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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Hilgers, while admitting the influence of the Jesuits in the direction of State censorship in South Germany, denies that the results of their work were adverse to the development of literature (“sound literature”) or to intellectual activity. Hilgers writes: “It may at once be admitted that the Jesuit Fathers were, during the 16th century, active in securing in Austria, Bavaria, and other States a censorship of literature. The Holy Ignatius, Father of the Order, had from the beginning of his active work insisted upon the responsibility resting with the Church and with the active workers of the Church for preserving the faithful from the poison of literature.”[60] In 1550, and in the years following, Peter Canisius, at that time the head of the Order in Germany, took active measures for the enforcement throughout the empire of the regulations of the Index of Paul IV, and after the publication, in 1564, of the Index of Trent, the Jesuit Fathers in Germany had a large part in bringing about the enforcement of the regulations therein presented. Hilgers points out that, under Jesuit influence, there were issued in Bavaria during the years succeeding 1565 not only lists of books condemned and prohibited, but further lists of books commended for the reading of the faithful. These catalogues had been prepared by the Jesuit Fathers at the instance of Canisius and under the authority of Duke William V. They were distributed chiefly through the parish priests. Against the contention made by German historians that the influence of the Jesuits, particularly in South Germany, had served to restrict, and in certain instances practically to repress, literary production and publishing activity, Hilgers insists that in Germany, as throughout Europe, the influence of the Order had always been an intellectual influence; and that its efforts had furthered education and had advanced the interests of scholarly literature, of printing, and of publishing. He contends with some ingenuity that the elimination from literary production of activity in undesirable productions and the concentration of literary force in the channels in which such force could be directed to the best service of humanity, far from lessening intellectual or literary force, could but serve to strengthen this and to render it more effective.[61]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“If,” says Hilgers, “there is to be a sound and safe rule for the community, it is not possible to permit for men, whose understanding is at best but limited, an unrestricted freedom of investigation or of expression. To God alone, whose understanding is unrestricted and unlimited, can there be absolute freedom from limit for thought or for action. For man the sole safety lies in control.”[68]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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