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Illuminations and Epiphanies
Banned Books
A Chronological Collection of
Banned Books
The 1600s
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The History of the World. Sir
Walter Raleigh, a favorite of Queen Elizabeth found himself in disfavor
for his political and religious views once James I became King.
He was sentenced to death on trumped-up treason charges in 1603 and
imprisoned indefinitely in the Tower of London awaiting his fate.
While imprisoned, he began work on his epic History of the World, which was as
much a political attack on the divine right of kings as an historical
work. According to one biographer, Raleigh “took
every opportunity he could in his book to pour scorn on famous
sodomites, and James took the point.” James, of course,
immediately banned the first volume of the work upon its publication,
noting that it was "too saucy in censuring princes." Raleigh was
beheaded in 1616 before he could complete his project's final two
volumes.
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De
Revolutionibus and The Dialogue
Concerning the Two Chief World Systems. In 1610, Galileo
Galilei published a small book, Starry
Messenger, based on his telescopic observation of the
heavens. In it he described a number of observations that, while
not directly conflicting with the Aristotolean view of the universe
accepted by the Church, clearly caused Aristotelian supporter
considerable discomfort. Later he championed Nicolai Copernicus's
De Revolutionibus,
a heliocentric explanation the universe, to Catholic authorities in
hopes that the Church would adopt the theory. It did not, and De Reolutionibus, while not
technically banned, was identified as a book that required substantial
revision before it could be republished. Additionally, Galileo,
was formally ordered not to publicly advance or support a
sun-centered system of astronomy. Galileo avoided controversy for
a number of years but when a friend of his, Cardinal Barberini, became
Pope Urban VIII in 1623, he again began to advocate the Church's
acceptance of a heliocentric universe. He published his famous
work, The Dialogue Concerning the
Two Chief World Systems in 1632. Although he intended no
sarcasm, papal authorities believed the character, Simplicio, was
intended to ridicule Urban. Worse, Urban believed that
himself. Galileo was summoned to Rome to defend himself and
following his trial, in which he was threatened with being burned at
the stake, was placed under house arrest and once more forbidden to
ever publicly support a heliocentric position again.
Additionally, without fanfare, his Dialogue
was prohibited from any reprinting, and any of his future writings were
banned from publication and distribution.
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In 1633,
William Prynne, a Puritan, published a heavy-handed criticism of the
London theater, the Histrio-Mastix
the Players Scourge, or Actors Tragaedie. Unfortunately
for Prynne, the book was released almost simultaneously with the
production of a play for the royal court. For some time, Prynne's
writings and tracks, which were critical of what he viewed as the lax
moral standards
of the court, the Church of England, and society in general, had
irritated the Archbishop of Canterbury, William Laud. Laud,
seizing the opportunity to end Prynne's writing once and for all,
brought the Histrio-Matrix to
the attention of Charles I and his wife, Queen Henrietta-Maria,
describing its contents, especially his description of actresses as
"notorious whores," as an attack upon the queen, who had occasionally
performed on stage. Prynne was arrested and tried for treason
before the Star Chamber. He was, of course, found guilty and
sentenced to be fined £5,000, pilloried,
branded, have both ears cut off, and then be imprisoned for life.
After pronouncing Prynne's sentence, Lord Cottington additionally
decreed:
I do in the
first place begin Censure with this Book. I condemn it to be burnt, in
the most publick manner that can be. The manner in other Countries is,
to be burnt by the Hang-man, though not used in England, (yet I wish it
may, in respect of the strangeness and hainousness of the matter
contained in it) to have a strange manner of burning; therefore I shall
desire it may be so burnt by the Hand of the Hang-man.
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Areopagitica: A speech of Mr John Milton
for the liberty of unlicensed printing to the Parliament of England.
With the Licensing Act of 1643, Parliament wrested control of the book
banning process from the throne. The Licensing Act required
authors to have their works pre-approved by the Stationers’ Company, a
firm that Parliament contracted with to serve as its censor in return
for a monopoly on the English printing trade. Although the subtitle of
this "speech" implies that it was given by Milton to Parliament, he did
not do so. In fact, Milton had always intended to distribute his
polemic throughout England in pamphlet form. Written at the
height of the First English Civil war, Areopagitca is an indictment
against the practice of requiring authors to obtain official approval
of their books before they could be published. Almost needless to
say, Milton did not request prior permission to publish his pamphlets
from the Stationer's Company. And, also almost needless to say,
the Aeropagitica was banned.
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The Meritorious Price of Our Redemption,
Justification, Etc. by William Pinchin has the distinction of
being the first book to be banned in what is now the United
States. Pynchon published his book in 1650 as an argument to
refute the doctrine of atonement--the process for pardoning sin--as
established by the Westminster Assembly of Divines. The
General Court of Massachusetts found the argument so offensive that it
condemned all copies to be burned noting "having had the sight of a
booke lately printed under the name of William Pinchon in New England,
Gent., doe judge meete, first, that a protest be drawen, fully and
cleerely, to satisfy all men that this Courte is so farr from
approoving the same as they doe utterly dislike it and detest it as
erronjous and daingerous; secondly, that it be sufficjently answered by
one of the reverend elders; thirdly, that the sajd William Pinchon,
gent., be summoned to appeare before the next Generall Courte to answer
for the same; fowerthly, that the sajd booke now brought over be burnt
by the executioner, or such other as the magistrates shall appointe,
(the party being willing to doe it,) in the markett place in Boston, on
the morrow immedjately after the lecture."
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Letters Provencial. In 1656,
Blaise Pascal published a series of 18 witty and polished letters that
attacked a form of ethical logic, known as casuistry, that was
practiced by the Jesuits. Casuistic reason is based on
case-by-case determinations as to what is ethical and what is
not. Pascal, in his Lettres
Provencial, argued that such reasoning was false and
amoral. Although the letters' mockery and biting satire of
mainstream Catholicism made them exceptionally popular, the book
outraged not only the Catholic establishment but King Louis XIV of
France as well, who ordered all copies to be shredded and burned.
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Leviathan. In 1683,
following the Rye House Plot to kill King Charles II
and his brother James (which may have been a hoax perpetuated by
Charles
so that he could legally eliminate his opposition in Parliament),
Oxford University, on behalf of the court, issued The
Judgment and Decree of the University of Oxford Past in their
Convocation July 21, 1683 Against certain Pernicious Books and Damnable
Doctrines Destructive to the Sacred Persons of Princes, their State and
Government, and of all Humane Society. Among the titles
listed in this decree to be collected and burned was Leviathan, or the Matter, Form and Power
of a Commonwealth, Ecclesiastical and Civil by Thomas Hobbes.
Although Hobbes ideas of the state as an authoritative Leviathan with
absolute power and with whom all individual members of a nation grant
some of their natural rights of freedom in exchange for a guaranty of
internal peace and external defense, should have found considerable
favor with the Royalists, its secular nature offended both
Anglicans and Catholics alike.
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To the 1500s To the 1700s
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