Chapter IX · THE BOOK PRODUCTION OF EUROPE AS AFFECTED BY CENSORSHIP

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The manuscript trade in the Netherlands was more important both in character and in extent than that carried on in Germany, and it appears to have exerted a larger influence upon the general education of the people than the book-trade of the time in either France or Italy. In France and in Italy, the earlier book-trade, first in manuscripts, later in printed volumes, was connected with the work of the universities. In the Low Countries, on the other hand, and particularly in such centres as Ghent, Antwerp, and Bruges, there came into existence during the first half of the 15th century an active and intelligently conducted business in the production of books, both of a scholarly and of a popular character, the sale of which was made among citizens who were for the greater part outside of university circles. One reason why the trade in books found a larger development in Belgium than in Germany was the greater wealth of the working classes in the Low Countries. With the wealth, came cultivation and a taste for luxuries and among luxuries soon came to be included art and literature. Another factor in the early development of the book-trade was the freedom from the university censorship control which in Paris, Bologna, and other book-producing centres restricted the undertakings of the dealers.

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

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

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

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

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

The strifes and contentions of the Reformation checked for a time the development in the universities of the studies connected with the intellectual movement of the Renaissance, and lessened the demand for the literature of these studies. The active-minded were absorbed in theological controversy, while those who could not understand the questions at issue could still shout the shibboleths of the leaders. As Erasmus puts it, rather bitterly: ubi regnat Lutheranismus, ibi interitus litterarum. The literature of the Reformation, however, itself did much to make good for the printing-presses the lessened demand for the classics, while, a few years later, the organisation in Germany of the Protestant schools and universities aroused intellectual activities in new regions and created fresh requirements for printed books. Within half a century of the Diet of Worms, the centre of the book-absorbing population of Germany had been transferred from the Catholic States of the south to the Protestant territories of the north and the literary preponderance of the latter has continued to increase during the succeeding generations.

Mark Pattison says[92]:

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

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

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

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

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

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

Early Printers and the Church

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

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

Venice

In 1492, the printing art was introduced into Venice, where it speedily developed into one of the most important of the industries of the city. For nearly a century thereafter, Venice took place among the most influential of the European centres of publishing and literary activity. There were various grounds on which the productions of the Venetian presses aroused criticism and antagonism in Rome. After the beginning of the work of Aldus in 1495, the Venetian publishing lists included a number of productions by Greek scholars. The majority of these books being editions of Greek classics, had of course nothing whatever to do with matters of doctrine or Church policy. The Roman censors of the time had no knowledge of Greek, an ignorance for which they were hardly to be criticised, as, until the books of the Aldine press began to reach the university centres, it was an ignorance that was shared by all the scholars of Europe. These ecclesiastics were, however, very apprehensive of the influence of the doctrines of the Greek Church. They appear to have imagined that the text of Homer or of Aristotle, or the accompanying notes, might be made to carry the contentions of the Greek Church in regard to the old-time issues which had divided Constantinople and Rome. As the censors were unable themselves to examine the texts, and were unwilling to accept the conclusions of any examiners who understood Greek, their only means of defence against this insidious attack on the orthodoxy of Italy was to prohibit the production and the circulation of any volumes printed in this heretical language.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Venice and the Pope

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

The most prominent figure in this long struggle between Venice and the Papacy was Fra Paolo Sarpi. Cleric though he was, he contended vigorously that the Church was embarking upon a wrong course, and he held that the State was justified in resisting, in secular matters, ecclesiastical encroachments upon the rights of the sovereign. The fight made by Sarpi on behalf of the independence of the State, and particularly of the right of the State to supervise and control literary productions, was of first importance for the intellectual activities of Europe. The arguments used in Venice were repeated in Madrid, Paris, Zürich, and Oxford. Time was gained for authors and for printers, until, largely by means of the presses which the Church was endeavouring to throttle, the spirit of resistance to the domination of the Papacy, and the feeling of national independence against the right of Rome to lay down the law for Europe, had gathered so much strength that the claims of the Church had to be withdrawn or very much moderated.

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

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

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

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

Rome

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Milan

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

Discrimination in Censorship

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

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

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

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

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

Papal Authorisation

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Book-trade and the Inquisition

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

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

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

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

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

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