contention that any properly ruled community must accept a supervision of its literary activities, he naturally lays stress upon the long series of censorship systems which were undertaken by ecclesiastics or by the civil rulers of Protestant States. He calls attention to the series of so-called Protestant (theological) Indexes, and he adds a very considerable list of instances of political censorship. He is able to point out that the number of books which have come under condemnation through this Protestant censorship (including the censorship undertaken directly by the civil authorities) very much exceeds the books condemned in the whole series of Roman Indexes, although in this comparison he omits all Indexes which came into publication outside of Rome.

He does not take pains to present any results of the effectiveness of these Protestant Indexes. In omitting the record of the censorship of the Spanish Inquisition, he is able to avoid any reference to the fact that the censorship machinery put into force by the Inquisition was, for the territory controlled by it, thoroughly effective; so that if a book was condemned in Spain, it was the case, for the centuries in question, that, as far as Spanish territory was concerned, the editions were thoroughly suppressed and the production or distribution of copies was rendered impossible. He speaks of each of the censorship edicts of the German States as if they had effect throughout the whole of the territory of Germany. He omits to point out that the books condemned in one city or in one State promptly came into print and into circulation in adjacent territory in such manner that the circulation was practically unchecked.

He is able, however, fairly to make out his main contention, that for the century succeeding the Protestant Reformation, the will or desire on the part of the Protestants to establish a censorship of literature was just as emphatic as that of the authorities of Rome; and that if their efforts were only partially successful, it was through no want of conviction on their part that such efforts were required for the maintenance of what they considered to be the true Faith. He is able to make good the further contention that these examples of Protestant censorship present a much larger series of inconsistencies than could be found in the record of the Index of the Church of Rome; even though one should for the purpose of the comparison include under the Church Index, in addition to those printed in Rome, the Indexes that emanated from Madrid, Louvain, and Paris. He also makes his point good in regard to the political Index. He is able to show that, as far at least as the edicts of the State were concerned, these were more bitter, more comprehensive, and more regardless of literary interests than those of the Church. What he does not emphasise is that these political edicts were very much more spasmodic and temporary in their influence, and that, as a fact, they had very little continued effect on the literary development of the communities which were responsible for them.

A political censorship becomes of necessity the football of political

## parties and is therefore not to be maintained with any measure of

consistency or justice. The multiplicity and changeableness of the religious doctrines of the reformers gave to the so-called Protestant censorship an inconsistent and contradictory character which is not to be paralleled under any epoch of Roman supervision of literature. A censorship of this kind is the natural product of the fissure of creeds. Hermann Wagener, writing in Berlin in 1864, remarks that all the measures of the State thus far attempted to protect the public against pernicious influences from the printing-press, are open to the criticism that their action is purely negative. On the other hand, as he points out, the censorship policy of the Catholic Church, while on the one hand prohibitory, on the other asserts positive and constructive principles for the literary and intellectual development of the community by wholesome and wise methods.

It is true, says Hilgers, that the works of great writers like Tasso, Molière, Châteaubriand, Vondel, Goethe, Schiller, Grotius, and other leaders of thought have come under the ban of censorship and that the publication or use of their works had been permitted only after certain eliminations or purgations had been made. The censorship regulations in regard to these authors emanated however not from Rome but from the authorities of France, Holland, Germany, and Denmark. It was the case even with _Faust_ that its production could not be permitted on the stage of Berlin until certain “dangerous” passages had been eliminated.

[Sidenote: Catholic Germany]

=2. Catholic States.=--The Edict of Worms of 1521, which committed the Emperor Charles V to the support of the contentions of the Papacy, and threw the great weight of the Holy Roman Empire against the cause of the Protestant reformers, constituted the beginning of an imperial censorship, a censorship which was confirmed and extended by the Edict of Nuremberg of 1524. In the regions under Lutheran influence, the only effect of the imperial and ecclesiastical prohibition was, as noted, to increase largely the circulation of the writings of the reformers. In the districts into which the reform doctrines had only begun to penetrate, the ecclesiastics were able, in great part at least, to stop the further circulation of the pamphlets, by taking prompt and harsh measures against the colporteurs. From this time and until the close of the Thirty Years’ War, Church and State (the imperial State) worked together (although not always in harmony) against the freedom of the press, on the broad ground that such freedom necessarily resulted in heresy and in treason. In 1529, the persecution of the printers and of the Protestants in Austria was for the time relaxed because of the peril of Vienna from the Turks, an exigency which absorbed the full attention of the imperial authorities.

The Church and the Holy Roman Emperor finally took the ground that every writing that came from the pen of a Protestant author, even though it had nothing whatsoever to do with religion or politics, must be classed as libellous. In 1548, the Emperor issued a new series of most strenuous laws for the control of the press. The penalties were brought to bear at one point or another with full severity, but it proved to be impracticable to secure in the Germany of the time any uniformity of obedience. In Austria and in Bavaria, the penalties included the use of the rack for authors, printers, and sellers of publications that came under condemnation. In 1567, a _Flugschrift_ was printed in Frankfort under the title of _Nachtigall_, which was at once interpreted as a libel on the Emperor. Fourteen hundred copies were sold within a few hours of its issue and there were various reprints within the next few weeks. The Emperor ordered the punishment not only of the printer, but of the magistrates of Frankfort. The former was placed in prison for two years and the magistrates were fined thirty thousand gulden, an enormous sum for those days.[58]

The Emperor Ferdinand was a more faithful, that is to say, a more bigoted, son of the Church than Charles, but he refused to admit that the control of the press was a Church matter. He took the ground that censorship was a matter pertaining to the State, that is, to the Crown, and that the bishops could take part in it only as delegates of the authority of the State. This was the contention asserted, and finally maintained, in France by Francis I and his successors.

In an official document of 1580, occurs the phrase, “The regulation of books (_das Bücher-regal_) which has for many years been within the control of the emperor.” Schurmann is of opinion that the authority for the regulation of books was derived from, or connected with, the rights reserved to the imperial authority under the Golden Bull. A century after the issue of the Golden Bull, at the time namely of the invention of printing, the reserved powers (_Reserva-rechte_) of the empire had become materially weakened, and were being in large part exercised by the local authorities, and the attempt of the emperor to enforce control over literary production and distribution was from the outset met by antagonism and protest on the part of princes and of the municipal magistrates, and was also opposed by the contention of the Church that such supervision properly belonged to her. The question was raised as to whether the decrees of the imperial Diet contained any references to the imperial control of book publishing. The omission was explained on the ground that such control was exercised as a personal right of the emperor. It was under such imperial authority, for instance, that an approval or privilege was given to the _Germania_ of Aeneas Sylvius (afterwards Pius II), originally issued in Italy in 1464 and printed in Germany in 1515.

In 1530, there came to Vienna a group of Jesuits who did much to strengthen the machinery of censorship. The undertakings of the printers and of the booksellers decreased in direct proportion with the growth of the influence of the Jesuit advisers of the emperor. In 1523, the production and sale throughout the empire of the German Bible is prohibited. In 1564, the Elector of Bavaria orders that the work of the publishers must be restricted to printers whose Catholic orthodoxy has been duly tested. In this year, the Elector begins the issue of an annual list of books that were to be permitted. In 1569, the use in the schools of Bavaria of certain Latin classics, including the works of Virgil, Horace, and Ovid, was prohibited. In 1616, the Elector appointed Catholic commissioners of censorship for each town in Bavaria. The University of Ingolstadt became the centre of the work of the Jesuits, who, in Bavaria as in Vienna, had secured the direction of censorship.

In 1579, under Rudolf II, the Jesuits were called upon to put into shape a more effective censorship for the empire. Under the régime thus established, the standard of thought for the political action and for the religious belief of Germany was to be fixed in Rome and in Madrid. Under the direction of the Jesuit censors in the year 1579, no less than twelve thousand books in German and two thousand in Bohemian were burned by the public hangman in the town of Gratz.[59]

In the same year, an imperial commission was appointed, with headquarters at Frankfort, which was charged with the supervision of the book production of the empire. The operations of this commission were very largely controlled by the interests, real or imaginary, of the Catholic Church, and the personal supervision and arbitrary censorship of the ecclesiastics, had not a little to do with the disintegrating of publishing undertakings in Frankfort and with the transfer, some years later, to Leipsic of the leadership in the business of book production and book distribution.

Hilgers, while admitting the influence of the Jesuits in the direction of State censorship in South Germany, denies that the results of their work were adverse to the development of literature (“sound literature”) or to intellectual activity. Hilgers writes: “It may at once be admitted that the Jesuit Fathers were, during the 16th century, active in securing in Austria, Bavaria, and other States a censorship of literature. The Holy Ignatius, Father of the Order, had from the beginning of his active work insisted upon the responsibility resting with the Church and with the active workers of the Church for preserving the faithful from the poison of literature.”[60] In 1550, and in the years following, Peter Canisius, at that time the head of the Order in Germany, took active measures for the enforcement throughout the empire of the regulations of the Index of Paul IV, and after the publication, in 1564, of the Index of Trent, the Jesuit Fathers in Germany had a large part in bringing about the enforcement of the regulations therein presented. Hilgers points out that, under Jesuit influence, there were issued in Bavaria during the years succeeding 1565 not only lists of books condemned and prohibited, but further lists of books commended for the reading of the faithful. These catalogues had been prepared by the Jesuit Fathers at the instance of Canisius and under the authority of Duke William V. They were distributed chiefly through the parish priests. Against the contention made by German historians that the influence of the Jesuits,

## particularly in South Germany, had served to restrict, and in certain

instances practically to repress, literary production and publishing

## activity, Hilgers insists that in Germany, as throughout Europe, the

influence of the Order had always been an intellectual influence; and that its efforts had furthered education and had advanced the interests of scholarly literature, of printing, and of publishing. He contends with some ingenuity that the elimination from literary production of

## activity in undesirable productions and the concentration of literary

force in the channels in which such force could be directed to the best service of humanity, far from lessening intellectual or literary force, could but serve to strengthen this and to render it more effective.[61]

During the first half of the 16th century, there may well have been ground for a censorship of literature in Germany in connection with the long series of lampoons and libellous tractates and volumes that came into print. Even leaders of thought such as Luther and Reuchlin, were tempted into language that became not only unscholarly, but coarsely abusive. The more earnestly the community interested itself in religious convictions, the more bitter became the expression of hate and scorn for other earnest believers who had arrived at different convictions.

It is certainly not in order to hold the Jesuits responsible for the general censorship policy of Rome. The direction of the Roman censorship has never been in Jesuit hands. The first secretary of the Congregation of the Index was a Franciscan, while all the succeeding secretaries have been Dominicans. Hilgers does not mention one detail in regard to which this Dominican control of the Congregation has doubtless been important: of the books on the Index which were the work of members of the great Catholic Orders, those of the Jesuits equal in number all of the others together. One cause for this was probably the fact that this Order included a larger proportion of educated workers. The literary interests of the Jesuits were greater and so also was the number of books produced by them.

During the second half of the 18th century, the censorship commissions instituted by the State were given powers under which the authority of the censorship bodies of the Church was materially modified and restricted. In Austria, a number of Indexes were compiled by these civil commissions, and in Bavaria one such Index was published. These Indexes have importance chiefly because they represent a claim made on the part of the State to control certain matters which, according to the ecclesiastics, properly belonged within the exclusive domain of the Church.

In 1752, Maria Theresa, for the purpose of checking the distribution throughout the Austrian dominions of Protestant writings, issued an edict ordering all Catholics to submit to their confessors the copies of religious books in their possession. The confessors were to retain all doubtful works and to return the others duly certified with their signatures and with an ecclesiastical seal. In 1756, the bookbinders were instructed to deliver to the parish priests copies of any Protestant writings placed in their hands for binding.

In 1753, the examination of books that were already in print, together with the censorship of works submitted for the purpose of securing a printing permit, was transferred from the University of Vienna to a censorship commission which was charged with the work both of censorship and revision. This commission was appointed under the imperial authority and remained in existence until 1848. It issued from time to time catalogues of prohibited books. Books were in part prohibited unconditionally, and in part with the restriction that they should be placed only in the hands of scholars who had secured from the police authorities a special permission for their use.

In 1754, was published the first Austrian Index. It bears the title _Catalogus librorum rejectorum per Concessum censurae_. After 1758, the lists bore the title of _Catalogus librorum a Commissione Aulica prohibitorum_.

Between the years 1758 and 1780, were issued continuations of the Aulic catalogues. Later, the system obtained of printing fortnightly lists of books which had failed to secure an _Imprimatur_ or _Admittetur_, these lists being distributed to police magistrates, libraries, and booksellers. Every two months the same were classified and reprinted.

In 1768, was published in one volume the series of catalogues covering the prohibitions of the preceding seven years. The title reads: _Catalogus Librorum a Commissione Caes. Reg. Aulica Prohibitorum. Vienna mdcclxviii. Prostat. in officiana Libraria Kaliwodiana._ With this volume, are bound in supplements to a preceding Austrian Index, numbered from I to VI, comprising annual lists for the six years succeeding 1761. The work was reprinted in Vienna in 1774 with further annual lists. Similar issues were made, with annual supplements, in 1776, 1777, and 1778. These volumes contain lists only, with no prefatory matter and no reference to the authority under which the condemnations are made. The selections presented a much larger proportion of English books (including plays and novels) than have received attention in any other Continental Indexes. Of Melanchthon only two works are condemned. Mendham points out that the Aulic Council, which was undoubtedly the authority for the preparation of these lists of prohibitions, was at the time composed of an equal number of Romanists and Protestants. The Aulic Indexes are probably the only examples of prohibitions arrived at by the judgment of Catholics and Protestants working together under the authority of the State.

In 1788, was published in Brussels an Index for use in the Austrian Netherlands, under the title _Catalogue des livres défendus par la Commission Impériale et Royale_.

The _Enchiridion Juris Ecclesiastici Austriaci_, edited by Rechberger and printed in Vienna, in 1808, presents the ecclesiastical law of Austria at that date in force. Rechberger declares in his preface that the “Index of Trent has no force in the Austrian dominions.”[62]

In 1816, was published in Vienna a general Index of German books under the title _Neues durchgesehenes Verzeichniss der verbotenen deutschen Bücher_.

In the earlier Vienna Indexes, are included the titles of certain works selected from the Roman Index, but it is difficult to arrive at the principle on which the selection has been made.

In 1769, under Max Joseph III, was instituted in Bavaria a “College of Censorship” comprising, in addition to the president, eight councillors. The subjects of theology and of ecclesiastical procedure were placed in the hands of three divines selected from the theological faculty of the University of Munich and the other councillors included representatives from the philosophical faculty.

_Municipal Censorship._--An early instance of the exercise of a city censorship occurred in Nuremberg, in 1527, in the case of a volume containing woodcuts illustrating the history of the Tower of Babel, for which cuts a rhyming text had been supplied by the cobbler-poet, Hans Sachs. The book had been printed without a license or permission from the magistracy. The magistrates decided that the book must be suppressed. They further cautioned Sachs that the writing of verses was not his proper business, and that he should keep to his own trade of shoemaking. The edict was simply an emphatic reiteration of the old proverb, “Shoemaker, stick to your last.” The difficulty in this case appears to have been due not to the Lutheran tendencies of Sachs’s rhymes, but to the lack of respect shown to the magistrates in issuing a book without a permit: and to the further breach of authority on the part of a man licensed only as a shoemaker undertaking also to carry on the avocation of a poet.

[Sidenote: France]

In France, the first State regulations for the control of the press date from 1521, and were directed against the works of the writers of the Protestant Reformation. While it was the case that the theologians of the University and the bishops put into action certain measures against works of heresy, the larger proportion of the censorship regulations came directly from the Crown or from the Parliament. In 1735, Duplessis d’Argentré published, in three volumes, a _collectio judiciorum_ which contained the most important of the acts and edicts in regard to censorship from the faculty of the Sorbonne, from the bishops, from the Parliament, and from the king up to the year 1735.

In 1757, the King (Louis XV) issues an edict prohibiting, under penalty of death, the publication and distribution of writings against religion.[63] There appears to be no record of the enforcement of this penalty. The policy of Malesherbes, who was director of censorship from 1750 to 1768, was lenient. One of the first acts of the revolutionary Government of 1789 was the repeal of the censorship laws of the old monarchy, but the new regulations, established by the revolutionists themselves for the control of the press, were still more severe and exacting than those that they replaced. It may be remembered, however, that these regulations, while in form universal, were as a matter of fact in force only in Paris and one or two other of the larger cities. Dupont, in his _History of Printing_, published in Paris in 1854, says that the press had been less seriously burdened under the persecutions of monarchical government than when it came under the control of the so-called “liberty” accorded to the community by the revolutionists of 1789. In form at least these revolutionists had shown themselves keenly interested in freeing the press from all burdens or restrictions. Under the Act of August, 1789, it was decreed as follows: “Article Two. Full exchange of thought and of opinion is one of the rights most precious to mankind. Every citizen is to be at liberty to speak, write, and print as he will, with the sole restriction that if the liberty be abused, he will be liable for any injury caused through such abuse.” It appears that certain inconveniences resulted from this cancellation of all restrictions. In March, 1793, the convention decrees as follows: “Whoever shall be convicted of having written or brought into print books or writings of any kind that assail the authority of the national representatives or that shall advocate the reëstablishment of royalty or that attempt to antagonise in any way the sovereignty of the people, shall be brought to trial before the special tribunal and shall, if convicted, be punished by death.” As a result of this decree, there were brought to the scaffold within the next year twenty journalists and fifty other writers.

The “rights of man” continued, however, to be maintained, at least by decree, as unassailable. The constitution of the Jacobins, published in September, 1793, declares that there must be no interference with the right of expression of thought and of opinion whether by word of mouth or in printed documents. In the constitution of the year III (1795) it is ordered that no censorship shall be imposed on writings before publication and that no author shall be hindered from bringing into print what he will. By September, 1797, the pendulum had again swung in the other direction. Under a decree issued in the name of the Senate and of the Five Hundred it was ordered that sixty journalists and other writers and printers who had been charged with conspiracy against the Republic should be brought to trial. Bailleul, speaking in the name of the Council of the Five Hundred, declared that “the mere existence of writers of this class is a crime against Nature ... they constitute a disgrace for mankind. The star of freedom must be freed from their presence. Not only these writers but the printers who have aided them in bringing their infamies into print must be banished into the penal colonies.” Fifty-five writers and printers were so banished.[64] In 1799, a new press law was enacted which brought the printing-press formally under the control of the police department. This system remained in force until the régime of the First Consul, when it was strengthened and the regulations were carried out more thoroughly. The censorship established under the empire is a part of the history of Europe. Fouché carried out with full measure of thoroughness the policy of Napoleon in regard to the operations not only of the journalists but of the printers, the book publishers, and the booksellers. The shops of the latter were placed under reiterated examination in order to avoid the risk that they might bring into the territory of France pernicious literature. The policy of the imperial censors concerned itself almost exclusively with works of a political character or which might, through criticisms of persons, by any possibility exert a political influence. The production and distribution of works in theology and religion had in any case been very much lessened, and during the consulate and the empire, there was but very little ecclesiastical censorship. But little attention seems during these years to have been paid to the protection of the morals of the community. Criticism of a book as _contra bonos mores_ does not find place in any of the French censorship lists of the time. In June, 1806, it was ordered by an imperial edict that the director-general should instruct all the booksellers and printers to place with the minister, in advance of any sales, a copy of every book whether it was printed in France or was an importation. They were at liberty to accept books which belonged without question to the divisions of science and art. This was the time in which the battle of Jena was being fought and one might perhaps suppose that the attention of the Emperor would have been sufficiently engaged with affairs in Germany.

Under the imperial censorship, occurred instances of expurgations which recall the expurgatory Indexes of the Spanish Inquisition. In the _Athalie_ of Racine, before a new edition was permitted to be printed, certain passages had to be cancelled because they contained allusions to “tyranny.” Chénier had permitted himself in his drama _Cyrus_ to present the following lines:

“_Je ne commande point, j’obéis à la loi; Et je suis à l’État, l’État n’est point à moi._”

These lines had to be cancelled before the performance of the play was permitted.[65] Kotzebue’s _Souvenir d’un Voyage_ was prohibited because the author had permitted himself certain favourable references to the late Queen of Naples and to the English Admiral, Sidney Smith (“that pirate,” said Napoleon). Madame de Staël’s _Corinne_ was prohibited in 1807 and a bitter criticism of the work, printed in the _Moniteur_, is ascribed to the pen of Napoleon himself. Chateaubriand’s _Les Martyrs_ was, before being published, severely handled by the censors. After suffering a large amount of elimination, it was brought into print, but even then proved unacceptable and was prohibited. A reference to the court of Diocletian was held by the police to constitute a _lèse Majesté_. In November, 1809, Napoleon specified as the responsibilities of censorship, _Le droit d’empêcher la manifestation d’idées qui troublent la paix de l’État, ses intérêts et le bon ordre_. In the same year, Napoleon says: _Qu’on laisse donc écrire librement sur la religion, pourvu qu’on n’abuse pas de cette liberté pour écrire contre l’État_.[66] In 1810, the Emperor instituted the post of _directeur general de l’imprimerie et de la librairie_, with Portalis as the first incumbent. The system of inspection and repression established under this bureau continued until the close of the empire and was, in fact, renewed with no great change after the return of the Bourbons.

Peignot, writing in 1806, during the “strenuous” years of the First Empire and at a time when political censorship in France and in the great territories outside of France that were under Napoleonic control was most severe, is prepared to speak with full measure of respect of the importance and the necessity of censorship. He finds ground for criticism, however, in the cases in which the Roman Church has undertaken to interfere with the control over French literature which properly belonged to the bishops and to the civil government of France, but he is quite prepared to accept the judgments of the Church in regard to pernicious books provided that these judgments are kept subordinated to the authority of the State.

Peignot speaks of “the happy Europe of his time” (the Europe controlled by Napoleon),

“in which governments now rest on foundations conformed to natural law. Individual liberty maintains itself through nearly all the civilised world. The princes recognise that they command not themselves but men and that their own authority is so much more to be respected when they submit themselves to the laws of their State. The rapid progress of science and art has developed the human spirit and has freed it from the prejudices and from the immorality, the tyranny and anarchy which had in the last years of the preceding century shaken and confused Europe.”[67]

Peignot includes in his lists of books condemned to be burnt not only the books which he finds recorded as condemned but certain further works which in his judgment ought to have been suppressed.

_The Results of Jansenism in France._--The Jesuit Hilgers places upon the Jansenists the responsibility for the wave of heresy, of free thought, and of unrestricted passion which at the close of the 18th century undermined in France, Church, State, and the foundations of society. Hilgers writes (in substance) as follows:

During the 18th century, through the Jansenism which affected a large part of the community in France, place was being made for the free thought philosophy which later became responsible for the great Revolution, and the result was the burst of a storm of public opinion against the Jesuits. In 1761, the Parliament of Paris prohibited twenty-four works by Jesuit writers and a year later, in a fresh prohibition, condemned a hundred and sixty-three Jesuit treatises. The contention was made in these edicts that the prohibited works had had an exciting and pernicious effect, had served to undermine Christian morality, and had tended to demoralise the life and to impair the safety of the citizens; and it was further contended that the opinions presented in these writings constituted an assault against the persons of the princes. These pernicious and godless heresies of the Jansenists continued to gain strength; the Jesuit Order in France became one of the first victims of the heresy; the Revolution gathered strength and the Parliament issued a fresh series of orders; the sacred persons of the king and queen fell victims on the scaffold and the best of the citizens lost property and in many cases life; the moral law of Christianity was replaced by the law of man and the goddess of Reason was accepted as the divinity of the community, and at her feet were burned as sacrifices the books of religion and the pictures of the saints. History has recorded how extreme became the tyranny of this world of so-called reason under the laws of men. This tyranny naturally extended itself to the censorship of all literature. The Jacobins controlled with an iron hand journals and journalists; the censorship instituted by them enforced the strictest supervision over their printed and spoken words; and when the rule of the mob was replaced by that of the despot Napoleon, the regulations controlling the press became still more burdensome and the penalties still more severe. Under the rule of Napoleon, it was not only the press of France of which the freedom was crushed, but throughout the broad territories of Germany and Italy, under the hand of the despot, every utterance of the people was checked and repressed. No censorship ever attempted or established by the Church had equalled in severity, in arbitrariness, in its crushing influence that instituted first by the so-called people of France (or to speak more accurately, by the mob of Paris) and later that continued and developed by the product of the mob revolution, Napoleon the despot.

The above is a summary of the forcibly presented contention of the Jesuit Hilgers. He traces back to the unrestrained utterances of the Jansenists what he terms the free-will riot of opinion that took possession of France. He makes this the natural causation of the excesses of the Revolution and of the oppressions of Napoleon. It is easy to point out that the causation is not adequate. The fact that the teachings of Port Royal preceded the Revolution is not in itself sufficient to make Port Royal responsible not only for the Revolution but for Napoleon. As the response of a disputant to the criticism of Church censorship, the parallel presented by Hilgers is, however, deserving of consideration if only as indicating the state of mind under which a loyal Romanist interprets history.

“If,” says Hilgers, “there is to be a sound and safe rule for the community, it is not possible to permit for men, whose understanding is at best but limited, an unrestricted freedom of investigation or of expression. To God alone, whose understanding is unrestricted and unlimited, can there be absolute freedom from limit for thought or for

## action. For man the sole safety lies in control.”[68]

Voltaire was obliged in 1716 to make sojourn for a number of weeks in the Bastile on the ground of certain of his ribald _pasquilles_. Before this experience, he had already endured banishment on the ground of other rash utterances. Rousseau’s _Émile_, which finds place in successive Indexes, was prohibited also by the civil authorities in Paris in 1762. The condemnation in Geneva was somewhat more serious; the book was burned by the hangman and the author was condemned to imprisonment.

In 1827, was printed in Paris (under Charles X) a State Index, under the title: _Catalogue des Ouvrages condamnés depuis 1814 jusqu’à Septembre, 1827, suivi du texte des jugemens et arrêts insérés au Moniteur_. The censures are specified as _conformément à l’article 26 de la Loi du 26 Mai, 1819_. The books condemned are for the most part classed as immoral.

Hilgers refers to the name of Mirabeau which stands on the Roman Index connected with the godless and immoral essay on the Bible that was printed anonymously, but the authorship of which was identified. He points out that this same book, when later reprinted in Paris, was condemned in 1829, and again in 1868, and on these two occasions not by Rome, but by the censorship of the State.

Among the books which secured the distinction of condemnation by the civil authorities, may be cited the following:

d’Aubigné, Sieur, _Histoire Universelle_. This book was condemned and burned in 1667 immediately after its publication, under a decree of the Parliament and a sentence of the Provost of Paris. The ground for the condemnation was certain satirical references contained in the history concerning Charles IX, Henry III, and Henry IV.

Beaumarchais, Pierre Augustin Caron de, _Mémoire_. The book was condemned and ordered to be burned by the public hangman under a decree of the Parliament of Paris, February, 1774. It was described as containing scandalous charges against the magistracy and the members of the Parliament.[69]

To France had been accorded, since the time of Pepin, the title of “eldest son of the Church.” It is France, however (or perhaps one should say consequently), that has found occasion to repudiate or to annul the greatest number of papal Bulls. I cite as follows certain of the more noteworthy of these acts of protest or of rebellion against the authority of Rome.

_Papal Bulls Repudiated in France._--1300. Boniface VIII. A Bull was issued by the Pope against Philip the Fair in connection with the injunction imposed by the Pope upon the King to make a pilgrimage to the Holy Land, and more immediately as a result of the treatment accorded by Philip to the papal emissary, who had been imprisoned for threatening interdict against the King. The Bull of excommunication was replied to with a decree from the King headed: _Philippe, par le grâce de Dieu roi des Français, à Boniface prétendu pape, peu ou point de salut_.

1407. Benedict XIII (classed as an anti-pope). In this Bull the Pope excommunicates all those who undertake to prevent the peaceable settlement for which he was working and who opposed themselves to his designs as the University of Paris had already done. The Pope places under interdict the kingdom of France and the domains of the empire.

Charles II, the Parliament, the clergy, and the University of Paris issued in general council a decree stating that Benedict was not only a schismatic but a heretic.

1510. Julius II excommunicates Louis XII because the King had refused to deliver to the Pope certain cities over which the Curia claimed to have rights. Louis is reported to have said when learning of his excommunication: _Saint Pierre avait bien autres choses à faire que se mêler des affaires des empereurs sous lesquels il vivait_. The King appealed to the General Council of Pisa. The Pope, in confirming the interdict on the kingdom, relieved the subjects of Louis from their oath of allegiance. Louis in his turn excommunicated the Pope and caused to be struck certain pieces of money which bore on the reverse _perdam Babylonis nomen_. The Council of Pisa refused to confirm the interdict of the Pope, who thereupon called the Council of the Lateran, but he died before this council had given a decision.

1580. The Bull _In Coena Domini_, issued by Gregory XIII, was publicly burned in Paris under decree of Parliament. This burning was the result of an attempt of the Pope to have the Bull published in France.

1585. Sixtus V issues a Bull against the King of Navarre, later Henry IV. The Pope declares the King, together with the Prince of Condé, to have been convicted of heresy and to be enemies of God and of religion. He decrees that the King shall be deposed from all rights in the kingdom of Navarre and in the principality of Berne, and shall forfeit his claim to the throne of France. This Bull gave satisfaction to the League in France, but had no political effect. The reply of Henry, copies of which were placed on the doors of the palace of the cardinals in Rome and even on the door of the Vatican, takes the ground that the declaration and excommunication on the part of Sixtus V, _soi-disant_ Pope of Rome, are false and are based on falsehood. The Pope is declared to be anti-Christ.

1591. Gregory XIV publishes in Rome two Bulls by the first of which he declares Henry IV to be a heretic and to be excommunicated and deposed from his kingdom; by the second, he places under interdict all ecclesiastics who may render homage to the King. Henry replies by ordering the Bull of Gregory to be burned before the gate of his palace and declares this _soi-disant_ Pope to be an enemy of the King, an enemy of France, and an enemy of peace and Christianity.

March, 1809. Pius VII issued a Bull of excommunication against his adversaries, this Bull being directed more particularly at Napoleon. Napoleon forbids the publication of the Bull in France and in the territories controlled by the French Empire and causes the Pope to be seized and taken from Rome to Savona and later to Fontainebleau. For a term of four years, during which he was practically a prisoner, the Pope refused to accept the instruction of the Emperor to cancel the Bull, but in January, 1813, he yielded, the Bull was recalled, and the _Concordat_ was signed. This _Concordat_ remained in force, at least in substance, up to 1906, in which year it was cancelled by the French Republic.

January, 1860. Pius IX issued a Bull (also described as an anathema) against those who had abetted the invasion of his dominions. This Bull was directed at Victor Emmanuel, who had, after the successful conclusion of the war with Austria, annexed the papal States, and at Napoleon III, through whose co-operation this annexation had proved possible. The Bull was, as far as France was concerned, suppressed by Napoleon III, who also suppressed the Paris journal (_Le Monde_) in which the Bull had been published.

[Sidenote: Spain and Portugal]

The law of 1558, which continued in force until the publication, in 1812, of the Constitution of Cadiz, rendered the supervision of the press a process as cumbrous as it was thorough. Every manuscript for which a license was desired had to be passed upon by an examiner appointed by the Royal Council. After such examination, it was delivered to the corrector general, and when it had passed through the press, the manuscript as annotated by this official was returned to him with the printed copy for comparison. If the author was an ecclesiastic, a preliminary examination and approbation by his superior were also required. The book as printed carried on its front page a long series of official certificates, and the same process had to be repeated for each succeeding edition. The fees were provided by the author or printer and constituted, of necessity, an additional charge on the actual cost of production. As the system grew more complex, the fees and the fines were multiplied so that the total charge became for each publication a very serious matter indeed. The interests of the readers were guarded by accompanying the license with a _tassa_ or specification of the price at which the book was to be sold, which price was determined by the Royal Council. This _tassa_ was not abandoned until 1762, when it was taken off all books excepting what are called books of necessity, that is to say books of instruction, either secular or religious.[70] The charge assumed by the Spanish censors brought upon them, as was the case with the censors of other countries, an unavoidable responsibility for the soundness, orthodoxy, and morality of everything that, having succeeded in passing the official examination, was permitted to come into print.

In 1682, it was ordered that books on the several subjects “affecting the interests of the State” (a definition which was of course capable of a very wide range of application) should be submitted to a special council or the department to whose affairs they related. The approbation of such department must be secured before the license could be issued. For instance, a book in regard to the colonies called for the approval of the Colonial Department, and one in regard to commerce or metals had to be submitted to the Department of Commerce. As late as 1757, a law issued by Ferdinand VI, and repeated in 1778 by Carlos III, ordered that all books on medical science must, before being published, secure the approval of a physician selected by the president of the _Protomedicato_. Printers and publishers, under the close supervision of the host of officials who had charge of the printing-offices and bookshops, were practically outlawed. The only printers who had any measure of freedom of action were those who carried on the printing-offices in the religious houses. The Crown could deprive its subjects of their civil rights, but it dared not meddle with ecclesiastical privileges. In 1752, under a royal decree, it is prohibited to import or to sell any books in Spanish written by Spaniards and printed abroad without special royal license; the penalty is death and confiscation. The death penalty could, however, be commuted to four years of _presidio_. With this varied series of obstacles in the way of printing and burdensome charges increasing the cost of publication, it is by no means surprising that the production of books in Spain was, for the three centuries after 1560, inconsiderable as compared with that of the other States of Europe. As Lea says, Spain fell absolutely behind in the development of literature, science, arts, and industry, when human thought seeking expression was surrounded and rendered ineffectual by so many impediments. Carlos III, realising the disadvantage to the community of the hampering of the work of the printing-press, undertook, in 1769, to remove certain of the restrictions. In 1778, he was able to congratulate himself on the increased prosperity of the printing business.

In 1782, the Inquisitor-General Bertram, following the instructions given in the Index of Benedict in 1756, recalled the prohibition of the printing and reading of Spanish versions of the Bible, a prohibition which had endured for two hundred and fifty years. This action brought out sharp antagonism on the part of many of the ecclesiastics and after the revolutionary events of 1789, the Inquisition re-established the larger number of the old-time prohibitions and included in these a fresh prohibition for the reading of the Scriptures. The censorship

## activity of the five years succeeding 1789 was, however, particularly

directed against the importation of political and so-called philosophical publications from France. After the restoration of the Spanish monarchy under Ferdinand VII, the old regulations of the Index were again confirmed under an edict of July 22, 1815. There were, later, certain modifications in these regulations, but in June, 1830, an elaborate law re-established the entire censorship system with its cumbrous machinery; every work contrary to the Catholic Faith or to the royal prerogative was forbidden under pain of death, and provision was made for the most elaborate supervision of books imported from abroad.

In 1768, Joseph I of Portugal declared that the _Bulla Coena_ and the other Bulls of the Church having to do with censorship, and the series of Roman Indexes were not to be held as binding upon his subjects excepting in so far as they had been specifically confirmed by the State Government. Joseph instituted a commission to take charge of the matter of censorship; but this body did not produce any Index. In 1771, however, it issued a list of sixty books prohibited under the authority of the Church, this list being made up chiefly of treatises by Jesuits, Escobar, Mariana, Saintarella, etc. Fourteen further works were to be sold only when containing a printed notice in which were to be specified the condemned passages.

[Sidenote: Switzerland]

=3. Protestant States.=--The Roman procedure in censorship in Switzerland, and particularly in Geneva, presents close analogies to the methods in force in Rome.

In 1525, the magistracy of Zurich established a so-called State Church. Under the regulations of this Church, no preaching could be permitted within the territory of the city other than the pure Gospel of Zwingli and his associates. The books of worship of the Catholics were ordered to be delivered and burned and a similar course was taken with the Lutheran Bibles and the Lutheran works of instruction of Melanchthon. A similar action was taken in Geneva under the direction of Calvin. The altars and altar pictures were destroyed and the Catholics were ordered to deliver for like destruction their books of worship, of song, and their catechism. The Inquisition established in Geneva assumed the authority to visit houses and shops and to confiscate for destruction all heretical books. In 1539, the magistrates ordered that no book should be printed until it had received a license from the authorities. This decree was renewed in 1556 and in 1560. The burning of Servetus, under the authority of the court instituted by Calvin, occurred in 1553.

In 1554, Calvin published his _Defensio Orthodoxi et Fidei de S. Trinitate contra Prodigiosos Errores Mich. Serveti Hispanii_, etc. This “Defence” bears, in addition to the name of the author, the subscriptions of fifteen of the divines of the Geneva Church. Later, Calvin called the theologians of Basel to account for permitting the publication of an anonymous monograph written as an answer to his “Defence,” and demanded that the publishers of the same should be duly punished. Even after the death of Calvin (1564), the censorship system was renewed and continued.[71]

In 1580, Henricus Stephanus (whose father Robert had migrated to Geneva in order to free his printing-press from the censorship of the Catholic divines) was brought before the city council and formally reprimanded because, in a certain volume of _Dialogues du Nouveau Langage Français_, he had made additions to the text after this had been passed upon by the censors. He was reminded that he was already under reprimand in connection with his _Apologia Herodoti_, and was cautioned that, if he did further printing without securing a permit for the text as finally worded, he would lose his license. It was decided finally by the Consistorium that Stephanus was not obeying the regulations, and he was declared to be excommunicated, while the magistrates condemned him to a week’s imprisonment. In 1559, knowledge came to the Church authorities in Basel that a certain heretical writer named David Joris had for some little time lived in the city unrecognised, and had died there in 1556. A formal process was entered into against the disinterred remains of Joris, and he was duly condemned (we may say _in absentia_) for heresy. His portrait and his books were burned by the public hangman. In 1563, in the process held in Zürich against Ochinus, it was made a charge that, without first securing permission from the city censors, he had brought into print, in Basel, a monograph on the Lord’s Supper.[72] In 1562, Beza brought before the Synod of Geneva a book of Morelli de Villiers which he described as heretical. The synod, accepting Beza’s view, orders the book to be prohibited and existing copies to be burned. One copy was burned in public by the hangman.

In 1566, Jo. Val. Gentilis was, in consideration of his repentance, spared from death but sentenced to walk through the street of Geneva in his shirt, barefooted, and with a burning candle in his hand, and, after doing penance in the church, he was, with his own hands, to burn his books. His march was to be preceded by trumpeters who were to specify his crime. Afterwards he was to be confined in Geneva for an apparently indefinite period. He escaped but was recaptured and was decapitated and burned.

In Basel, the first decree having to do with censorship emanated from no less an authority than Erasmus. In 1542, the magistrates issued an order prohibiting, under a penalty of a hundred dollars, the printing of any book until it had been examined and approved by the municipal censors.

An example is presented in Geneva, in 1645, of a prohibition or suppression of a book with a payment made to the author as consideration for his loss. The name of the author was Brios; the book was entitled _L’homme hardi à la France_. The amount paid was ten crowns. I do not find record of another instance of compensation in connection with the cancelling of a book.[73]

[Sidenote: Protestant Germany]

In certain of the States which had accepted Protestantism, attempts were made at an early date to institute a censorship over the productions of the printing-press. There was, however, no central authority through which a permanent censorship organisation could be maintained and it was not practicable to enforce any penalties for the possession or the reading of condemned books that could be considered the equivalent of excommunication. No Protestant rulers took the ground that the reading of false or of erroneous doctrine constituted a mortal sin. The responsible authority for such censorship as came into existence rested with the State. Action was taken by the State most frequently at the instance of the theological faculties of the universities, and it was to these bodies that was as a rule committed the task of supervising and examining the books that came into question. In the case, however, of works that were charged with assailing the rulers of the State or with any utterances _contra bonos mores_, the civil officials were accustomed to take the direction of the matter into their own hands. The German princes sometimes also assumed the authority to supervise matters of theology, a weakness that has been paralleled as late as the 20th century by a German Emperor. Duke Ludwig of Würtemberg, in 1585, announced for instance that in his duchy no work of theology should come into print that had not been passed upon and approved by himself. He made no exception even for the writings of the divines of his own principality, the soundness of whose orthodoxy might, one should suppose, have been already tested.

In 1561, the Duke of Weimar appointed a consistorium, comprising four divines and four laymen, which was charged with the duty of examining all books offered for sale in the duchy, whether these were printed within the confines of Weimar or were importations. A book offered for sale without the approval of the consistorium (whose meetings took place only four times a year) was ordered to be confiscated. For a serious offence, such as a repeated disregard of the regulation, the printer or dealer was subject to a fine. The theologians of Jena promptly made protest against such a censorship, particularly in the case of imported books. They took the broad ground that the writing of books was a necessary responsibility of learning or of knowledge, and that any attempt to restrict the use of men’s thinking power or the expression of their opinions was an attempt to place restrictions upon the Holy Ghost himself.[74]

The chief difficulty in the application of any censorship regulation within the Lutheran States was the existence of different schools of belief, the controversies between which soon became active. The control of the censorship machinery for any one State fell into the hands first of one set of controversialists and then of another, according to the activity of the respective leaders and to the influence brought to bear upon the local ruler. In the Lutheran States, such as Saxony, the prohibition against papistical writings was accompanied by an equally sweeping condemnation of the writings of the Calvinists; while the Calvinistic authorities of States like Brandenburg were prompt on their side to take similar measures for the protection of their own special tenets. This continued conflict between the several groups of reformers had the necessary effect of bringing into disrepute and ineffectiveness the larger portion of the attempts at censorship control. Some attempts were made towards a more tolerant and a more practicable policy. Zwingli, for instance, insisted that his fellow-believers in Essling should follow the Christian example of the church in Zürich, which refused to interfere with the sale even of Anabaptist writings; but in Zürich itself this tolerant spirit was not long permitted to control.

The Elector of Saxony[75] prohibited, under a penalty of three thousand gulden, the printing of the _Corpus Doctrinae_ of Melanchthon, and Frederick II of Denmark prohibited preachers and instructors, under penalty of the loss of their positions and (for persistency in misdoing) of further punishments, the use of the formula of the _Concordia_. Again, in 1574, the Elector of Saxony compelled the members of the University of Wittenberg to subscribe to an oath that they would neither purchase nor read the writings of the Sacramentists or of the Vermigli.

In 1439, Nicholas Wohlrab, who had, under the instructions of Duke George of Saxony and the Magistracy of Leipsic, brought into print the _Postille_ of Wicels, was put into prison by Duke Henry, acting at the instance of the Elector John Frederick. Before he could secure his release, Wohlrab was obliged to take oath to bring no further works into print or into sale until these had received the censorship and the approval of the magistrates. The three other book-dealers of Leipsic were forbidden to print or to sell any books that had not secured approval of the censor appointed by the magistrates, and two deputy magistrates were detached to make a weekly inspection of the printing-offices and assure themselves that nothing was printed antagonistic to the teachings of the Gospel.[76]

There were from time to time schemes for a Protestant Index. In 1579, Duke Julius of Brunswick brought out a scheme for charging a general synod with the duty of compiling an Index of heretical books and of instituting measures for the censorship of the press; but the plan was not put into execution.

In 1593, Duke Louis of Würtemberg issued an instruction to the University of Tübingen which reads as follows:

“Book-dealers must be cautioned under sufficient penalties, neither to print, to possess, nor to sell, heretical or pernicious books, such as the abominable writings of the Jesuits. The preachers are directed to warn their hearers against the unclean literature. In order, however, that the instructors and preachers should be able to secure knowledge of the arguments of their adversaries and of the nature of their calumnies, printer George Gruppenbach is ordered to secure two copies of each of such books as are available and to deliver the same to the university. The preachers whose erudition and good judgment can be trusted to keep them from being led astray by pernicious doctrines, are to be permitted to read these heretical and sectarian writings, in order that they may be in a position to defend the true Faith. The superintendent appointed for the purpose is to keep a record of the pernicious books so distributed and is to secure reports as to the use made of them. The copies themselves are in any case to be returned to the university authorities, so that they may not be used to pervert the people. All this is done ‘In order that the assaults of the hateful Satan (who in these last days has been permitted to work much evil upon the Church of God) shall be withstood, and that for the people in this principality the true Faith shall be preserved and their souls shall be kept clean.’”[77]

Luther was, it should be remembered, thoroughly in accord with pope and with emperor in the belief that it was the duty of the faithful to destroy heresy. He only differed from the pope as to what constituted heresy. In 1525, we find him invoking the aid of the censorship regulations of Saxony and of Brandenburg for the purpose of stamping out the “pernicious doctrines” of the Anabaptists and of the followers of Zwingli. The Protestant princes were for the most part more than willing to establish and to maintain a censorship for the presses of their several localities, as such a system served in more ways than one to strengthen their authority, while it could be utilised also to head off undesirable criticism.

In 1525, Luther decides that a censorship ought to be established in the Protestant States. He asks the Protestant princes to co-operate in instituting the machinery for the purpose. The regulations established by the princes interfered seriously with the operations of the printers in the larger places, but proved ineffectual for securing any uniformity of religious publishing throughout the States of North Germany.

In 1532, Luther calls upon Duke Heinrich of Mecklenburg, for the sake of the Gospel of Christ and for the saving of souls, to prevent from coming into print a translation of the Gospels that had been prepared by the Catholic priest Emser. Melanchthon was fully in accord with Luther as to the necessity of repressing with sharpest and most effective censorship all books that were not in accord with the Protestant faith.

Zwingli and Calvin, acting each from his own point of view, established in their respective cities a censorship that was much more bitter and strenuous than anything as yet attempted under the authority of Rome. Hilgers points out that the Lutherans with their schools and their cliques, the Zwinglians, the Calvinists, the Anabaptists, the Mennonites, the Schwenckfeldians, the Weigelians, and the Socinians, contended with each other with full use of the weapon of censorship, and in censorship as in religion it was always the brutal power of the strongest that came into control. The princes, establishing with readiness a censorship machinery, changed the application of their penalties as they changed their faith, but the penalties themselves became, with each change, more severe.[78]

According to Gretser, the first article of the Calvinistic theologian stated that “the writings of Luther must be stamped out from the Church of God.”[79] In Saxony, in the Palatinate, in Baden, in Würtemberg, in Brandenburg, and in Prussia after 1550, we find in full force a series of Protestant censorships directed sometimes spasmodically, but usually with no little bitterness, under the authority of the political power.[80]

The Jesuit Hilgers, who naturally makes use of Luther as a characteristic example of Protestant intolerance in censorship, writes:

“Luther, who characteristically enough began his notorious career with the burning of books, was by no means prepared to accept with patience any Catholic literature that stood in his way. What, nevertheless, made the Lutheran movement a radical revolution was the acceptance of the right of individual freedom of inquiry, a right that was to make each man the authority for his individual views of faith and doctrine against the accepted Catholic principle that the authority for the interpretation of doctrine and for the guidance of faith must rest with the Church.... Luther accepted as authoritative the teaching of the Scriptures, but it was his contention that this teaching could be ascertained by the individual understanding and without the guidance of the Holy Church. This very principle, however, of individual interpretation was almost immediately set to one side by Luther himself. He found that what he propounded as the true Faith could be maintained only through the protection of his faithful from the influence of pernicious literature; and he instituted promptly, to the extent of his own power, a censorship against not only the writings of the Catholics from whom he had broken away, but still more sharply against those of fellow-Protestants whose views of interpretation differed in any manner from his own. Luther became himself the first censor of the Word of God, and set up his individual understanding as a guide not merely for himself but for the misguided who were ready to accept the word of a single man rather than the authority of the Church universal.... Under the divine government, men have been placed in dependence upon each other. It is only through full recognition of this interdependent relation that State and Church can come into existence and can be maintained. No reasonable man will deny for a father the right and the duty to preserve son and daughter from the influence of pernicious companionship. One could more reasonably contend against the authority of the Lord in Heaven to impose upon Adam and Eve in Paradise certain prohibitions. That a still more seriously pernicious influence can be brought about by bad books than even by evil companionship can be denied by no thoughtful man. The evil is none the less because it may be brought about under the name of freedom and enlightenment. No father, with a proper consciousness of his own responsibilities, will permit a son who is still a youth to receive without restriction teachings, whether religious, philosophical, medical, or scientific, which have been shaped for the understanding only of older men.... The father must on his own authority restrict, direct, and select the literature upon which is based the instruction of his children. The authority of the State makes necessary a supervision of the

## action and influence of the printing-press. The Church includes

in its responsibilities the relation of the father to the child and of the Government to the citizen. Its rulers must watch not only the matter of morality but that of sound doctrine and wholesome influence. If the ruler of a modern State finds it impossible to permit the circulation of writings which assail the character or the person of king or emperor, how much less is it possible for those who direct the government of the Church to permit the circulation of writings which assail the wisdom and the authority of the Lord of Hosts or of his Son. The realm of the Church is that of faith and of conduct, a realm which is of necessity directly influenced by the spoken word and still more by the word circulated in print. It is this realm that must be defended and protected against the invasion of the poison of pernicious and unsound writings. As in the modern State, a special system is required for the organisation of the defensive power represented by such bodies as the army and the police, so is it necessary for the Church, with the organisation of its own ecclesiastical army of bishops, priests, deacons, and soldiers of the Faith, to establish regulations for discipline, for defence, and, when the time comes, for assault upon the powers of evil. This system of the Church is expressed most logically through its control of thought and of literature, for the Church works through the mind with spiritual forces. The authorities of a city are prepared to prohibit, under the severest penalties, miscellaneous disturbances or a careless handling of dynamite; such precautions in regard to personal harm as the mayor finds necessary for the safety of his community, the bishop is under similar necessity of adopting for the preserving of his flock against spiritual assaults.”[81]

In 1595, the astronomer, Johann Kepler, completed his first astronomical treatise, the _Mysterium Cosmographicum_, which was to be printed in Tübingen. Before the book could come into print, it was necessary to secure the approval of the senate of the university. The theological faculty gave permission for the printing only after cancelling the chapter in which the author undertook to bring the Copernican system into accord with the Scriptures. In Leipsic, the printing of the book was prohibited.

The great Elector of Brandenburg, in 1670, ordered that, for the purpose of avoiding religious strife and controversy, there should be a thorough censorship of all books, whether printed within his territory or imported from without, which were concerned with matters of theology or religion.

An order issued in Cologne in 1662 prescribes that the preachers shall engage in no disputations or conferences and shall bring into print no controversial writings, without the specific permission of the Elector himself.

In 1772, a Cabinet order prescribes that theological books for which privileges are demanded must be examined and, if necessary, revised by a consistorial commission comprised of certain Protestant ecclesiastics. The penalties imposed upon an ecclesiastic for printing any volume for which special permission had not been secured were

## particularly severe.

The persecution of Christian Wolff, who held for a series of years a professorship in Halle, is cited as a characteristic example of Protestant censorship and intolerance. The philosophic doctrines taught by the professor excited the indignation of Frederick II and in 1773, under a Cabinet order, Wolff was deprived of his post and was ordered to leave Prussian territory within forty-eight hours. Other instructors who had accepted the so-called Wolffian philosophy, such as Gabriel Fischer of Königsberg, were in like manner deprived of their offices and banished from the country. The various operations of royal censorship under the great Elector and his several successors, up to and including Frederick the Great, present examples of tyrannical inconsistency, inconsequence, unreasonableness, ignorance, and narrowness which have not been surpassed, and have possibly hardly been equalled, under any of the regulations of the Roman Index.

Frederick the Great developed the political censorship of Prussia into a system the influence of which persists under the German Empire of to-day. His censorship was directed more particularly against literature affecting the interests of the State, but it included the full control of theological utterances.

After the occupation of Silesia, an order was issued directing the Bishop of Breslau to submit for the approval of the royal censors, before publication, all edicts or utterances on the part of the Catholic Church.

In 1775, the King prohibited the publication in his dominions of the Bull of Clement XIV.

In 1784, Frederick the Great issued an edict prohibiting under serious penalties the acceptance by any of his subjects of Catholic doctrines. This edict being contrary to the conventions in force, he was obliged, however, to withdraw it.

In 1792, Frederick William issues an order for the systematising of the censorship of the kingdom. It is directed that all printing-offices, publishing concerns, and bookshops be placed under the strictest supervision, that no work shall come into print until it has secured the approval of the royal censors. The penalties included, in addition to fines, the cancellation of the editions, and in case of a persistent disobedience, the banishment of the delinquent. The university professors are also brought under close supervision for their utterances in lectures.

In 1794, in which year censorship in England was practically abandoned, the censorship system in Prussia under Frederick William II. became more severe and exacting than ever before.

In 1794, the _Allgemeine deutsche Bibliothek_ is prohibited in Prussian dominions as constituting an influence against the Christian religion. This is an example of a long series of similar prohibitions. In 1816, the _Rheinische Merkür_ of the poet Görres, who had done so much to arouse public opinion against Napoleon, was suppressed under a Cabinet order. The royal censorship was ameliorated under Frederick William but was again strengthened in 1848 and during the years immediately succeeding.

In 1844–5 was published at Jena a catalogue entitled _Index Librorum Prohibitorum_, giving the titles only of books prohibited in Germany.

In 1882, was published in Berlin what is probably the latest of the State Indexes. It is devoted to a list of works maintaining the principles of the Social Democrats, which works had been condemned and prohibited under the authority of an act of the Reichsrath of 1878. The list includes several hundred publications, chiefly pamphlets.

The political censorship existing to-day throughout Prussia and the German Empire under the imperial control is of course familiar to all readers of the 20th century. Between 1878 and the close of the century, a very long list of Social Democratic writings, pamphlets, books, and journals came under condemnation and suppression. This policy was continued into the 20th century, although under present conditions its thorough enforcement is a matter of increasing difficulty.

Hilgers points out that the instances of Protestant political censorship against works which are purely literary or intellectual in their character, that is to say, which had no direct concern with either religion or politics, are far more numerous than under the

## action of the censorship authorities of Rome. Among other examples, he

points out the action of Luther against the works of Erasmus and the writings of a number of the Humanists; the decree of the Duke of Weimar (acting at the initiative of Goethe) against _Isis_, and for the suppression of the epoch-making writings of the philosopher Fichte; the acts of Frederick the Great against Voltaire, and the measures taken by Bismarck against a long series of writings that came into print during the _Kulturkampf_.

An order issued in January, 1903, by the rector of the University of Berlin, prohibits the delivery of a lecture on Proudhon and Lasalle on the ground that it was necessary to take “all possible precautions for the protection of young souls from the pernicious and poisonous influence of sociological errors.”[82]

In November, 1902, in a convention held at Hamburg of the teachers of Germany, it was proposed to prohibit the use in schools of the catechism of Luther and of the Protestant Scriptures.[83]

The German _Goethe-bund_ finds occasion to make protest, in 1903, against the _lex Heinze_: “In Berlin, we are not only under the burden of dramatic censorship which never sleeps and which causes perpetual irritation, but we have to endure the exacting regulations of the general press law under which are controlled not merely journals but publications of all kinds. For instance, in the three months from October to December, 1902, no less than seventy-seven works were condemned and their further publication prohibited; that is to say, in these three months the civil authority condemned more books than had been placed in the prohibitory Index of Rome during the ten years preceding.” With such experience under the State control of the press, it is, claims Hilgers, absurd to make reference to “the pernicious interference with literature on the part of the Church censors.”

Kant’s _Critique of Pure Reason_, prohibited, in its Italian translation, in the Roman Index since 1827, had, years before that date, come under the condemnation of the royal authority of Prussia. In October, 1792, a Cabinet order contains a bitter characterisation of the work: “Our sacred person you have with your so-called philosophy attempted to bring into contempt ... and you have at the same time assailed the truth of Scriptures and the foundations of Creed belief (_mich und Gott_).... We order that henceforth you shall employ your talents to better purpose and that you shall keep silence on matters which are outside of your proper functions.” The further circulation of the book was prohibited, but it is fair to remember that this prohibition proved entirely ineffective to suppress the book, even in Prussia.

[Sidenote: Holland]

The States General of Holland issued in 1581, and again in 1588, edicts prohibiting the printing, the reading, and the possession of certain condemned books, the lists of which were given with the edicts. These books were described as presenting “papistical superstitions.” In 1598, certain Socinian books which had been printed in Amsterdam were condemned as heretical by the theological professors of Leyden. The editions were confiscated and the books were publicly burned in The Hague.

Among the noteworthy names included in the list of condemned authors may be cited those of Vondel, Grotius (who was certainly not to be ranked either as a Socinian or as an unbeliever, but whose form of Calvinism was not in accord with that of the authorities), Hobbes, and Spinoza. The poet Vondel, in 1641, went back into the Catholic Church and thereupon came under the proscription of the Synod of Delft as well as of the State. Before he accepted the Catholic Faith, he was accused of being an Arminian and a supporter of Olden-Barneveld. Later, his tragedy _Maria Stuart_, in which he declaimed against the murder of the Catholic queen, brought him again into trouble with the authorities.

Grotius suffered much more severely from the persecution of his fellow-historians than from any action on the part of censors of the Roman Church. His friend Olden-Barneveld had lost his life largely because of differences on theological matters with certain of his fellow-Calvinists. The same fate would probably have befallen Grotius if he had not succeeded in escaping from prison.

Hobbes, when instructor in the University of Cambridge, having undertaken to defend certain propositions concerning the law of nature, was prohibited from further teaching and was driven from the university. He betook himself to Amsterdam, but even here, the _Leviathan_, (printed in London, in 1651,) came under condemnation. The Roman censors are criticised (and with justice) for their prohibition of the writings of Spinoza, but the condemnation of Spinoza was much more severe among his own people than anything that had been proposed by the authorities of Rome. The ban uttered in the Jewish temple on the 27th of July, 1656, closes with the words:

“We order hereafter that no one shall have communication with Baruch Espinoza either by word of mouth or in writing, that no one shall render him any service, that no one shall remain under the same roof with or even accost him, that no one shall in any manner have communication with him.”

The works of Spinoza and the _Leviathan_ of Hobbes were brought under a series of condemnations under the authority of the Prince of Orange, the States of Holland, the synods of the Church, the local magistrates, the university authorities, and the Burgomaster of Leyden.

In 1668, Adrian Coerbach, a doctor of medicine of Amsterdam, was charged with having accepted the opinions of Spinoza and with having defended these before others. He gave evidence that he had never spoken with Spinoza and had not spoken publicly of his theories. He was, however, sentenced to be imprisoned for ten years and thereafter to be banished from Holland for ten years. In 1678, the Synod of South Holland, in session at Leyden, gave fresh judgment concerning the pernicious writings of Spinoza. Between the years 1650–1680, there were in all no less than fifty similar edicts or judgments, in some instances accompanied by severe punishments, against the reading or circulation of the works of Spinoza. In many cases, under the same judgment was placed the _Leviathan_ of Hobbes.

[Sidenote: Scandinavia]

In Denmark, between the years 1537 and 1770, a severe censorship was maintained not only against works upholding the Catholic Faith, but against all books which were not in accord with the Lutheran doctrines that the Crown had established as the orthodox faith of the kingdom. Among books other than theological which came under condemnation, may be noted the _Werther_ of Goethe, condemned in 1776. The severe prohibitions of the censorship law were not repealed until 1849 and 1866. In Sweden also, where the Lutheran creed had been established as the faith of the kingdom, a censorship was maintained against publications which were not in accord with the creed of Luther. In 1667, under a royal ordinance, the booksellers were directed to present from year to year to the censors a precise catalogue of all the books carried in stock and to secure permission for the sale of such books. The penalty was loss of license.

In 1764, was printed, at Upsala, an Index presenting a list of certain books which are held as prohibited in Sweden. It is to be classed as an historical tract and not strictly as an Index. The title reads as follows: _Historia librorum prohibitorum in Suecia; cujus specimen primum, consensu Ampl. Senat. Philos. Upsal. publica disputatione, submittunt Samuel J. Alnander, Philos. Magister, et Petrus Kendal, Stipend. Reg. Ostrogothi, Anno mdcclxiii, Upsaliae._ The thesis recognises three sources of the power of prohibiting books, the royal Senate, specified in the title-page; the royal authority by edict; and the theological faculty of the University of Upsala. The lists are devoted mainly to works of the 17th century but there are a few titles from the 16th century. The books condemned are chiefly political. The volume has value chiefly as an indication of a system of censorship in a Protestant country and also (in connection with the meagreness of the lists) of the fact that such system was apparently neither comprehensive nor exacting.

In 1856, was printed in Gothenburg, in an edition comprising but sixteen copies, an Index bearing the title, _Elenchus Librorum in Suecia prohibitorum, saeculorum XVII et XVIII_.

[Sidenote: Censorship by the State in England]

The first censorship in England appears to have been made as a matter of Church discipline; the bishops assumed in these earlier cases the sole jurisdiction and the punishments were ecclesiastical--penance and excommunication. In 1382, the State began to take action in matters of censorship. The occasion arose from the circulation of the doctrines of Wyclif, which, together with the teachings of the Lollards, were assumed to have had influence in bringing about the insurrection of Wat Tyler. The authorities decided that the bishops did not have the power required to suppress the inflammatory doctrines, because the preachers kept moving from one diocese to another and denied at the same time the jurisdiction of the ecclesiastical courts. In 1382, therefore, the Parliament passed an act directing the civil authorities to arrest all such preachers and to “hold them in arrest and strong prison until they will justify themselves to the law and reason of Holy Church.” The mischief, however, continued and, in 1401, the more severe act known as “_de haeretico comburendo_” was passed. Dr. Shirley says that the first victim of this statute was W. Sawtree, preacher at St. Osyth’s in the City of London. Sawtree was convicted of denying transubstantiation. Milman points out that the writ for the execution of Sawtree appears on the Rolls of Parliament before the act itself. It is possible, therefore, says Milman, that Sawtree suffered under a special act which had perhaps been proposed for the purpose of ascertaining, in advance of the consideration of the larger measure, the feeling of Parliament.

The last instances of execution for heresy in England occurred in 1612, in which year Bartholomew Legate was burned at Smithfield for holding Unitarian opinions, and Edward Wightman was burned at Litchfield for holding no less than nine “damnable heresies.”

The papal Bull issued on June 19, 1520, for the destruction of the publications of Luther, Wolsey declined to enforce in England. It is probable that if the Cardinal had been left to himself, the cruel proceedings which characterised the reign of Henry VIII would not have been instituted. It is the opinion of Froude that with Wolsey, heresy was an error, while with More it was a crime.

A prohibitory Index was published in England in 1526, nearly twenty-five years before the issue of the first Index on the Continent, and thirty-three years before the first issue in the series of the Roman Indexes. In March, 1527, Tunstal, Bishop of London, gave to Thomas More a privilege for the reading of heretical books in order that, following the example of the King (Henry VIII), More might be enabled to make good defence of the Catholic Faith against the new heresies. In June, 1539, the King gave his approval to an act of Parliament which was concerned particularly with the articles of faith. The first of these articles had to do with the real presence of Christ in the Sacrament. The act reads: “If any person writes, preaches, or disputes against this first article, he shall be punished with death as a heretic and his property shall be confiscated to the Crown.”

In 1564, Queen Elizabeth issued an instruction to the Bishop of London to provide for an examination of the cargoes of all the vessels arriving, in order that pernicious and heretical books should be secured and destroyed. In 1571, an act of Parliament provided the punishment of treason against all who should secure from the Bishop of Rome any bull, brief, or other instrument or should undertake to make distribution of copies of the same. Under Elizabeth, it was ordered that any person should be treated as guilty of high treason and should be liable to sentence of death if he had in his possession a Catholic

## book in which was taught the doctrine of the supremacy of the pope.

In 1582, an act of Parliament declared it to be felony to write, print, sell, distribute, or possess books, rhymes, ballads, letters, or writings of any kind which contained matter against the fame of the Queen or in any way injurious to the repute of the Government. Under this law, two ministers belonging to the sect of the Brownists, Thacher and Copping, were tried and executed. In 1575, Elizabeth approved a new act directed against the Anabaptists, the Puritans, the Brownists, and the Catholics, under the provisions of which act a number of people were condemned and burned. Among the books prohibited under the same law, were certain writings of Henry Nicholas of Leyden which had been translated from the German. It was ordered that any persons possessing or distributing these writings should be punished. In 1583, a proclamation was issued by the Queen against the publishers, booksellers, or possessors of pernicious and schismatic literature. The Star Chamber, under the law of 1585, prescribed that each university should keep in activity but one press and prescribed from year to year the number of presses permitted for London. In 1593, Barrow and Greenwood, both Brownists, were executed as heretics. It is the view of the Jesuit historian Hilgers that throughout the whole of the reign of Elizabeth there was a persistent and bloody persecution against freedom of thought of any kind. In 1594, Adfield and Carter suffered death because the former had brought into England a Catholic book and the latter had had the same in his possession.

A sect that fell under the displeasure of Queen Elizabeth was the “Family of Love.” The founder was a Dutch Anabaptist, born at Delft, called David George, but the leader whose influence was of the most importance was Henry Nicolai of Münster. Nicolai gave out that his writings were of equal authority with Holy Scripture. “Moses,” he says, “taught mankind to hope, Christ to believe, but Nicolai taught man to love, which last is of more worth than both the former.” The Queen ordered (in 1575) that all books and writings maintaining this doctrine should be destroyed and burned and that possessors of such books should be duly punished. In 1608, James I, in a proclamation concerning the supervision of literature, says: “For better oversight of books of all sortes before they come to the presse, we have resolved to make choice of commissioners that shall looke more narrowly into the nature of all those things that shall be put to the presse, either concerning our authoritie royall or concerning our government, or the lawes of our Kingdom.”[84]

In July, 1637, the Star Chamber published an act for the regulation of literature which in the severity of its censorship can be compared only with a procedure under Napoleon. It was prohibited to import or make sale of any books the influence of which was opposed to sound faith or to the authority of the Church or to the authority of government or to any rulers or to the interests of the community, or in which there should be libels or attacks against any corporation or any individual person. The penalties prescribed included fines, imprisonment, and bodily punishment, the decision to be made under the authority of the Chamber. The printing of any book which had not secured the approval of the Chamber was forbidden under heavy penalties. Books in the department of jurisprudence must be approved by the Chief Justice or by some authority appointed by him; books on history and statecraft were to be approved by the Secretary of State; those on morals by the Lord Marshal; works on theology, philosophy, natural science, poetry, and general literature, by the Archbishop of Canterbury or Bishop of London or by the chancellor of one of the two universities. Licenses were to be issued for but twenty master printers outside of those appointed directly by the Crown and those allotted to the universities. No printer was to operate more than two presses or was to have more than two apprentices. Should anybody undertake to operate a press without securing a license from the Chamber, he was liable to be placed in the stocks, to be flogged through the city, and, after judgment, to further penalties.

In 1638, Alexander Leighton was, under a judgment of the Star Chamber, condemned in connection with a book entitled: _An Appeal to the Parliament or Sion’s Plea against the Prelacie_. He was sentenced to a fine of ten thousand pounds, to degradation from the ministry, and to be publicly whipped in the palace yard; he was made to stand two hours in the pillory, one ear was cut off, a nostril slit open, and one of his cheeks branded with the letters S.S. (Sower of Sedition). A week later, he underwent a second whipping and a repetition of the mutilation. He was then left in prison for three years but, in 1641, had the satisfaction of having his sentence reversed by the House of Commons. The book had declared the institution of Episcopacy to be anti-Christian and satanical and it accused the king with having been corrupted by the bishops to the undoing of himself and his people.

In 1633, Prynne was condemned by the Star Chamber to be fined five thousand pounds, to be placed in the pillory, to be deprived of his ears, and to perpetual imprisonment. The book on the ground of which this punishment was administered was entitled: _The Histriomastix, the player’s scourge or actor’s tragedies_. Lord Cottington, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, says in his judgment: “I do in the first place begin censure with Prynne’s book. I condemn it to be burned by the hangman,” etc. This is said to be the first instance in England in which a condemned publication was burned by the hangman. Prynne came again under condemnation, in 1637, in connection with a book called the _Flagellum Pontificis et Episcoporum Latinorum_, which was said to have been written in co-operation with J. Bastwick and H. Burton. I do not find the record of Prynne’s punishment in this case, but Bastwick was condemned by the High Commission court to pay a fine of one thousand pounds, to be excommunicated, to be debarred from the practice of his profession (medicine), and to remain in prison until he recanted (and that is, he says, “until domesday in the afternoone”).

The practice of burning books was continued by the Puritans, who also utilised for the purpose the services of the common hangman. One book so burned (in 1619) was the King’s _Book of Sports_, issued by James in 1618, on the advice of Morton, Bishop of Chester. It had been ordered to be read in all churches throughout England. Copies were publicly burned in a number of the Puritan counties.

The regulations for the control of the press in England were more strenuous under the Commonwealth and the later Stuarts than before the death of Charles I. Between the years 1637–1681, more than two hundred books came upon the condemnation lists. Among the works condemned and prohibited by Cromwell was the _Areopagitica_ of Milton, published in 1644. In 1646, was condemned the book by John Biddle (known as the father of modern Unitarianism) which bore the title: _Twelve Arguments from Scripture in regard to the Divinity of the Holy Ghost_. The author was imprisoned and the copies of the book burned. The censor of the press under the last two Stuarts was Roger L’Estrange. The penalties in force at the time he assumed the office providing for the destruction of books, the imprisonment and in certain cases the death of the authors and printers, were, in his judgment, not sufficiently severe. He beseeched Parliament to give him authority to add to these penalties stocks, public whipping, the cutting off of the hand, the cutting out of the tongue, etc. A printer named Trogan, who came under the disapproval of the censor, was executed in 1686, with various revolting details.

In 1642, the Parliament condemned and ordered burned by the hangman five publications written by Royalists. In each succeeding year, similar action was taken with publications (mainly pamphlets) written in opposition to the control of Parliament. A more serious matter for the authors than the burning of the books was that of the fines. Joseph Primatt, for instance, in 1652, was fined five thousand pounds for the publication of a petition to Parliament, and Lilburne was in the same year fined seven thousand pounds. The first theological work dealt with by Parliament was a treatise by John Archer entitled _Comfort for believers about their Sinnes and Troubles_. This was published in 1645 and in the same year was, under the order of Parliament, publicly burned in four places. In September, 1650, a monograph by Lawrence Clarkson entitled _Single Eye, All light, no darkness_, was condemned to be burned by the hangman and Clarkson, after being imprisoned for a month, was sentenced to banishment for life. These instances are selected from a long series of similar condemnations merely in order to make clear that the theory of the Parliament in regard to the right and the duty of the Government to prevent the circulation of pernicious literature (that is to say, literature the opinions of which were not in accord with those of the existing authorities) differed in no way from that of the supporters of royalty. A similar series of condemnations, with burning of the books and fining of the authors, together with an occasional exposure in the pillory, was continued through the Restoration. In the year 1690, a treatise by Arthur Bury, rector of Exeter College, Oxford, issued under the title of the _Naked Gospels_, was ordered burned under the authority of the University of Oxford.

In 1698, a Scotchman named Aikenhead, who was at the time a student of but eighteen years of age, was hanged at Edinburgh, not on account of any heresies brought into print, but simply because in some wild talk he had referred to Christianity as a delusion. Under one of the statutes of Scotland, it was a capital crime to revile or to curse the Supreme Being or any person of the Trinity. The words used by the young man were not strictly within the definition of the statute, but this statute was, under the direction of James Stuart, Lord Advocate of Scotland, used to bring the boy to execution.[85]

The censorship laws were not repealed as an immediate result of the Revolution of 1688 but endured until 1695. The regulations then established maintained for the Crown the full authority to control the operations of the press, but the penalties were made much less severe. Among the books condemned under the new legislation were _Christianity not Mysterious_, by John Toland, _Thoughts concerning Human Souls_, by William Coward, and the _Fable of the Bees_, by Mandeville, in 1723. (The last had been published as far back as 1706). Mandeville’s volume was made the subject of a presentment by the Grand Jury of Middlesex. The book was described as “a public nuisance, having a tendency to the subversion of all religion, the undermining of civil government, and the impairment of our duty to the Almighty.” No penalty was inflicted, or ordered, upon the author, nor was the book itself suppressed.[86]

Among the books condemned in the succeeding years were _The Doctrine of the Trinity_, by Samuel Clark, and the _Miracle of Our Saviour_, by Thomas Woolston. The author of the latter was fined twenty-five pounds and was then imprisoned until he could raise two thousand pounds. He died after four years’ imprisonment.

In 1701, a treatise by John Asgill on the _Covenant of Eternal Life_ was burned by the order of two Parliaments, English and Irish. In 1702, the famous essay by Defoe, _The Shortest Way with the Dissenters_, was burned by the hangman under order of Parliament and Defoe was sentenced to three days’ punishment in the pillory, to a ruinous fine, and to a long imprisonment. The trial of Saccheverell brought about the burning, in 1710, of a long series of books, including his own sermons and works by both his supporters and adversaries. In 1707, the Grand Jury of Middlesex made a presentment characterising as a public nuisance the essay by Matthew Tyndale entitled the _Rights of the Christian Church_. Tyndale reflects that this proceeding will further “the wider circulation of one of the best books that have been published in our age among many people that would not otherwise have heard of it.” It was burned by the hangman in 1710. In 1722, the Commons agreed with the resolution of the Peers to have burned at the Royal Exchange the declaration of the Pretender issued as the declaration of James III. In 1763, numbers of the _North Briton_, of John Wilkes, who was then himself a member of the House, were, under an order of the two Houses, condemned to be burned at the Royal Exchange. The author was expelled from the House, but secured, after a long contest, a re-election. A volume issued without name in 1775, under the title of _The present Crisis in regard to America considered_, was burned on the 24th of February of that year and is referred to as the last book which the English Parliament has condemned to the flames.

In 1795, Sheridan proposes to have publicly burned a treatise by Reeve entitled _Thoughts on English Government_, but his proposal was not supported. The press law, passed as late as December, 1819, imposed a penalty of transportation on the writers or printers of godless and revolutionary works. This law was repealed in 1837, and the legislation of 1869 finally secured an assured freedom for the press. It is the conclusion of Catholic writers, in summing up the history of what they call the exceptionally fierce and brutal censorship of England, that the responsibility for this rests with the original crime committed by the State against the Church universal; and with the continued and demoralising wrong caused by transferring the control of the Church to the civil authorities.

The history of political censorship, or of censorship by the State in England, is a large and complex subject to which in a work like this it is of course, possible only to make reference.

In 1877 was printed (privately) in London a catalogue which from the title has been classed with the Indexes: _Index librorum prohibitorum_; being notes bio-, biblio-, and icono-graphical and critical on curious and uncommon books, compiled by Pisanus Fraxi. This is, however, simply a list, probably prepared for commercial purposes, of obscene books.

=4. Summary.=--The instances cited are sufficient to show that the spirit of Protestantism, in each and all of the sects that came into power or influence in the State, has through the past centuries held it to be the right and duty of the Church, and of the State under the influence of the Church, to supervise and to control the productions of the printing-press and the reading of the people. The fact, however, that within the Protestant communion there were so many points of view, rendered it not only difficult but impossible to establish any consistent and continuing policy of censorship. There was also a lack of any effective machinery for carrying out, within these Protestant territories, such regulations as the censors of the Church might establish. In certain places and at certain times the civil authorities, like the magistrates of Geneva or the Elector of Saxony, were ready to utilise the force of the State for carrying out the decrees of the Church, but such co-operation and support were at best (or at worst) but intermittent and spasmodic. In Germany or in Switzerland, the authority of the State covered but a limited territory. If the censorship pressure became burdensome in one city, there was no essential difficulty in moving the composing-room and the press to some other place where the faith of the magistrates was not so “orthodox” or so strenuous. As a result, the Protestant writers, representing all schools of protest, found no continued difficulty in bringing their productions into print and in circulating these among sympathetic readers.

The Jesuit historian, while admitting that the condemnation of the Catholic Church has fallen upon certain works of unquestioned scholarly value, insists that the Protestant censorship of authors and books of similar standing has been, to say the least, no less severe. He maintains, further, that the Catholic policy and methods have been more consistent, more discriminating, more intelligent, and more moral in purpose and in effect than those of the Protestants. He emphasises the importance of distinguishing between the circles of readers for which different books are fitted, either to do service or to work injury. He writes: “The works of Grotius, Gibbon, and Guicciardini have a deserved repute with the scholars. We may admit, that scholars can derive from such works valuable instruction, but this does not make them suitable for the reading of the untrained or the half trained. The Church undertakes always to maintain this distinction.”

The Father sums up his arraignment of the censorship of the State by a bitter reference to the methods pursued by the Protestant Government of Prussia with its Catholic subjects in Poland. What answer can an instructor make in a school in Posen when a child asks why he is forbidden to read the Polish Catechism? The instructor can only say that the modern State is all powerful, and that in the execution of its self-imposed task of crushing out nationality, it is willing to take the responsibility not only for the interpretation of science, but for the shaping of belief.[87]

“Whence,” says Hilgers, “do the civil authorities secure the right to compel Catholic children to accept instruction from heretical books; and to prohibit the use in Catholic families, outside even of the walls of the official institutions, the use of Catholic books and documents? Here is a censorship tyranny with which in the history of Rome there is nothing to be compared.”

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