THE CENSORSHIP OF THE CHURCH OF ROME

1. The Protestant Theologians of France, 1654–1700.—The Protestant theological literature of France and of French Switzerland is more fully represented in the Index than are the corresponding groups of Holland and Germany; but in the case of the French authors also the selection is rather haphazard, the names of important authors being omitted, while of others only single books, and of these the least characteristic, have been included. Certain works also which escaped condemnation at the time of the first publication secure attention from the censors only a number of years later. Such Protestant writers in the first half of the 17th century as Chamier, Picter, Capel, and Bochart were overlooked altogether.

Jacques Abbadie (1654–1727) comes into the Index in connection with his Traité de la Vérité de la Religion Chrétienne. The edition prohibited was that of 1688, the entry finding place in the list of 1703. Remond’s treatise, L’Antéchrist Romain opposé à l’Antéchrist Juif, du Bellarmin, secured naturally fairly prompt attention, being condemned in 1609, the year after its appearance.

La Bastide’s monograph, Exposition de la Doctrine de l’Église Catholique sur les Matières de Controverse, was prohibited in 1693, twenty years after its publication. This is the only one of the series of replies to the treatise of Bossuet which secured condemnation.

Isaac la Peyrère published in Holland, in 1655, a treatise entitled Praeadamitae s. Exercitatio super V. 12–14, cap. 5. epistolae ad Romanos item Systema theologicum ex Praeadamitarum Hypothesi. The book was censured by the Bishop of Namur, and copies were publicly burned in Paris. In 1656, Peyrère was imprisoned in the Spanish Netherlands, but, on his application, was sent to Rome for trial. In advance of his trial, he became Catholic and retracted the utterances in his book. Later, he wrote a second treatise in confutation of the first. Notwithstanding the emphasis given to the earlier book, it is not included in the Index lists.

2. Theological Contests in the Netherlands, 1654–1690.—The issues that arose in the Netherlands during the second half of the 17th century between the Jesuits and the Franciscans on the one side, and the theologians of the University of Louvain and the leaders of the other orders and of the clergy on the other, had to do not only with the doctrine of Grace but also with questions of theological morality and pastoral theology (the administration, for instance, of confession and communion), and, after 1682, were also concerned with some of the contentions that had been brought up by the Gallican Church. As a result of a long series of controversies that arose concerning these issues, a very considerable number of the works of theological writers of the Low Countries came into the Index. It was the practice of the leaders on either side to make application to Rome to have condemned the works brought into print by their adversaries. The authorities in Rome appear to have condemned with a fair measure of impartiality the controversial writings on both sides. In 1677, the University of Louvain sent to Rome, with the approval of the Spanish King (Charles II), four professors who were charged with the duty of securing the condemnation of a series of propositions described as adverse to sound morality, and at the same time to defend against the assaults of the Jesuits the true doctrine of Grace. In response to this application, Innocent XI, in March, 1679, caused to be condemned by a decree of the Inquisition sixty-five propositions. The decree followed the lines of that issued in 1665 for forty-five propositions then defined as unorthodox. In regard to the doctrine of Grace, the Holy See decided that the teaching presented in the censures promulgated in 1558 by the faculties of Louvain and Douay, was sound and was to be upheld. As was the case with the decrees in 1665 and 1666, the particular works from which the condemned propositions had been cited were not specified. A number of monographs in which the question was brought up as to the authors who were responsible for these condemned propositions, and particularly as to whether these authors were or were not Jesuits, were themselves condemned. After the publication of the decree of 1679, the Inquisition gave attention to the investigation of certain propositions which had been denounced by the opponents of the Louvain divines as contained in the writings of these, and as also contained in certain other works classed as Jansenist. In 1690, was published by Alexander VIII a decree which had been framed under the instructions of Innocent XI, condemning as unorthodox thirty-one propositions which had been found in this group of writings. The propositions condemned had to do in part with what may be called the moralities and in part with the doctrine of Grace. The proposition bearing in this series the number twenty-nine, took the ground that the claim for the superiority of the pope over the general council of the Church, and for the infallibility of the pope in the decision of questions of dogma, was a claim for which there was no foundation (Futilis et toties convulsa assertio). Certain monographs written to criticise and oppose this decree were promptly prohibited. The action taken during these years gives evidence of the development of the policy of the Church in the matter of defining or of approving or condemning doctrinal assertions, or propositions having to do with theology or morality, apart from the condemnation by title of any works in which such propositions may have been contained. A condemnation of this kind freely interpreted constitutes, of course, a condemnation not only of all books which had been brought into print up to that time containing such propositions or doctrines, but (without the necessity of specific prohibition by title) a condemnation which may serve as a prohibition of all books coming into print at a later date containing similar doctrines. On the other hand, the fact that the propositions as specified were often found open to different interpretations (as in the case of the famous five propositions of Jansen), and the further fact that it was not always easy to determine whether the statements or expressions in certain works brought into question were actually identical with propositions, classed as heretical, had the result of bringing into print after every such condemnation of propositions, a group of writings undertaking either to analyse the propositions themselves or to confirm or to deny the application of the condemnation to works with which they had been connected. The necessity for analysing, and in large part for condemning, the writings of this class, involved probably in the end a larger amount of detailed labour for the Index authorities than would have been required if, in place of condemning general propositions, the original condemnation had been connected with specific writings. The thirty-one propositions condemned in the decree of Alexander VIII of 1690 were described as temerariae, scandalosae, male sonantes, injuriosae, haeresi proximae, ... schismaticae et haereticae, etc. Certain of the propositions were taken from the writings of Lupus, Huygens, Havermans, Gabrielis; La Fréquente Communion of Arnauld, and the Monita of Widenfeld. Arnauld speaks of this as un décret pitoyable,[1] and Gerberon says: Cette censure ambiguë est le scandale de la Cour Romaine, la honte du Saint Office et la confusion du Pontificat d’Alexandre VIII.[2]

3. The Protestant Theologians of Holland in the 17th Century.—The compilers of the Index selected from the Dutch writings of this period only such books as were issued in Latin or as were printed later in French versions. It appears that the Dutch language constituted a sufficient barrier to secure a practical protection against the condemnation of the Church. It is noteworthy to remember, however, that this condemnation would in any case not have been likely to influence those readers who took their literature in the Dutch form, and it is quite probable that the majority of these Dutch readers never even knew that their authors had the distinction of being prohibited. Even in the case of those authors whose books did appear in the world language of Latin, the selections of the Index compilers were made at haphazard and omitted a number of the most noteworthy names. Arminius, Voetius, Gomarus, Coccejus, and a number of other leaders of thought in Holland are not found in the Index. The Congregation did succeed in getting into their lists the names of a number of obscure authors whose books had been printed originally in Latin, but who were forgotten excepting in connection with this record. The treatise by Grotius, De Jure Belli et Pacis, and a few of the writings of Heinsius, Fossius, and Horne were prohibited.

4. The Protestant Theologians of England, 1676–1732.—Up to the time of Benedict XIV, none of the English theological writings which had been printed in the vernacular received attention at the hands of the compilers of the Indexes. Certain works were condemned which had been originally issued in Latin or of which French translations had been printed. The English writers begin to receive attention after 1676, although even in these later Indexes the selections, as in the case of the writers of Germany and Holland, are curiously incidental and have apparently been made with no consistent principle. The list for the 17th century includes among the more noteworthy titles the following: Reformatio Ecclesiae Anglicanae quibus gradibus inchoata et perfecta sit, London, 1603; the writings of Bishop Hall († 1656); the works of the scientist Robert Boyle, founder of the Boyle lectures (1627–91); the Polyglot Bible of Walton; the Synopsis Criticorum of Reginald Pole; the Cantabrigensis tributa of Thomas James; the Gravissimae Quaestiones de Christ. Ecclesiarum, of James Usher, Archbishop of Armagh; certain works of Isaac Casaubon (1559–1614) (Casaubon was by birth a Swiss, but in connection with his long residence and the place of publication of the greater portion of his books, he came to be classed with English scholars); the latest work of Casaubon to be condemned, the title of which has been continued in modern Indexes, is the Corona Regia, a panegyric of James I; the Regii sanguinis clamor ad coelum adversus parricidas Anglicanos (This was first printed in The Hague in 1652, and later in London in 1655. It constituted an answer to Milton’s essay Pro populo Anglicano defensio. The author was later identified as Pierre du Moulin, a canon in Canterbury); The History of the Reformation of England of Burnet (1643–1715) and the same author’s History of his Own Times (These two books are described in the Index in the French editions. Burnet’s other writings escaped condemnation); Robert Baillie († 1662), Operis historici et chronologici a creatione mundi ad Constantinum magnum, printed in Amsterdam in 1668; Pearson’s Exposition of the Creed; the sermons of Bishop Sherlock (in the French version) and those of Archbishop Tillotson; a treatise on Christian Perfection by Lucas; Bartley’s Apology for the True Christian (printed in the French version in 1702, prohibited in 1712); Andrew Marvelle’s († 1678) An Account of the Growth of Popery and Absolute Government in England (1675–76). (This was prohibited in its French edition; the Parliament had, shortly after its first prohibition, offered a reward of £50 for the identification of the author.) Williams, Bishop of Chester, finds place in the Index in connection with his treatise on the Discovery of a New World, in which the author undertakes to prove that the moon is inhabited. This had been first printed in 1638; the condemnation in 1703 had to do with the French edition printed in Rouen in 1655. Selden’s De jure naturali et gentium, together with a number of his later treatises which had appeared between the years 1640 and 1679, were prohibited in 1714. Prideaux’s The Old and the New Testament connected in the History of the Jews and Neighbouring Nations, printed in 1716, was prohibited in the French edition in 1732.

5. The Protestant Theologians of Germany, 1600–1750.—The cancellation of Class I of the Index may be considered as constituting one of the more distinctive modifications of the activity or assertions of authority on the part of the Congregation of the Index. Through the 16th century, the view had obtained that in this class should be brought together practically all of the heretical authors who had ventured to treat of religious matters. After the Index of 1596, however, the attempt had been abandoned to specify in full the names of all of the works which on the ground of their heretical character came under the proscription of Rule II. After that time, it was considered sufficient to place under a general condemnation all works on religious subjects which came from writers outside of the Church. To this general principle, however, certain noteworthy exceptions were made. There continued to be a separate prohibition, by title, of books which had, on one ground or another, been brought to the attention of the Congregation. The decrees of 1686–1700, 1703–1709, included, in addition to certain lists of Protestant theological writings, a series of the works of jurists of which the treatise by Grotius above cited is a good example. The works so selected were for the most part concerned with questions as to the sources of authority, whether of Church or of State.

One peculiarity of the condemnation of this particular group of books is the fact that their pernicious character came to the attention of the Congregation or of the examiners in many cases only a number of years after the publication of the books themselves, and, as has been pointed out, there are commemorated in this manner, as deserving of attention, not a few books which had gone out of print and had been practically forgotten in the communities in which they had been published. Of the works on exegesis and in Church history published in Germany during the 17th century and the first half of the 18th, a number of the most important never found their way into the Index. The titles selected covered in the majority of cases comparatively insignificant books. There is, for instance, a long list of the controversial German writings directed against Bellarmin, Becanus, and Grester, which escaped attention altogether in Italy. Among the better known names which did come under condemnation during this period are those of Joh. L. Mosheim, for his Ecclesiastical History and his treatise on the Institutions of Christianity, and Swedenborg for the Opera philosophica et mineralia, published in Dresden in 1734 and prohibited in 1737. In the Index of Benedict, the Opera philosophica is omitted and in its place is given the Principia rerum naturalium. The other treatises of this voluminous author escaped condemnation. The prohibition of Mosheim’s Church History was not sufficiently conclusive to prevent the book from being read in Italy. In 1769, an Italian translation by Roselli was published in Naples in ten volumes. This particular edition was never listed in the Indexes.