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

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

In 1782, the Inquisitor-General Bertram, following the instructions given in the Index of Benedict in 1756, recalled the prohibition of the printing and reading of Spanish versions of the Bible, a prohibition which had endured for two hundred and fifty years. This action brought out sharp antagonism on the part of many of the ecclesiastics and after the revolutionary events of 1789, the Inquisition re-established the larger number of the old-time prohibitions and included in these a fresh prohibition for the reading of the Scriptures. The censorship activity of the five years succeeding 1789 was, however, particularly directed against the importation of political and so-called philosophical publications from France. After the restoration of the Spanish monarchy under Ferdinand VII, the old regulations of the Index were again confirmed under an edict of July 22, 1815. There were, later, certain modifications in these regulations, but in June, 1830, an elaborate law re-established the entire censorship system with its cumbrous machinery; every work contrary to the Catholic Faith or to the royal prerogative was forbidden under pain of death, and provision was made for the most elaborate supervision of books imported from abroad.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Hilgers points out that the instances of Protestant political censorship against works which are purely literary or intellectual in their character, that is to say, which had no direct concern with either religion or politics, are far more numerous than under the action of the censorship authorities of Rome. Among other examples, he points out the action of Luther against the works of Erasmus and the writings of a number of the Humanists; the decree of the Duke of Weimar (acting at the initiative of Goethe) against Isis, and for the suppression of the epoch-making writings of the philosopher Fichte; the acts of Frederick the Great against Voltaire, and the measures taken by Bismarck against a long series of writings that came into print during the Kulturkampf.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

In 1564, Queen Elizabeth issued an instruction to the Bishop of London to provide for an examination of the cargoes of all the vessels arriving, in order that pernicious and heretical books should be secured and destroyed. In 1571, an act of Parliament provided the punishment of treason against all who should secure from the Bishop of Rome any bull, brief, or other instrument or should undertake to make distribution of copies of the same. Under Elizabeth, it was ordered that any person should be treated as guilty of high treason and should be liable to sentence of death if he had in his possession a Catholic book in which was taught the doctrine of the supremacy of the pope. In 1582, an act of Parliament declared it to be felony to write, print, sell, distribute, or possess books, rhymes, ballads, letters, or writings of any kind which contained matter against the fame of the Queen or in any way injurious to the repute of the Government. Under this law, two ministers belonging to the sect of the Brownists, Thacher and Copping, were tried and executed. In 1575, Elizabeth approved a new act directed against the Anabaptists, the Puritans, the Brownists, and the Catholics, under the provisions of which act a number of people were condemned and burned. Among the books prohibited under the same law, were certain writings of Henry Nicholas of Leyden which had been translated from the German. It was ordered that any persons possessing or distributing these writings should be punished. In 1583, a proclamation was issued by the Queen against the publishers, booksellers, or possessors of pernicious and schismatic literature. The Star Chamber, under the law of 1585, prescribed that each university should keep in activity but one press and prescribed from year to year the number of presses permitted for London. In 1593, Barrow and Greenwood, both Brownists, were executed as heretics. It is the view of the Jesuit historian Hilgers that throughout the whole of the reign of Elizabeth there was a persistent and bloody persecution against freedom of thought of any kind. In 1594, Adfield and Carter suffered death because the former had brought into England a Catholic book and the latter had had the same in his possession.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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