THE CENSORSHIP OF THE ROMAN CHURCH.* MR. PUTNAM'S book is
a triumph of industry and, what is not less important in such a matter, impartiality. . Though for convenience' sake he entitles it The Censorship of the Church of Rome, he deals also in fact with the censorship exercised by other Churches. It was long an accepted principle in all Com- munions that error should be forcibly restrained, the heretical teacher silenced, the heretical book suppressed. The efforts to put this principle into practice have elsewhere been feeble and intermittent. Other Churches have, happily or unhappily for themselves, lacked the executive power and the consistent tradition of Rome. In our own country, for instance, the censorship was active during. considerable portions of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The Star Chamber in 1637 issued a scheme for the regulation of literature which certainly deserved the title of " thorough " as much as did any of the political action of the time. The Lord Chief Justice N.V as to be the supreme authority on books of law, the Secretary of State on books of history—imagine Mr. Herbert Gladstone adding this to his cares of office !—and the Archbishop of Canterbury, with other dignitaries, on theology, with literature in general. It was under this regime that Alexander Leighton (father of the Archbishop) had his ears cut off and his nose slit for an attack on episcopacy. The Commonwealth and the Restoration carried on the tradition. It survived the Revolution, but became gradually weaker. It is now entirely obsolete. The task of distinguishing has become too com- plicated for execution.
The earliest instance of censorship which Mr. Putnam can
• The Censorshtp of the Church of Rome. By George Haven Putnam, Litt.D. 2 vols. Loudon U. P. Putmulie Sous. [21s. net.1
discover is the condemnation by a local assembly, which It would have been well not to describe as "the Council of Ephesus," of the Acta Pauli,—the Acta Pauli et Thedue is
probably meant. Similar judgments were pronounced from time to time by Popes, Councils, and other authorities. But the occasions were rare; the faithful, as our author remarks, were sufficiently protected by the common inability to read.
Among the more illustrious of the condemned were Beren- garius in the eleventh century, the determined opponent of Transubstantiation; Abelard in the twelfth ; and later, in -our own country, Wycliffe and Pocock. The name of Aeneas Sylvius (Pius II.) should be added to the list of the condemned; but then be pronounced sentence on himself, when his eleva- tion to the Papacy had changed his views on religion and morals. Among the objects of orthodox censure Hebrew writings were prominent. The action of the authorities in
this matter was not consistent. The Babylonian Talmud, which had been repeatedly condemned by earlier Popes, was
printed at Venice in 1520 with the Papal privilege. Commonly, however, the feeling was adverse. As late as 1775 Jews were forbidden to possess copies of their own literature.
The systematic censorship may be said to date from the fifteenth century, and to have been the result of the invention of printing. At first the authorities seem to have thought that the new art would make their action easier. A manu- script might be manufactured and multiplied in secret, while
the machines of the press necessitated a certain -amount of publicity. By degrees they were compelled to recognise the enormous capabilities of the new art, and found that all, and more than all, their powers would be required to cope with it. The vast increase of intellectual activity and the widening of the borders of knowledge that followed on the invention greatly aggravated the difficulties of the situation. When we examine the Indexes, as they were put fOrth from time to time, we are struck by the incapacity of the authorities to understand the subject with which they were dealing. Gross ignorance or carelessness is seen in the manner in which books are entered. The touching narrative of Anne Askew, bearing as it does so striking a resemblance to St. Perpetua's narrative as we have it (probably through the intervention of Tertullian), . naturally attracted attention. The English prelates of the time doubtless represented it as a noxious publication. It accordingly appears in the Index of Sixtus V., when that Pope put for the first time into a formal shape the decisions of his predecessors. But it is recorded in the curiously travestied form of "Anna: a Skeue," which was still further disguised in the edition of Clement VIII. as "A. S. Keuue." Again, we find a number of indifferent books. The metrical version of the Psalms by Thomas Sternhold was the work of a Protestant, but it is difficult to see why it was included in the list of prohibited books. There was no dangerously fascinating beauty about the version, and it surely was not heretical. Still more incomprehensible is the condemnation of the purely scientific works of Gerard Mercator, a protege of the orthodox Charles V. He had, however, the indiscretion to dedicate his Chronology to Queen Elizabeth. His namesake Nicholas, the geographer, met with the same treatment. His Atlas was put on the Index in 1663, and the condemnation was repeated by Benedict XIV. in the following century. [We are not quite clear as to Mr. Putnam's reference to Mercator. There were two men of science of this name, Gerard (1512-1594) and Nicholas (1640-1694), and the two books could hardly have been "dedicated to Queen Elizabeth."] It is still more surprising to find the name of Bellarmine. He seems to have incurred Papal displeasure by maintaining that the power of the Roman Pontiff was indirect as to temporals. The edition of the Index compiled by Brasichelli in 1607 has many curiosities, chief among them being the expurgation of the Bibliotheca Patrum. "S. Ignatius is censored for his opinions about the Lord's Day." Our own Bishop Fisher (of Rochester) was reprehended for derogatory opinions about indulgences.
The climax of indiscretion was, of course, reached in 1633 when Galileo was condemned. His solar theory was pro- nounced to be "foolish, absurd, false in theology, because expressly contrary to Holy Scripture." No further editions of his works were to be permitted, nor any other in which the Copernican astronomy was maintained. In 1757 this latter restriction was removed, but Galileo's works were still retained
in the Index. In 1765 Lalande, the French astronomer, vainly endeavoured to obtain the removal. Copernicus remained under the same condemnation as late as 1835. In 1822, however, it was settled that his system might be taught. It will be within the memory of persons still living that the Ptolemaic system has been advocated by clerical champions. It must not be supposed, however, that it was only at Rome that the teachings of Copernicus and Galileo were condemned. "Lutherans," says Mr. Putnam, "Calvinists, Anglicans, alike placed themselves in record as opposed" to them. But we cannot allow that John Hutchinson, the author of the Principia of Moses, was "Professor John Hutchin- son of Cambridge." It would have been too monstrous that such a spectacle should be seen in Newton's University. We cannot make out that Hutchinson had any connexion with Cambridge, except that in early life be worked for Woodward, who may be described as the founder of geological study in Cambridge. But even Woodward was not incorporated at Cambridge till somewhat late in life. Galileo, condemned mainly through Jesuit influence, was vindicated'two hundred and twenty years after his condemnation by the Jesuit astronomer Secchi, who "presented in one of the churches at Rome, the experiment of Foucault with the pendulum, making clear to the human eye the movement of the earth about its own axis."
These two volumes embarrass us with the multiplicity of the interesting things which they suggest. These, however, we are constrained to pass over, and to proceed at once to the latest exposition of the Roman theory, the "Constitution of Leo XIII. concerning the Prohibition and Censorship of Books. All translations of the Scriptures into the vernacular are condemned if executed by non-Catholics; all executed by Catholics must have the approbation of the Holy See, and must be annotated from Patristic sources." All treatises in which "the inspiration of Holy Scripture is perverted, or its extension too narrowly limited," are condemned,—a very signifi- cant fact when we think of the present movement of thought. When we come to the actual list the interest increases. On it we find Jeremy Bentham, the Book of Common Prayer, Browne's Religio Medici, Bunsen's Hippolytus and his Age, Combe's Phrenology, A. Comte; Erasmus Darwin's Zoonomia, but not Charles Darwin's Origin of Species; Alexandre Dumas (pere and fits), Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Goldsmith's Abridged History of England, Hallam's Works, Hobbes, Kant, Locke, Maurice's Theological Essays, Mill's Political Economy, Montaigne's Essays, Richardson's Pamela, Whately's Logic, and Andrew Lang's Myth, Ritual, and Religion. One cannot help seeing in the Index, with its intellectual feebleness, one of the results of the Italianisation of the Papacy. As Mr. Putnam puts it, the mediaeval Church has been narrowed into the Roman.
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