Note 1303 — Chapter IV · CENSORSHIP.

Nueva Recop., Lib. I, Tit. vii, leyes 24, 33.—(Novís. Recop. VIII, xvi, 3; xviii, 1).—Alcubilla, Códigos antiguos españoles, p. 1580.

In 1746, the preliminary examination of MSS. for licences to print was entrusted by the Royal Council to the Real Academia de la Historia, a duty limited by Fernando VII to those concerning the history of Spain and the Indies. The records of this censorship have been printed by the Academy (Boletin, XXXV, 369-434). Each MS. was submitted to one or more members and there were three classes of censure—favorable, unfavorable and doubtful, the latter equivalent to the donec corrigatur of the Index, when the author had an opportunity of revising his work and submitting it again, a process which occasionally was repeated a third time. The censors appear to have been for the most part lenient. In the record, extending from 1747 to 1833, the favorable reports amount to 618, the unfavorable to 149 and the doubtful to 155.

Works of belles-lettres were submitted to the Spanish Academy. Don Manuel Serrano y Sanz has printed (Revista de Archivos, Julio-Agosto, 1906) a number of the judgements pronounced by the censors to whom they were confided, which throw an interesting light on the critical canons of the period. It would appear that the issue of useless books was discouraged: as Miguel Cervera López says of one entitled Los desengaños de un casado, “Finding no usefulness in this writing, I think it should not be printed.” This was only enforcing a decree of Philip IV in 1627, ordering licences to be refused to unnecessary works (Novís, Recop., VIII, xvi, 9).