Renaissance in Italy Volume VI Part 8

How little the subjects of S. Mark at this epoch trusted the good faith of laws securing liberty of thought in Venice, may be gathered from what happened immediately after the publication of the Index Expurgatorius in 1596. From an official report upon the decline of the printing trade in Venice, it appears that within the s.p.a.ce of a few months the number of presses fell from 125 to 40.[108] Printers were afraid to undertake either old or new works, and the trade languished for lack of books to publish. Yet an edict had been issued announcing that by the terms of the Concordat with Clement VIII., the Venetian press would only be subject to State control and not to the Roman tribunals.[109] The truth is that, in regard both to the Holy Office and to the Index, Venice was never strong enough to maintain the independence which she boasted. By cunning use of the confessional, and by unscrupulous control of opinion, the Church succeeded in doing there much the same as in any other Italian city. Successive Popes made, indeed, a show of respecting the liberties of the Republic. On material points, touching revenue and State-administration, they felt it wise to concede even more than complimentary privileges; and when Paul V. encroached upon these privileges, the Venetians were ready to resist him. Yet the quarrels between the Vatican and San Marco were, after all, but family disputes.

The Venetians at the close of the sixteenth century proved themselves no better friends to spiritual freedom than were the Grand Dukes of Tuscany. Their political jealousies, commercial anxieties, and feints of maintaining a power that was rapidly decaying, denoted no partiality for the opponents of Rome--unless, like Sarpi, these wore the livery of the State, and defended with the pen its secular prerogatives. Therefore, when the Signory published Clement VIII.'s Index, when copies of that Index were sown broadcast, while only an edition of sixty was granted to the Concordat, authors and publishers felt, and felt rightly, that their day had pa.s.sed. The art of printing sank at once to less than a third of its productivity. The city where it had flourished so long, and where it had effected so much of enduring value for European culture, was gagged in scarcely a less degree than Rome. We have full right to insist upon these facts, and to draw from them a stringent corollary. If Venice allowed the trade in books, which had brought her so much profit and such honor in the past, to be paralyzed by Clement's Index, what must have happened in other Italian towns? The blow which maimed Venetian literature, was mortal elsewhere; and the finest works of genius in the first half of the seventeenth century had to find their publishers in Paris.[110] But these reflections have led me to antic.i.p.ate the proper development of the subject of this chapter.

[Footnote 108: The doc.u.ment in question, prepared for the use of the Signoria, exists in MS. in the Marcian Library, Misc. Eccl. et Civ.

Cla.s.s. VII. Cod. MDCCLXI.]

[Footnote 109: This edict is dated August 24, 1596.]

[Footnote 110: This will be apparent when I come to treat of Marino and Ta.s.soni.]

In Italy at large, the forces of the Inquisition were directed, not as in Spain against heretics in ma.s.ses, but against the leaders of heretical opinion; and less against personalities than against ideas.

Italy during the Renaissance had been the workshop of ideas for Europe.

It was the business of the Counter-Reformation to check the industry of that _officina scientiarum_, to numb the nervous centers which had previously emitted thought of pregnant import for the modern world, and to prevent the reflux of ideas, elaborated by the northern races in fresh forms, upon the intelligence which had evolved them. To do so now was comparatively easy. It only needed to put the engine of the Index Librorum Prohibitorum into working order in concert with the Inquisition.

Throughout the Middle Ages it had been customary to burn heretical writings. The bishops, the universities, and the Dominican Inquisitors exercised this privilege; and by their means, in the age of ma.n.u.scripts, the life of a book was soon extinguished. Whole libraries were sometimes sacrificed at one fell swoop, as in the case of the 6000 volumes destroyed at Salamanca in 1490 by Torquemada, on a charge of sorcery.[111] After the invention of printing it became more difficult to carry on this warfare against literature, while the rapid diffusion of Protestant opinions through the press rendered the need for their extermination urgent. Sixtus IV. laid a basis for the Index by prohibiting the publication of any books which had not previously been licensed by ecclesiastical authority. Alexander VI. by a brief of 15O1 confirmed this measure, and placed books under the censorship of the episcopacy and the Inquisition. Finally, the Lateran Council, in its tenth session, held under the auspices of Leo X., gave solemn ec.u.menical sanction to these regulations.

The censorship having been thus established, the next step was to form a list of books prohibited by the Inquisitors appointed for that purpose.

The Sorbonne in Paris drew one up for their own use, and even presented a pet.i.tion to Francis I. that publication through the press should be forbidden altogether.[112] A royal edict to this effect was actually promulgated in 1535. Charles V. commissioned the University of Louvain in 1539 to furnish a similar catalogue, proclaiming at the same time the penalty of death for all who read or owned the works of Luther in his realms.[113] The University printed their catalogue with Papal approval in 1549.

[Footnote 111: Llorente, vol. i. p. 281.]

[Footnote 112: Christie's _Etienne Dolet_, pp. 220-24.]

[Footnote 113: Llorente, vol. i. p. 463.]

These lists of the Sorbonne and Louvain formed the nucleus of the Apostolic Index, which, after the close of the Council of Trent, became binding upon Catholics. When the Inquisition had been established in Rome, Caraffa, who was then at its head, obtained the sanction of Paul III. for submitting all books, old or new, printed or in ma.n.u.script, to the supervision of the Holy Office. He also contrived to place booksellers, public and private libraries, colporteurs and officers of customs, under the same authority; so that from 1543 forward it was a penal offence to print, sell, own, convey or import any literature, of which the Inquisition had not first been informed, and for the diffusion or possession of which it had not given its permission. Giovanni della Casa, who was sent in 1546 to Venice with commission to prosecute P.

Paolo Vergerio for heresy, drew up a list of about seventy prohibited volumes, which was printed in that city.[114] Other lists appeared, at Florence in 1552, and at Milan in 1554. Philip II. at last, in 1558, issued a royal edict commanding the publication of one catalogue which should form the standard for such Indices throughout his States.[115]

These lists, revised, collated, and confirmed by Papal authority, were reprinted, in the form which ever afterwards obtained, at Rome, by command of Paul IV. in 1559.

[Footnote 114: In the year 1548. The MS. cited above (p. 192) mentions another Index of the Venetian Holy Office published in 1554.]

[Footnote 115: Sarpi, _Ist. del Conc. Tial_, vol. ii..p. 90.]

The Tridentine Council ratified the regulations of the Inquisition and the Index concerning prohibited books, and referred the execution of them in detail to the Papacy. A congregation was appointed at Rome, which, though technically independent of the Holy Office, worked in concert with it. This Congregation of the Index brought the Tridentine decrees into harmony with the practice that had been developed by Caraffa as Inquisitor and Pope. Their list was published in 1564 with the authority of Pius IV. Finally, in 1595 the decrees embodying the statutes of the Church upon this topic were issued in print, together with a largely augmented catalogue of interdicted books. This doc.u.ment will form the basis of what I have to say with regard to the Catholic crusade against literature.

Not without reason did Aonio Paleario call this engine of the Index 'a dagger drawn from the scabbard to a.s.sa.s.sinate letters'--_sica districta in omnes scriptores_.[116] Not without reason did Sarpi describe it as 'the finest secret which has ever been discovered for applying religion to the purpose of making men idiotic.'[117]

[Footnote 116: In his _Oratio pro se ipso ad Senenses_. Printed by Gryphius at Lyons in 1552.]

[Footnote 117: _1st. del Conc. Trid_. vol. ii. p. 91. The pa.s.sage deserves to be Paul IV. designated in his transcribed. 'Sotto colore di fede e religione sono vietati con la medesima severita e dannati gli autori de'libri da'quali l'autorita del principe e magistrati temporali e difesa dalle usurpazioni ecclesiastiche; dove l'autorita de' Concilj e de'Vescovi e difesa dalle usurpazioni della Corte Romana; dove le ipocrisie o tirannidi con le quali sotto pretesto di religione il popolo e ingannato o violentato sono manifestate. In somma non fu mai trovato piu bell'arcano per adoperare la religione a far gli uomini insensati.']

Index Expurgatorius sixty-one printing firms by name, all of whose publications were without exception prohibited, adding a similar prohibition for the books edited by any printer who had published the writings of any heretic; so that in fine, as Sarpi says, 'there was not a book left to read.' Truly he might well exclaim in another pa.s.sage that the Church was doing its best to extinguish sound learning altogether.[118]

In order to gain a clear conception of the warfare carried on by Rome against free literature, it will be well to consider first the rules for the Index of Prohibited Books, sketched out by the fathers delegated by the Tridentine Council, published by Pius IV., augmented by Sixtus V., and reduced to their final form by Clement VIII. in 1595.[119]

Afterwards I shall proceed to explain the operation of the system, and to ill.u.s.trate by details the injury inflicted upon learning and enlightenment.

[Footnote 118: _Discorso Sopra l'Inq._ vol. iv. p. 54.]

[Footnote 119: These rules form the Preface to modern editions of the Index. The one I use is dated Naples, 1862. They are also printed in vol. iv. of Sarpi's works.]

The preambles to this doc.u.ment recite the circ.u.mstances under which the necessity for digesting an Index or Catalogue of Prohibited Books arose.

These were the diffusion of heretical opinions at the epoch of the Lutheran schism, and their propagation through the press. The Council of Trent decreed that a list of writings 'heretical, or suspected of heretical pravity, or injurious to manners and piety,' should be drawn up. This charge they committed to prelates chosen from all nations, who, when the catalogue had been completed, referred it for sanction and approval to the Pope. He nominated a congregation of eminent ecclesiastics, by whose care the catalogue was perfected, and rules were framed, defining the use that should be made of it in future. It issued officially, as I have already stated, in 1564, the fifth year of the pontificate of Pius IV., with warning to all universities and civil and ecclesiastical authorities that any person of what grade or condition soever, whether clerk or layman, who should read or possess one or more of the proscribed volumes, would be accounted _ipso jure_ excommunicate, and liable to prosecution by the Inquisition on a charge of heresy.[120]

Booksellers, printers, merchants, and custom-house officials received admonition that the threat of excommunication and prosecution concerned them specially.

[Footnote 120: Paulus Manutius Aldus printed this Index at Venice in 1564.]

The first rules deal with the acknowledged writings of Protestant heresiarchs. Those of Luther, Zwingli, and Calvin, whether in their original languages or translated, are condemned absolutely and without exception. Next follow regulations for securing the monopoly of the Vulgate, considered as the sole authorized version of the Holy Scriptures. Translations of portions of the Bible made by learned men in Latin may be used by scholars with permission of a bishop, provided it be understood that they are never appealed to as the inspired text.

Translations into any vernacular idiom are strictly excluded from public use and circulation, but may, under exceptional circ.u.mstances, be allowed to students who have received license from a bishop or Inquisitor at the recommendation of their parish priest or confessor.

Compilations made by heretics, in the form of dictionaries, concordances, etc., are to be prohibited until they have been purged and revised by censors of the press. The same regulation extends to polemical and controversial works touching on matters of doctrine in dispute between Catholics and Protestants. Next follow regulations concerning books containing lascivious or obscene matter, which are to be rigidly suppressed. Exception is made in favor of the cla.s.sics, on account of their style; with the proviso that they are on no account to be given to boys to read. Treatises dealing professedly with occult arts, magic, sorcery, predictions of future events, incantation of spirits, and so forth, are to be proscribed; due reservation being made in favor of scientific observations touching navigation, agriculture, and the healing art, in which prognostics may be useful to mankind.

Having thus broadly defined the literature which has to be suppressed or subjected to supervision, rules are laid down for the exercise of censure. Books, whereof the general tendency is good, but which contain pa.s.sages savoring of heresy, superst.i.tion or divination, shall be reserved for the consideration of Catholic theologians appointed by the Inquisition; and this shall hold good also of prefaces, summaries, or annotations. All writings printed in Rome must be submitted to the judgment of the Vicar of the Pope, the Master of the Sacred Palace, or a person nominated by the Pontiff. In other cities the bishop, or his delegate, and the Inquisitor of the district, shall be responsible for examining printed or ma.n.u.script works previous to publication; and without their license it shall be illegal to circulate them.

Inquisitorial visits shall from time to time be made, under the authority of the bishop and the Holy Office, in bookshops or printing houses, for the removal and destruction of prohibited works. Colporteurs of books across the frontiers, heirs and executors who have become depositaries of books, collectors of private libraries, as well as editors and booksellers, shall be liable to the same jurisdiction, bound to declare their property by catalogue, and to show license for the use, transmission, sale, or possession of the same.

With regard to the correction of books, it is provided that this duty shall fall conjointly on bishops and Inquisitors, who must appoint three men distinguished for learning and piety to examine the text and make the necessary changes in it. Upon the report of these censors, the bishops and Inquisitors shall give license of publication, provided they are satisfied that the work of emendation has been duly performed. The censor must submit not only the body of a book, to scrupulous a.n.a.lysis; but he must also investigate the notes, summaries, marginal remarks, indexes, prefaces, and dedicatory epistles, lest haply pestilent opinions lurk there in ambush. He must keep a sharp lookout for heretical propositions, and arguments savoring of heresy; insinuations against the established order of the sacraments, ceremonies, usages and ritual of the Roman Church; new turns of phrase insidiously employed by heretics, with dubious and ambiguous expressions that may mislead the unwary; plausible citations of Scripture, or pa.s.sages of holy writ extracted from heretical translations; quotations from the authorized text, which have been adduced in an unorthodox sense; epithets in honor of heretics, and anything that may redound to the praise of such persons; opinions savoring of sorcery and superst.i.tion; theories that involve the subjection of the human will to fate, fortune, and fallacious portents, or that imply paganism; aspersions upon ecclesiastics and princes; impugnments of the liberties, immunities, and jurisdiction of the Church; political doctrines in favor of antique virtues, despotic government, and the so-called Reason of State, which are in opposition to the evangelical and Christian law; satires on ecclesiastical rites, religious orders, and the state, dignity, and persons of the clergy; ribaldries or stories offensive and prejudicial to the fame and estimation of one's neighbors, together with lubricities, lascivious remarks, lewd pictures, and capital letters adorned with obscene images. All such peccant pa.s.sages are to be expunged, obliterated, removed or radically altered, before the license for publication be accorded by the ordinary.

No book shall be printed without the author's name in full, together with his nationality, upon the t.i.tle-page. If there be sufficient reason for giving an anonymous work to the world, the censor's name shall stand for that of the author. Compilations of words, sentences, excerpts, etc., shall pa.s.s under the name of the compiler. Publishers and booksellers are to take care that the printed work agrees with the MS.

copy as licensed, and to see that all rules with regard to the author's name and his authority to publish have been observed. They are, moreover, to take an oath before the Master of the Sacred Palace in Rome, or before the bishop and Inquisitor in other places, that they will scrupulously follow the regulations of the Index. The bishops and Inquisitors are held responsible for selecting as censors, men of approved piety and learning, whose good faith and integrity they shall guarantee, and who shall be such as will obey no promptings of private hatred or of favor, but will do all for the glory of G.o.d and the advantage of the faithful. The approbation of such censors, together with the license of the bishop and Inquisitor, shall be printed at the opening of every published book. Finally, if any work composed by a condemned author shall be licensed after due purgation and castration, it shall bear his name upon the t.i.tle-page, together with the note of condemnation, to the end that, though the book itself be accepted, the author be understood to be rejected. Thus, for example, the t.i.tle shall run as follows: 'The Library, by Conrad Gesner, a writer condemned for his opinions, which work was formerly published and proscribed, but is now expurgated and licensed by superior authority.'

The Holy Office was made virtually responsible for the censorship of books. But, as I have already stated, there existed a Congregation of prelates in Rome to whom the final verdict upon this matter Was reserved. If an author in some provincial town composed a volume, he was bound in the first instance to submit the MS. to the censor appointed by the bishop and Inquisitor of his district. This man took time to weigh the general matter of the work before him, to scrutinize its propositions, verify quotations, and deliberate upon its tendency. When the license of the ordinary had been obtained, it was referred to the Roman Congregation of the Index, who might withhold or grant their sanction. So complicated was the machinery, and so vast the pressure upon the officials who were held responsible for the expurgation of every book imprinted or reprinted in all the Catholic presses, that even writers of conspicuous orthodoxy had to suffer grievous delays. An archbishop writes to Cardinal Sirleto about a book which had been examined thrice, at Rome, at Venice and again at Rome, and had obtained the Pope's approval, and yet the license for reprinting it is never issued.[121] The censors were not paid; and in addition to being overworked and over-burdened with responsibility, they were rarely men of adequate learning. In a letter from Bartolommeo de Valverde, chaplain to Philip II., under date 1584, we read plain-spoken complaints against these subordinates.[122] 'Unacquainted with literature, they discharge the function of condemning books they cannot understand. Without knowledge of Greek or Hebrew, and animated by a prejudiced hostility against authors, they take the easy course of proscribing what they feel incapable of judging. In this way the works of many sainted writers and the useful commentaries made by Jews have been suppressed.' A memorial to Sirleto, presented by Cardinal Gabriele Paleotti, points out the negligence of the Index-makers and their superficial discharge of onerous duties, praying that in future men of learning and honesty should be employed, and that they should receive payment for their labors.[123] These are the expostulations addressed by faithful Catholics, engaged in literary work demanded by the Vatican, to a Cardinal who was the soul and mover of the Congregation. They do not question the salutary nature of the Index, but only call attention to the incapacity and ignorance of its unpaid officials.

[Footnote 121: Dejob, _De l'Influence_, etc. p. 60.]

[Footnote 122: Id. _op. cit._ p. 76.]

[Footnote 123: Id. _op. cit._ p. 78.]

Meanwhile, it was no easy matter to appoint responsible and learned scholars to the post. The inefficient censors proceeded with their work of destruction and suppression. A commentator on a Greek Father, or the Psalms, was corrected by an ignoramus who knew neither Greek nor Hebrew, anxious to discover petty collisions with the Vulgate, and eager to create annoyances for the author. Latino Latini, one of the students employed by the Vatican, refused his name to an edition of Cyprian which he had carefully prepared with far more than the average erudition, because it had been changed throughout by the subst.i.tution of bad readings for good, in defiance of MS. authority, with a view of preserving a literal agreement with the Vulgate.[124] Sigonius, another of the Vatican students, was instructed to prepare certain text-books by Cardinal Paleotti. These were an Ecclesiastical History, a treatise on the Hebrew Commonwealth, and an edition of Sulpicius Severus. The MSS.

were returned to him, accused of unsound doctrine, and scrawled over with such remarks as 'false,' 'absurd.'[125]

[Footnote 124: Dejob, _op. cit._ p. 74.]

[Footnote 125: Id. _op. cit._ p. 54.]

In addition to the intolerable delays of the Censure, and the arrogant inadequacy of its officials, learned men suffered from the pettiest persecution at the hands of informers. The Inquisitors themselves were often spies and persons of base origin. 'The Roman Court,' says Sarpi, 'being anxious that the office of the Inquisition should not suffer through negligence in its ministers, has confided these affairs to individuals without occupation, and whose mean estate renders them proud of their official position.'[126] It was not to be expected that such people should discharge their duties with intelligence and scrupulous equity. Pius V., himself an incorruptible Inquisitor, had to condemn one of his lieutenants for corruption or extortion of money by menaces.[127]

There was still another source of peril and annoyance to which scholars were exposed. Their comrades, engaged in similar pursuits, not unfrequently wreaked private spite by denouncing them to the Congregation.[128] Van Linden indicated heresies in Osorius, Giovius, Albertus Pighius. The Jesuit Francesco Torres accused Maes, and threatened Latini. Sigonius obtained a license for his _History of Bologna_, but could not print it, owing to the delation of secret enemies. Baronius, when he had finished his Martyrology, found that a cabal had raised insuperable obstacles in the way of its publication. I have been careful to select only examples of notoriously Catholic authors, men who were in the pay and under the special protection of the Vatican. How it fared with less favored scholars, may be left to the imagination. We are not astonished to find a man like Latini writing thus from Rome to Maes during the pontificate of Paul IV.[129]

[Footnote 126: Discorso dell'Origine, etc. dell'Inquisizione,' _Opp._ vol. iv. p. 34.]

[Footnote 127: Mutinelli, _Storia Arcana_, vol. i. p. 277.]

[Footnote 128: Dejob, _op. cit._ pp. 53-57.]

[Footnote 129: Id. _op. cit._ p. 75.]

'Have you not heard of the peril which threatens the very existence of books? What are you dreaming of, when now that almost every published book is interdicted, you still think of making new ones? Here, as I imagine, there is no one who for many years to come will dare to write except on business or to distant friends. An Index has been issued of the works which none may possess under pain of excommunication; and the number of them is so great that very few indeed are left to us, especially of those which have been published in Germany. This shipwreck, this holocaust of books will stop the production of them in your country also, if I do not err, and will teach editors to be upon their guard. As you love me and yourself, sit and look at your bookcases without opening their doors, and beware lest the very cracks let emanations come to you from those forbidden fruits of learning.' This letter was written in 1559, when Paul proscribed sixty-one presses, and prohibited the perusal of any work that issued from them. He afterwards withdrew this interdict. But the Index did not stop its work of extirpation.

Another embarra.s.sment which afflicted men of learning, was the danger of possessing books by heretics and the difficulty of procuring them.[130]

Yet they could not carry on their Biblical studies without reference to such authors as, for example, Erasmus or Reuchlin. The universities loudly demanded that books of sound erudition by heretics should at least be expurgated and republished. Yet the process of disfiguring their arguments, effacing the names of authors, expunging the praises of heretics, altering quotations and retouching them all over, involved so much labor that the demand was never satisfied. The strict search inst.i.tuted at the frontiers stopped the importation of books,[131] and carriers refused to transmit them. In their dread of the Inquisition, these folk found it safer to abstain from book traffic altogether.

Public libraries were exposed to intermittent raids, nor were private collections safe from such inspection. The not uncommon occurrence of old books in which precious and interesting pa.s.sages have been erased with printer's ink, or pasted over with slips of opaque paper, testifies to the frequency of these inquisitorial visitations.[132] Any casual acquaintance, on leaving a man's house, might denounce him as the possessor of a proscribed volume; and everybody who owned a book-case was bound to furnish the Inquisitors with a copy of his catalogue.

Book-stalls lay open to the malevolence of informers. We possess an insolent letter of Antonio Possevino to Cardinal Sirleto, telling him that he had noticed a forbidden book by Filiarchi on a binder's counter, and bidding him to do his duty by suppressing it.[133] When this Cardinal's library was exposed for sale after his death, the curious observed that it contained 1872 MSS. in Greek and Latin, 530 volumes of printed Greek books, and 3939 volumes of Latin, among which 39 were on the Index. But charity suggested that the Cardinal had retained these last for censure.