It is in connection with the Index of Pope Clement VIII and the Concordat that the history of publishing in Venice comes for the first time into touch with general history. The claim of the Church to the control of all publishing undertakings soon became involved in the larger question of the relations between Venice and Rome. Paolo Sarpi, who became the champion of the cause of the independence of the State against ecclesiastical domination, comes into the history of literature as the upholder of the rights of authors and of publishers against the crushing censorship of the Inquisition. The problem presented to the Venetian Government was whether the Venetian press, supported in its liberty by the Government, should continue to maintain its character as one of the freest presses in Europe (and therefore one with the most active production); or whether it should be permitted, for want of the support of the Government, to fall under the repressive influence of the Inquisition and the Index. As early as 1491, Franco, Bishop of Treviso and Papal Legate, had issued a decree prohibiting any one from printing in Venetian territory or from causing or permitting, to be printed, any books treating of the Catholic faith or of matters ecclesiastical without the express permission of the bishop or of the vicar-general of the diocese. The Legate named at once two works, Rosselli’s Monarchia and Mirandola’s Theses, which were absolutely prohibited, and all existing copies of which were to be burned in the cathedral or in the parish churches within fifteen days from the publication of the decree. There was no charge that these works were in any way immoral or scandalous. They were condemned simply on the ground of the unsoundness of their doctrine. The contention raised in this order on behalf of the Church was far-reaching. If it were heretical to discuss, in a sense at all hostile to the Curia, the relative powers of the pope and the emperor, there would be an implied right in the Church to censure and to condemn any political writings in which reference was made to the authority of the pope or to the responsibilities of the emperor. It became in fact the keystone of the ecclesiastical position that in the case of the Church no separation was possible between politics and ecclesiastical dogma. In July, 1693, Paruta, the ambassador of Venice at the Vatican, submitted to the pope a vigorous protest against the publication of the Clementine Index, which was then in readiness. Paruta pointed out that the commercial importance of the book-trade in Venice at that time exceeded that of any city in Europe; that the book-trade was in itself deserving of protection and consideration; that a sufficient censorship was already exercised by the imprimaturs of the Council of Ten, who utilised among their examiners the inquisitor; that the publication of this Index would destroy the property, and might cause the ruin, of many who, believing themselves to be safe as long as they kept within the regulations of the Council of Trent, had published books which were now to be prohibited in the Clementine Index; that the new Index not only made many additions to the lists of prohibited books, but proposed a radical change in the standard of prohibition—a great number of books were now, on the ground of some trivial expressions, to be condemned although they were not at all concerned with ecclesiastical or religious questions; that it was important for the Church to keep well affected men of learning throughout the world and that such men would certainly be very much troubled with any measures that interfered with scholarly undertakings and the distribution of the world’s literature. The arguments of Paruta and similar protests that came to Rome from Germany and from Paris had the effect of convincing the pope that some modification of his Index was necessary. The Index, as finally published four years later, was very much altered and diminished. Among the omissions from the first lists were the titles of the whole class of non-religious books printed in Venice, in behalf of which Paruta had spoken. In 1596, the printers and publishers of Venice again found occasion to appeal to the Senate for support against the regulations of the Clementine Index. They found that the works that remained prohibited in the Clementine lists, in addition to those on previous lists the prohibitions of which were still in force, included many that had constituted an important staple in their trade and that this trade, particularly for export, was suffering severely. The Clementine regulations also undertook to take away from the Venetian printers the right to print Bibles and missals and to restrict the printing of such books to Rome. Negotiations between the Senate and the Papacy lasted for some months but in the end the pope gave way on the more important points complained of, and a declaration or Concordat was agreed upon which lessened as far as Venice was concerned the stringency of the most objectionable features of the Index. When this Concordat had been signed, the Senate authorised the publication of the Index. The most important clause in the Concordat was the seventh, which provided that the right of the bishops and inquisitors to prohibit books not on the present Index should refer only to books which attacked religion, or which were printed outside of Venice, or which were issued with a false imprint. This limitation of the ecclesiastical Inquisition to purely religious or theological questions constituted a most valuable precedent in the long fight between the Church and the secular authorities for the control of the press. The Concordat was the last arrangement arrived at until the year 1766 between Rome and Venice in regard to the supervision of the press. During the century and a half following the Concordat, the Venetian republic persistently refused to authorise the publication within its territory of an augmented Index. A list of later prohibitions was, however, finally accepted in 1766, juxta formam concordatorum.
The most prominent figure in this long struggle between Venice and the Papacy was Fra Paolo Sarpi. Cleric though he was, he contended vigorously that the Church was embarking upon a wrong course, and he held that the State was justified in resisting, in secular matters, ecclesiastical encroachments upon the rights of the sovereign. The fight made by Sarpi on behalf of the independence of the State, and particularly of the right of the State to supervise and control literary productions, was of first importance for the intellectual activities of Europe. The arguments used in Venice were repeated in Madrid, Paris, Zürich, and Oxford. Time was gained for authors and for printers, until, largely by means of the presses which the Church was endeavouring to throttle, the spirit of resistance to the domination of the Papacy, and the feeling of national independence against the right of Rome to lay down the law for Europe, had gathered so much strength that the claims of the Church had to be withdrawn or very much moderated.
In 1613, two books by the Englishman Thomas Preston, who wrote under the name of Roger Widdrington, Apologia Cardinalis Bellarmini and Disputatio Theologica, were placed on the Index by the Congregation. The Government of Venice, acting under the advice of Sarpi, refused to allow the provision to take effect in Venice on the two grounds that the theological doctrines taught by Widdrington were sound and orthodox, and that his arguments against the pernicious doctrine of the temporal authority of the pope over princes were eminently worthy of dissemination.
There were also instances of books that were approved by the Church but the publication of which was considered detrimental to the interests of the State, and their sale in Venice was accordingly prohibited. An example of this class was the Recantation of the Archbishop of Spalato, printed in Rome in 1623. The republic objected to the contention of the Archbishop that the pope had power in things temporal as well as in things spiritual. The republic also prohibited the History of the Council of Trent, by Cardinal Pallavicini, written in answer to the History by Sarpi, on the ground that the work contained sentiments obnoxious to the Government of the republic. In a report written to the Government by Sarpi, he takes the ground that the course of action of the Church during the past few years had produced a series of books whose doctrines were entirely subversive of secular government. The writers taught that no government but the ecclesiastical had the divine origin; that secular government is a thing profane and tyrannical which God permits to be imposed upon his people as a kind of trial or persecution; that the people are not in conscience bound to obey the secular law or to pay taxes; that the imposts and subventions are for the most part iniquitous and unjust, and that the princes who impose these have in many cases been excommunicated. In short, princes and rulers are held up to view as impious and unjust; subjects may have to obey them perforce, but in conscience they are free to do all that in them lies to break their yoke. Sarpi emphasises the importance on the part of the republic in retaining in their own hands the control of literary censorship. He pointed out that unless the burden of papal censorship could be lessened, literary production in Venice and elsewhere must cease. He contended that in the correction of books which are open to censure, it is not advisable to follow the practice of the Church of “raking through the entrails of an author” and altering the sense and the intention of a whole sentence so that the writer is made to say the reverse of what he had desired to say; first, because all the world stigmatises such action as falsification; secondly, because such conduct would bring upon Venice the infamous charge of castrating books; thirdly, because the court of Rome assumes for itself the sole right to alter passages in books. He submitted ten propositions upon which he recommended the Government to take action. The purpose aimed at in these propositions was the retention in the hands of the State of the final decision as to prohibition or expurgation, admitting that the civil authorities could very properly utilise in matters of doctrine the service of ecclesiastical censors. Sarpi insisted that in all Venetian editions of the Index, the Concordat should itself be printed.
It was evident in the course of the controversy that Venice was, ostensibly at least, as anxious as the Church could be for the purity of the press. In fact, judging from the Indexes, this point had not caused the Church any particular anxiety. The unsettled question was, which authority should exercise the censorship over the offences of libel, scandal, and obscenity—the Church or the State? It was the opinion of Sarpi that all such books should be absolutely prohibited. The risk, as emphasised by him, was that the Concordat might fall into desuetude, leaving the Venetian press, deprived of the bulwark which the State had secured for its defence, placed completely under the control of the Inquisition. The future justified Sarpi’s dread. The heat of the argument died away, and the Concordat was substantially forgotten. The Inquisition secured full control of the censorship. The press of Venice came under the influence of the Index and the Rules. Its losses were greater than those of the other presses that the Council of Trent had undertaken to regulate, for the reason that it had so much more to lose. From the middle of the 17th century, the printing-press of Venice, though not destroyed, ceases to hold pre-eminence in Europe. The last contest of Venice with Rome occurred in August, 1765, when the Senate issued a decree instructing the Rifformatori to publish and to circulate the Index of Clement and the Concordat, and providing further that the Rifformatori should appoint as an equal associate with the inquisitor an ecclesiastic who should be a subject of Venice, and whose testamur as to matters of faith and doctrine should have equal weight with that of the inquisitor.
A decree was at once issued by the papal court prohibiting the sale or circulation of all books licensed by the newly appointed Venetian officers and the nuncio demanded the withdrawal of the Venetian decree. The issue between the republic and the Papacy turned simply upon the selection of the authority that should decide what was heretical or dangerous. The republic was prepared to make use of ecclesiastical censors but insisted that these must be appointed by the civil government. The Papacy, on the other hand, maintained that the entire responsibility of keeping the faithful from poisonous food had been entrusted to the Church. The Venetian decree of 1765 was never withdrawn and the place of inquisitor as censor of books upon matters of faith was thereafter held by persons appointed by the Rifformatori of the university. As late as 1794, the commissioners of heresy secured an opinion from these university censors upon the Institutiones Theologicae of De Montazet, Archbishop of Lyons, which had been condemned at Rome in 1792. As a result of their report, the Government refused to sanction the decree of the Congregation of the Index. Such an instance can be accepted as an evidence that the press of Venice had at last secured freedom from the censorship of Rome. The revolutionary spirit which was agitating all Europe, and which in France had for the time completely overthrown both Church and monarchy, must have seriously weakened the control of the Papacy over the Italian States, and doubtless exercised no little influence in this final contest between the ecclesiastical censorship and the printing-press. The Venetian press possessed a greater measure of freedom than had been secured by the printer-publishers of any other Italian State and this was an important factor in its long-continued pre-eminence. The general course, however, of the legislation for the supervision of the press was similar in character to that of the other Italian cities in which attention was given to printing.
The city which undertook the task of at once purifying and revitalising the literature of the Christian world, has itself been curiously barren of literary producers. In examining the lists of the writers of Italy whose names and whose works have survived through the centuries, one is surprised to note how few are to be credited to Rome. It is Florence, Venice, Bologna, Ferrara, Milan, and Naples that are recorded as the birthplaces of the most illustrious of the writers of Italy, and it was also largely in these smaller cities rather than in the capital that their important work was carried on.
In artistic productions, the record of Rome is more important. There was, during the 16th and 17th centuries, a Roman school of art that had influence, while in Rome were produced many of the famous works by artists who were natives of Tuscany, of Venice, or of other regions outside of the States of the Church.
The vision of the cardinal’s hat or of the tiara must have had a powerful effect in attracting to the papal capital the talent of the Christian world, and particularly, of course, of Italy; but the concentration of energies upon ecclesiastical aims and dignities may easily have had a depressing and restricting influence on general intellectual development, at least as expressed in literature or art.
Dejob suggests that the possession of the throne of St. Peter, held as the chief wealth of the country, may possibly have brought intellectual poverty to Italy as the mines of America had caused ruin to Spain.
It is the conclusion of Dejob that the crushing surveillance of ecclesiasticism, in connection with the demoralising influences that opulence had brought upon a society already corrupt, has been the chief reason why the States of the Church produced fewer writers and artists of note than are to be credited to the other Italian States; while the Roman writers whose names are known, such as Leopardi and Caporali, have in their work manifested an aversion rather than a patriotic sympathy for the spirit of their home government.[98]
An examination of the list of the popes shows how seldom the choice has fallen on any one not a native of Italy. Since Adrian VI, who died in 1523, no “foreigner” has been called to the headship of the “World’s Church,” while of the forty-one popes who have ruled the Church since Adrian, no less than twenty were born within the territory of the States of the Church. Dejob (writing in the time of Pius IX) is willing to ascribe greatness to but one pope since the 16th century, namely Sixtus V.[99]
This impresses me as too sweepingly pessimistic, at least if we are to consider the term greatness by the standard attained by the other monarchs of Europe. I should suppose for instance that Benedict XIV was entitled to a high relative position among the rulers of the 18th century for wisdom and for capacity.
In 1561, Pius IV calls to Rome Paul Manutius, son of Aldus, to take charge of the publication of the writings of the Fathers of the Church and of such other works as might be selected. Pius was impressed with the belief that the printing-press, under scholarly management, could be made of service to the cause of the Church in withstanding the pernicious influence of the increasing mass of the publications of the German heretics. These Protestant pamphlets and books were not merely undermining the authority of the Church in Germany, in Switzerland, and in France, but were making their way into Italy itself. The first issues of the Aldine press in Rome were the decrees of the Council of Trent, the writings of Cyprian, and the letters of St. Jerome. The press secured the continued support of Pius V and of Gregory XII.
Pius V, when he was Inquisitor of Como, had made one seizure of twelve bales of books characterised by him as heretical, which had been sent from the Valtelina to Como for distribution in Lombardy and Romagna. The books were detained at the office of the Inquisition, but the application for their release on the part of the bookseller to whom they were consigned, being backed up by the vicar and the chapter, the too zealous inquisitor was compelled to release the books, and escaped only with difficulty payment of damages to the importer whose business had been interfered with.[100] The same inquisitor, when stationed at Bergamo, made seizure of two chests of prohibited books, which were in the possession of a priest who was waiting for a favourable opportunity for their distribution. The inquisitor reports that the priest had become depraved by the reading of heretical literature.[101]
In 1614, the Milan guild of printers and booksellers secured a fresh edict confirming its authority and enjoined, under heavy penalties, strict obedience to its regulations. In the application for this decree, the guild no longer lays stress upon the necessity of upholding the dignity and honourable standard of the book-trade, but emphasises the risk to the Church and to the community of believers if permission to print or to sell books should be given to uneducated and irresponsible persons who could not be familiar with the lists of forbidden works. Experience had evidently made clear to the publishers that with a government like that of Spain (which might be described as a despotism tempered by the Inquisition) this class of considerations would be more influential than any thought of upholding the dignity of the business of making and selling books. The confirmation of the authority of the guild under the direct control of ecclesiastics representing the Spanish Inquisition, had the effect of checking its business in publications outside of the classes of jurisprudence and medicine. These subjects were naturally less affected by ecclesiastical censorship.
A factor to be taken into account in considering the selections of books ordered to be condemned, was the patriotism of the Italian clergy, in whose hands rested the control of the operations of the Congregation. They were as unwilling to characterise as pernicious noteworthy and representative books by Italian writers, as they were to place any one but an Italian on the throne of St. Peter. This partisan zeal for the literary glory of Italy must frequently have seriously interfered with the aim of securing a consistent and effective Index and have brought upon a conscientious pope not a little embarrassment. An example of the difficulty experienced by Rome in enforcing a consistent censorship in the face of Italian patriotism, on the part of ecclesiastics, no less than of laymen, is afforded by Dante and Petrarch. Of the former, was prohibited the De Monarchia, but the Divine Comedy, with all its bitter strictures of things ecclesiastical, escaped condemnation and even expurgation.
The Canzoniere of Petrarch were also left untouched by Rome, although the Inquisition of Spain had characterised them most severely in the Indexes of 1612 and 1667. It was not until 1667 that the Satires of Ariosto were placed upon the Index, while the Comedies of the same poet were never condemned although in these the poet had assailed fiercely the trade in indulgences, and had painted a vivid picture of the traffic carried on by the capital of the Christian world with the blood of the apostles and martyrs.
The example of independence set by Venice in its series of contests with the Church for the freedom of the press had a natural influence in other cities of Italy where conditions were favourable for publishing activity. In Florence, Pisa, Ferrara, Milan, and other cities in which scholarship had flourished during the manuscript period, the productions of the printing-press became, during the 15th and 16th centuries, of increasing importance. This work was frequently interfered with and sometimes seriously hampered by the censorship regulations of Rome and by the operations of the local inquisitors, but it was never entirely blocked even in any one city. The feeling of State and municipal independence and the individuality of the people were too strong to be crushed out by Roman edicts or by the threats of the Inquisition. In Italy as in Germany, the fact that there was not one government in the peninsula, but a number of independent States, helped to secure for the work of the printers some degree of opportunity, notwithstanding the censorship edicts of the Church and the repressive measures of the State. The presses of the day were small and in case of trouble in one city, they could easily be moved to another.
An instance of a book the censorship of which caused no little difficulty to the authorities of the Index is afforded by the Decameron of Boccaccio. The book had, under the instructions of Paul IV, been placed upon the Index of 1559, and the prohibition was confirmed in that of 1564. In response to an urgent requirement from the public, an expurgated edition was printed for the needs of the faithful by the Giunti in Florence in 1573, under a special privilege from the Duke of Tuscany and from Gregory XIII, who himself contributed a prefatory word. The volume includes further an authorisation from Manrique, Grand Inquisitor, and one from de Pise, Inquisitor-General of Florence. The introduction states that the work has been purged of its obnoxious passages. It appears, however, that the eliminations were confined almost exclusively to the passages which were tainted with heresy, and to the uncomplimentary references to the clergy and to monastic institutions. The amorous incidents are left untouched, but in all cases in which a monk or a cleric, an abbess or a nun is made by Boccaccio to play an undignified or unworthy rôle, the character is replaced by a citizen, a nobleman, or a bourgeoise.
The edition of the Decameron, revised under the instructions of Gregory XIII, did not prove satisfactory to Sixtus V, and the book was therefore replaced on the Index. The demand for copies on the part of readers, ecclesiastics and others, who were prepared to respect the prohibition of the Index, continued urgent, and the Pope authorised the production of a further expurgated edition, which was printed in Florence in 1582 and reprinted in Venice in 1588. The task of expurgation had been confided to two laymen, Salviati, known as a linguist, and Groto, a poet. This further revision still failed to satisfy the Pope and the book remained on the Index, but it continued in general reading, and the authorities appear finally to have decided to close their eyes to this particular instance of disobedience. The record presents a curious example of a book the vitality of which, persisting through the centuries, defied all efforts for its suppression. It is referred to by the historians as the first chef d’oeuvre in prose that had as yet been produced in Italy, whose literature was so rich in great poems.
One would suppose that the authority of the head of the Church ought to have been accepted in all cases as adequate to cover the permission required for the printing and continued circulation of a book. It appears, however, that from time to time even the papal authorisations were disregarded or failed to receive continued consideration. Dejob refers to a history of Bologna by Sigone, the publication of which was suspended, owing to the malignancy of certain Bolognese, after the approval had been secured from the examiners appointed by the pope. Baronius, the defender of the most extreme claims for the supremacy of the Papacy, secured for his monograph on Sixtus V the approbation of the papal examiner and of the master of the palace. Notwithstanding this approval, the printing of the book was blocked through some cabal and the work was held up until Cardinal Caraffa intervened to secure its publication.[102]
In the year 1600, was completed, in thirteen folio volumes, the Annales Ecclesiastici of Baronius, the most comprehensive work which the controversies of the Protestant revolt had as yet produced. The series was continued by various writers until, in the edition issued at Lucca in 1738–1786, it had grown to thirty-eight folio volumes, a work of which purchase was difficult and perusal impossible.
A reply to Baronius was undertaken by Casaubon, who published in London in 1604 (as a fragment of the work originally planned) his Exercitationes, a volume of eight hundred folio pages. For the great work of Baronius, the authorities of the Church interested themselves in securing through the Church machinery channels of distribution and such reading public as was practicable considering its compass and scholastic character.
The Roman idea of reforming and developing the intellectual life of the State was to follow a policy of official supervision with prohibitions and penalties. Ecclesiastical censors undertook to bring authors under a system of religious and theological obligations, and were willing to give their official approval only to works complying with their standards. Certain writers accept with docility the regulations imposed, but it is not those whose productions will live or will retain influence. The books that have not conformed to the ecclesiastical restrictions must be either reshaped or suppressed. It is not under such conditions, says Dejob, that a great literature can be produced.[103] And yet in spite of an ecclesiastical policy of restriction and repression enforced, or at least attempted, through centuries, the intellectual vitality of Italy was so great that it proved impossible to crush out its independence of thought, or even seriously to limit the expression of its spiritual and literary ideals. A scholarly Catholic of France writing in 1883 says (in substance):
The peculiar conception, that from the earliest times Italy had formed, of the Kingdom of God and of the way in which this Kingdom was to be reached, the astounding freedom of spirit with which (during the middle ages) it handled matters of dogma and of discipline, the serenity that it was able to maintain in the face of the great mystery of life and death, the marvellous way with which it brought into accord faith and rationalism, its indifference for heresies and for the temerities of its mystical imagination, the ardent affection with which it accepted the highest ideals of Christianity, and finally, the indignation with which from time to time it denounced the feebleness, the violence, the corruption of the Church of Rome,—this is the religion of Italy, the faith of Peter Damien, of Arnold of Brescia, of St. Francis, of John of Parma, of St. Catherine of Siena, of Savonarola, and of Ochino; but it was also the faith of Dante and of Petrarch, of Giotto, of Fra Angelico, and of Raphael, of Vittoria Colonna and of Michael Angelo.[104]
4. Spain.—In Spain as in Italy, the Church did not at once realise the risks to orthodoxy that were to be associated with the work of the printers. German printers coming to Spain as early as 1474 were received with favour and found opportunities for profitable work. Even Hebrew printers were at the outset welcomed. Between the years 1499–1510, Cardinal Ximenes (following in the footsteps of Turrecremata) paid fifty thousand crowns for the production of a series of classics. It was not until 1510 that the Church began, through the organisation of its censorship, to hamper the work of the printers. Pütter is authority for the statement[105] that for a term of two years (1484–1486) Christopher Columbus served as a bookseller’s apprentice and as a colporteur. An ecclesiastic named Bernaldes writes in 1487: “I have recently seen a man named Christofero Colombo who comes from Genoa and who is a dealer in printed books that he has brought to this city (Cogolludo) from Andalusia.”
The destruction of books classed as pernicious appears to have been, during the 15th century, within the province of any person of position and influence.[106] In 1490, Torquemada burned, under order of Ferdinand and Isabella, a number of Hebrew Bibles, and, later, he made at Salamanca an auto-da-fé of more than six thousand volumes described as books of magic or as infected with Jewish errors. Ximenes, while yet merely Archbishop, burned in the public square of Granada no less than five thousand Arabic books, many of them splendidly ornamented and illuminated. The only books spared from the collection were those on the subject of medicine, which were deposited in the University of Alcala.[107] In 1502, Ferdinand and Isabella enacted an elaborate law, which is referred to as the first of the kind in Europe, establishing a general censorship of the press. In this law, were laid down the principles on which were based nearly all subsequent enactments. To Spain thus belongs the honour of organising the system which was to exercise an influence so incomputable on the development of human intelligence.
“The Spanish people strove earnestly for the maintenance of the faith but it understood by this not the reform of methods of life and the correction of immorality, but the extirpation of heresy.”[108]
“The uncompromising character of the Spanish temperament, which pursued its object regardless of consequences, saw at once what was elsewhere only perceived by degrees, that any endeavours to set bounds to the multiplying products of the press could be successful only under a thorough system of minute surveillance.”[109] It was ordered that no book should be printed or imported or exposed for sale without examination and license. In some places, this duty was imposed upon judges of the royal courts and in others on the archbishops or bishops. The examiners, men of good repute and learning, were to be appointed by these authorities and were to be adequately paid for their work. After a work in manuscript had been licensed for printing, the printed sheets were to be carefully compared with the original to insure that no alteration had been made on the press. Any book printed or imported or offered for sale without such license was to be seized and burned and the printer or vendor was declared incapable of longer carrying on the business.[110] In this first enactment, no reference is made to the Inquisition as having any concern either with the investigation of books for heresies or with the punishment of delinquents; but the Inquisition had not long to wait before its jurisdiction over literature was established on an impregnable basis.
After the beginning of the Reformation in Germany, the operations of the censorship in Spain were carried on with renewed vigour. Special efforts were naturally made to protect the faithful in Spain from contamination through the importation of heretical books from Germany. A letter of June 25, 1524, written by Martin de Salinas, mentions that a ship from Holland bound for Valencia had been captured by the French and then recaptured and brought into San Sebastian. In discharging the vessel, there were found two casks of Lutheran books which were publicly burned. Salinas writes, some months later, that three Venetian galleasses had arrived at a port in Granada, bringing large quantities of Lutheran books. The books were burned and the captains and crews arrested. An edict of the Supreme Council of the Inquisition, issued in August, 1530, urged the inquisitors to increased vigilance in connection particularly with the destruction of certain Lutheran writings that had been introduced under false titles or under the names of Catholic authors. The inquisitors were ordered to add to the Edict of Denunciations, published annually, a clause requiring the denunciation of all who possessed such books or of all who had read them.[111] In spite of the watchfulness of the inquisitors and of the customs officials, it is reported that, in 1570, no less than thirty thousand copies of a Spanish version of the Institutes of Calvin were brought over the frontier.[112]
It is the conclusion of Ticknor that by the end of the 16th century, bookselling in Spain, in the sense in which the term was used elsewhere in the world, was practically unknown, and the Inquisition and the confessional had often made most rare what was most desirable. In March, 1521, papal briefs were sent to Spain, warning the Spanish Government to prevent the further introduction of books written by Luther and his followers, copies of which had, it was believed, been penetrating into the country for about a year. These papal briefs were addressed to the civil administration, which still, in form at least, retained in its own hands the control of such matters. It was, however, more natural and more in accordance with the ideas then prevalent, not only in Spain but in other countries, to look to the ecclesiastical power for remedies in a matter connected with religion. This was certainly the attitude of the great body of the Spanish people. In less than a month (as is evident from the date of the briefs in question) and possibly even before these briefs were received in Spain, the grand inquisitor addressed an order to the tribunals under his jurisdiction, requiring them to search for, and to seize, all books supposed to contain the doctrines of the new heresy. The measure was bold and proved successful.
In the meantime, the Supreme Council of the Inquisition proceeded with this work with a firm and consistent step. By successive decrees issued between 1521 and 1553, it was ordained that all persons who had in their possession books infected with the doctrines of Luther, and all persons also who failed to denounce the holders of such books, should be excommunicated and subject to severe punishments. These decrees gave to the Inquisition the right to inquire into the contents and the character of whatever books were sold and printed. They also relegated to itself the power to determine what books might be sent to the press. This assumption was made gradually and with little noise, but effectually.
While at first there was no direct authority for such action from either the pope or the Kingdom of Spain, it necessarily implied the assent of both, and was carried into effect by means furnished by one or the other. In certain works printed before 1550, the Inquisition began quietly and without any formal authority to take cognisance and control of books that were about to be printed. A curious treatise on exchange, by de Villalon, entitled Tratado de Cambios, was printed at Valladolid in 1541. The title-page declared that the book had been “Visto por los señores Inquisidores.” In the Silva de Varia Leccion, of Pero, printed at Seville, in 1543, the title gives the imperial license for printing, while the colophon adds that of the Apostolical inquisitor. The author was evidently anxious to secure, in addition to a permission resting on law, one which rested on the still more formidable authority of the Church.
A system which should effectually preserve the faithful from the contamination of evil by keeping from them the knowledge of its existence comprised two functions; the first was the examination of all books prior to publication, permitting only the innocent to be printed; the second was the scrutiny of the books that had come from the press and the condemnation or expurgation of those containing errors which had escaped the vigilance of the first examiners. Under the rigid institution of censorship in Spain, the first of these duties was assumed by the State and the second was confided to the Inquisition. The first law in regard to Spanish censorship was enacted in 1502 and forbade the printing or importation of any book without an examination and license. The chancellor Gattinara, writing in 1527 to Erasmus, says that in Spain no book could see the light without a careful preliminary inspection which was rigidly enforced. This statement is confirmed in 1540 by Hugo de Celso. The Inquisition had no legal status in the matter of preliminary licensing, but its growing influence caused its judgment to be frequently appealed to in advance. Ticknor makes reference to books of 1536, 1541, and 1546 as bearing records of examination by the Inquisition.
In 1554, an edict of Charles V confines to the royal council the function of issuing licenses for the printing of books of all descriptions. In the case of works of importance, the original manuscript was to be deposited with the council to ensure detection of any alterations made while the book was going through the press. In 1558, it is ordered under royal edict that no bookseller or other person shall sell or possess any books printed or to be printed which have been condemned by the Inquisition and that such books should be publicly burned. The penalty is death and confiscation of all property. The same penalties apply to the importing of any books in Romance which do not bear a printed license from the council. A later regulation specifies that, in order to prevent any alterations in the printing, the original manuscript shall be signed on every leaf by a secretary of the royal chamber, who shall mark and rubricate every correction or alteration in it and shall state at the end the number of leaves and of alterations. When the printing has been completed, these corrected leaves are to be compared with the printed sheets. The infection of heresy could be communicated by manuscript, and therefore the penalty of death and confiscation is decreed for all who own or show to others manuscripts on any religious subject without first submitting these to the council.[113] Lea goes on to say: “I am not aware that any human being was actually put to death for violating its provisions, unless the offence was complicated with heresy express or implied, but such violation remained to the end a capital crime. The only modification of this ferocious penalty occurs in a revision of the press law in 1752.”[114] It is not surprising that under restrictions of this character, the work of the Spanish printer-publishers during the 16th century was seriously hampered. As an example of the enforcement of the regulations of the Valdes Index of 1559, may be named the case of a French priest named Jean Fesque. He had handed to a bookseller named Trechel a volume without imprint, asking Trechel if he could say where it was printed. The book belonged to the condemned list, being a French version of the Psalms of David, translated by Marot and Bèza. Fesque stated that he had purchased the book from a boy in the street without knowledge of its character. He was brought before the Inquisition, and after five months’ imprisonment and various examinations, he was put to the torture but was unable to give further evidence as to the history of the book. He was finally released after six months’ incarceration, seriously disabled by the torture.[115]
The machinery of the Inquisition was effective even in the farther parts of the empire. In 1795, a priest in the settlement of Hopelcheen in Yucatan published a prohibition of the Inquisition warning his congregation not to read a certain book which had been described by the Inquisition as dangerous and to surrender at once all copies in their possession. The book was entitled Disengaño del Hombre, by Puglia, and bore the imprint (possibly fictitious) of Philadelphia. The congregation of Indians and half-breeds was hardly likely to have had knowledge of the book or to have been able to read it even if copies had reached Hopelcheen.[116]
The Index expurgatorius in its literal sense may be described as peculiarly a Spanish institution. In the Roman series, there is record of the publication of but one expurgatory Index, that of Brasichelli, and this was never republished and was in fact promptly recalled by the authorities. The inquisitors of Spain took upon themselves the task of preserving the faithful from contamination, and the successive expurgatory Indexes give evidence of the enormous labour expended by the examiners in the correction of the text of books which they were not prepared absolutely to prohibit, but the circulation of which they were ready to permit if the heresies could be expunged or corrected. The Roman prohibitory Index contained against many works the restriction donec corrigatur. This indicated that the book when corrected was to be permitted; the objectionable passages were, however, not specified, although the author could ascertain these on application. As an actual result, it was very rarely the case that it proved practicable to bring into publication an edition in which the corrections in question, having been ascertained from the authorities, could be made. The Spanish censors took credit to themselves for their liberality in securing the use of heretical works of value through the expurgation of the offensive passages. It is true that, under this system, permission was given for the production of the writings of authors like Erasmus, Casaubon, Bertram, and others who were absolutely prohibited in Rome. It does not appear, however, that as far as the publishers of Spain were concerned, this permission brought about for the greater portion of the books in question the production of corrected editions. It is in fact easy to understand how the heavy loss that must be incurred through the suppression of the original edition would have discouraged both author and printer from the task of risking a further investment in a second edition which might itself in like manner be prohibited until again revised. It may safely be concluded that the restricted prohibition in Spain had as far as the production and distribution of books were concerned practically the same result as the absolute prohibition in Rome. In fact, in Spain, the result was more effective simply because the regulations of the Spanish Inquisition were enforced, while for the similar orders of the Inquisition of Rome or of the Congregation of the Index, the enforcement throughout the States of Italy or outside of Italy was but vacillating and fragmentary. An example of the watchfulness of the Spanish examiners is given in the expurgation of a passage from the Second Part of Don Quixote. But a single sentence is cancelled. It reads: “Works of charity negligently performed are of no worth.” In the Divine Comedy of Dante, the censors found but three passages for excision. Lea points out that for this work at least the examination can hardly be described as thorough.[117] In 1790, the history of the monastery of Sixena, by Varon, which had been published with the approval of the royal examiners in 1776, was prohibited until the following sentence had been expurgated: “When Philip the Second was despoiling the world to enrich his monastery of the Escorial.” The Inquisition of Spain even assumed for itself the authority to revise and correct the utterances of the popes. The State utilised the censorship of the Inquisition not only for matters theological but for the suppression of writings that were purely political. Instructions of Clement VIII were accepted as the authority for the expurgation of teachings that were derogatory to princes and to ecclesiastics and contrary to good morals. In 1612, for instance, the works of Antonio Perez were placed on the Index because they were critical of Philip II.[118] In 1640, the Inquisition suppressed a manifesto addressed by the authorities of Barcelona to Philip IV, and, in 1642, it prohibited a further manifesto in which the Catalans accused the favourite, Olivares, of causing the misfortunes of Spain. In 1643, on the other hand, after the dismissal of Olivares, the Inquisition prohibited a pamphlet which had been issued in his defence.