Part 1 (2/2)

But if Calvin must bear the burden of the death of Servetus, Christianity itself is responsible for the death of William Tyndale, who, deeming it desirable that his countrymen should possess in their own language the book on which their religion was founded, took the infinite trouble of translating the Scriptures into English. His New Testament was forthwith burnt in London, and himself after some years strangled and burnt at Antwerp (1536).

The same literary persecution continued in the next century, the seventeenth. Bissendorf perished at the hands of the executioner at the same time that his books, _Nodi gordii resolutio_ (on the priestly calling), 1624, and _The Jesuits_, were burnt by the same agent. In the case of the _De Republica Ecclesiastica_ (1617) by De Dominis, Christian savagery surpa.s.sed itself, for not only was it burnt by sentence of the Inquisition, but also the dead body of its author was exhumed for the purpose. Dominis had been a Jesuit for twenty years, then a bishop, and finally Archbishop of Spalatro. This office he gave up, and retired to England, where he might write with greater freedom than in Italy.

There he wrote this work and a history of the Council of Trent.

His chief offence was his advocacy of the unchristian principles of toleration; he wished to reunite and reconcile the Christian communions. But alas for human frailty! he retracted his errors, many of them most sensible opinions, in London, and again at Rome, whither he returned. Pope Urban VIII., however, imprisoned him in the Castle of St. Angelo, where he is said to have died of poison, so that only his dead body was available to burn with his book the same year (1625). Literary lives were tragic in those times.

Simon Morin was burnt with all the copies of his _Pensees_ that could be found, on the Place de Greve, at Paris, March 14th, 1663. Morin called himself the Son of Man, and such thoughts of his as survived the fire do not lead us in his case to grudge the flames their literary fuel. But it is curious to think that we are only two centuries from the time when the Parlement of Paris could pa.s.s such a sentence on such a sufferer.

The Parlement of Dijon condemned to be burnt by the executioner Morisot's _Ahitophili Veritatis Lacrymae_ (July 4th, 1625), but though this work was a violent satire upon the Jesuits, Morisot survived his book thirty-six years, the Jesuits revenging themselves with nothing worse than an epitaph, containing a bad pun, to the effect that their enemy, after a life not spent in wisdom, preferred to die as a fool (_Voluit mori-sot_).

In the same century Molinos, the Spanish priest, and founder of Quietism, wrote his _Conduite Spirituelle_, which was condemned to the flames for sixty-eight heretical propositions, whilst its author was consigned to the prisons of the Inquisition, where he died after eleven years of it (1696). Self-absorption of the soul in G.o.d to the point of complete indifference to anything done to or by the body, even to the sufferings of the latter in h.e.l.l, was the doctrine of Quietism that led ecclesiastic authority to feel its usual alarm for consequences; and it must be admitted that similar doctrines have at times played sad havoc with Christian morality. But perhaps they helped Molinos the better to bear his imprisonment.

I may next refer to seventeenth-century writers who were fortunate enough not to share the burning of their books. (1) Wolkelius, a friend of Socinus, the edition of whose book _De Vera Religione_, published at Amsterdam in 1645, was there burnt by order of the magistrates for its Socinian doctrines, appears to have lived for many years afterwards. Schlicttingius, a Polish follower of the same faith, escaped with expulsion from Poland, when the Diet condemned his book, _Confessio Fidei Christianae_, to be burnt by the executioner. Sainte Foi, or Gerberon, whose _Miroir de la Verite Chretienne_ was condemned by several bishops and archbishops, and burnt by order of the Parlement of Aix (1678), lived to write other works, of probably as little interest. La Peyrere was only imprisoned at Brussels for his book on the _Pre-adamites_, which was burnt at Paris (1655). And Pascal saw his famous _Lettres a un Provincial_, which made too free with the dignity of all authorities, secular and religious, twice burnt, once in French (1657), and once in Latin (1660), without himself incurring a similar penalty. So did Derodon, professor of philosophy at Nismes, outlive the _Disputatio_ (1645), in which he made light of Cyril of Alexandria, and which was condemned and burnt by the Parlement of Toulouse for its opposition to some beliefs of Roman Catholicism.

Pa.s.sing now to the eighteenth century, we find book-burning, then declining in England, in full vigour on the Continent.

The most important book that so suffered was Rousseau's admirable treatise on education, ent.i.tled _emile_ (1762), condemned by the Parlement of Paris to be torn and burnt at the foot of its great staircase. It was also burnt at Geneva. Three years later the same writer's _Lettres de la Montagne_ were sentenced by the same tribunal to the same fate. Not all burnt books should be read, but Rousseau's _emile_ is one that should be.

So should the Marquis de Langle's _Voyage en Espagne_, condemned to the flames in 1788, but translated into English, German, and Italian. De Langle antic.i.p.ated this fate for his book if it ever pa.s.sed the Pyrenees: ”So much the better,” said he; ”the reader loves the books they burn, so does the publisher, and the author; it is his blue ribbon.” But, considering that he wrote against the Inquisition, and similar inhumanities or follies of Catholicism, De Langle must have been surprised at the burning of his book in Paris itself.

A book at whose burning we may feel less surprise is the _Theologie Portative ou Dictionnaire abregede la Religion Chretienne_, by the Abbe Bernier (1775), for a long time attributed to Voltaire, but really the work of an apostate monk, Dulaurent, who took refuge in Holland to write this and similar works.

The number of books of a similar strong anti-Catholic tendency that were burnt in these years before the outbreak of the Revolution should be noticed as helping to explain that event.

Their t.i.tles in most cases may suffice to indicate their nature.

De la Mettrie's _L'homme Machine_ (1748) was written and burnt in Holland, its author being a doctor, of whom Voltaire said that he was a madman who only wrote when he was drunk. Of a similar kind was the _Testament_ of Jean Meslier, published posthumously in the _Evangile de la Raison_, and condemned to the flames about 1765. On June 11th, 1763, the Parlement of Paris ordered to be burnt an anonymous poem, called _La Religion a l'a.s.semblee du Clerge de France_, in which the writer depicted in dark colours the morals of the French bishops of the time (1762). On January 29th, 1768, was treated in the same way the _Histoire Impartiale des Jesuites_ of Linguet, whose _Annales Politiques_ in 1779 conducted him to the Bastille, and who ultimately died at the hands of the Revolutionary Tribunal (1794). But the 18th of August, 1770, is memorable for having seen all the seven following books sentenced to burning by the Parlement of Paris:--

1. Woolston's _Discours sur les Miracles de Jesus-Christ_, translated from the English (1727).

2. Boulanger's _Christianisme devoile_.

3. Freret's _Examen Critique des Apologistes de la Religion Chretienne_, 1767.

4. The _Examen Impartial des Princ.i.p.ales Religions du Monde_.

5. Baron d'Holbach's _Contagion Sacree_, or _l'Histoire Naturelle de la Superst.i.tion_, 1768.

6. Holbach's _Systeme de la Nature ou des Lois du Monde Physique et du Monde Moral_.

7. Voltaire's _Dieu et les Hommes; oeuvre theologique, mais raisonnable_ (1769).

No one writer, indeed, of the eighteenth century contributed so many books to the flames as Voltaire. Besides the above work, the following of his works incurred the same fate:--(1) the _Lettres Philosophiques_ (1733), (2) the _Cantique des Cantiques_ (1759), (3) the _Dictionnaire Philosophique_ (1764), also burnt at Geneva; (4) _L'Homme aux Quarante ecus_ (1767), (5) _Le Diner du Comte de Boulainvilliers_ (1767). When we add to these burnings the fact that at least fourteen works of Voltaire were condemned, many others suppressed or forbidden, their author himself twice imprisoned in the Bastille, and often persecuted or obliged to fly from France, we must admit that seldom or never had any writer so eventful a literary career.

II. Turning now to the books that were burnt for their real or supposed immoral tendency, I may refer briefly in chronological order to the following as the princ.i.p.al offenders, though of course there is not always a clear distinction between what was punished as immoral and punished as irreligious. This applies to the four volumes of the works of the Carmelite Mantua.n.u.s, published at Antwerp in 1576, of which nearly all the copies were burnt. This facile poet, who is said to have composed 59,000 verses, was especially severe against women and against the ecclesiastical profession. In 1664, the _Journal de Louis Gorin de Saint Amour_, a satirical work, was condemned, chiefly apparently because it contained the five propositions of Jansenius. In 1623, the Parlement of Paris condemned Theophile to be burnt with his book, _Le Parna.s.se des Poetes Satyriques_, but the author escaped with his burning in effigy, and with imprisonment in a dungeon. I am tempted to quote Theophile's impromptu reply to a man who a.s.serted that all poets were fools:--

”Oui, je l'avoue avec vous Que tous les poetes sont fous; Mais sachant ce que vous etes Tous les fous ne sont pas poetes.”

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