Jesuit Mariana's book De Rege (1599) as anti-monarchical, seeing that it appeared with the privilege of the King of Spain. He maintained the right of killing a king for the cause of religion, and called Jacques Clement's act of assassination France's everlasting glory (Galliæ æternum decus). But it is only fair to add that the superior of the Order disapproved of the work as much as the Sorbonne.
In the seventeenth century, I notice first the Ecclesiasticus of Scioppius, a work directed against our James I. and Casaubon (1611). The libel having been burnt in London, and its author hanged and beaten in effigy before the king on the stage, was burnt in Paris by order of the Parlement, chiefly for its calumnies on Henri IV. The author, originally a Jesuit, has been called the Attila of writers, having been said to have known the abusive terms of all tongues, and to have had them on the tip of his own. He wrote 104 works, apparently of the violent sort, so that Casaubon called him, according to the style of learned men in those days, "the most cruel of all wild beasts," whilst the Jesuits called him "the public pest of letters and society."
The Senate of Venice caused to be burnt the Della Liberta Veneta, by a man who called himself Squitinio (1612), because it denied the independence of the Republic, and asserted that the Emperor had rightful claims over it; and about the same time (1617) the Parlement of Paris consigned to the same penalty D'Aubigné's Histoire Universelle for the freedom of its satire on Charles IX., Henri III., Henri IV., and other French royal personages of the time. The second edition of D'Aubigné (1626) is the poorer for being shorn of these caustic passages.
The Jesuit Keller's Admonitio ad Ludovicum XIII. (1625), and the same author's Mysteria Politica, (1625), were both sentenced to be burnt; also the Jesuit Sanctarel's Tractatus de Hæresi (1625), which claimed for the Pope the right to dispose, not only of the thrones, but also of the lives of princes. This doctrine was approved by the General of the Jesuits, but, under threat of being accounted guilty of treason, expressly disclaimed by the Jesuits as a body. In resisting such pretensions, the Sorbonne deserved well of France and of humanity. In 1665, the Châtelet ordered to be burnt Claude Joly's Recueil des Maximes véritables et importantes pour l'Institution du Roi, contre la fausse et pernicieuse politique de Cardinal prétendu surintendant de l'éducation de Louis XIV. (1652); a book which, if it had been regarded instead of being burnt, might have altered the character of that pernicious devastator, and therefore of history itself, very much for the better. About the same time, Milton's Pro Populo Anglicano Defensio, not to be burnt in England till the Restoration, had a foretaste in Paris of its ultimate fate. Eustache le Noble's satire against the Dutch, Dialogue d'Esope et de Mercure, and burnt by the executioner at Amsterdam, may complete the list of political works that paid for their offences by fire in the seventeenth century.
The first to notice in the next century is Giannone's Historia Civile de Regno di Napoli (1723), in five volumes, burnt by the Inquisition, which, but for his escape, would have suppressed the author as well as his book, for his free criticism of Popes and ecclesiastics. His escape saved the eighteenth century from the reproach of burning a writer. Next deserves a passing allusion the Historia Nostri Temporis, by the once famous writer Emmius, whose posthumous book suffered at the hands of George Albert, Prince of East Frisia. The Parlement of Toulouse condemned Reboulet's Histoire des Filles de la Congrégation de l'Enfance (1734) for accusing Madame de Moudonville, the founder of that convent, of publishing libels against the king. That of Paris and Besançon condemned Boncerf's Des Inconvéniens des Droits Féodaux (1770).
The number, indeed, of political works burnt during the eighth decade of the last century is as remarkable as the number of religious books so treated about the same period: one of the lesser indications of the coming Revolution. During this decade were condemned: (1) Pidanzet's Correspondance secrète familière de Chancelier Maupeon avec Sorhouet (1771) for being blasphemous and seditious, and calculated to rouse people against government; a work that made sport of Maupeon and his Parlement. (2) Beaumarchais' Mémoires (1774), of the literary style of which Voltaire himself is said to have been jealous, but which was condemned to the flames for its imputations on the powers that were. (3) Lanjuinais' Monarque Accompli (1774), whose other title explains why it was condemned, as tending to sedition and revolt, Prodiges de bonté, de savoir, et de sagesse, qui font l'éloge de Sa Majesté Impériale Joseph II., et qui rendent cet auguste monarque si précieux à l'humanité, discutés au tribunal de la raison et l'équité. Lanjuinais, principal of a Catholic college in Switzerland, passed over to the Reformed Religion. (4) Martin de Marivaux's L'Ami des Lois (1775), a pamphlet, in which the author protested against the words put into the mouth of the king by Chancellor Maupeon, Sept. 7th, 1770: "We hold our Crown of God alone; the right of law-making, without dependence or partition, belongs to us alone." The author contended that the Crown was held only of the nation, and he excited the vengeance of the Crown by sending a copy of his work to each member of the Parlement. At the same time, to the same penalty and for the same offence, was condemned to the flames Le Catéchisme du Citoyen, ou Elémens du Droit public Français, par demandes et par réponses; the episode, and the origin of the dispute, clearly pointing to the rapidly approaching Revolutionary whirlwind, the spirit of which these literary productions anticipated and expressed.
The last book I find to notice is the Abbé Raynal's Histoire philosophique et politique des Etablissemens et du Commerce des Européens dans les Deux Indes, published in 1771 at Geneva, and, after a first attempt at suppression in 1779, finally burnt by the order of the Parlement of Paris of May 25th, 1781, as impious, blasphemous, seditious, and the rest. Like many another eminent writer, Raynal had started as a Jesuit.
From the above illustrations of the practice abroad, we may turn to a more detailed account of its history in England. Although in France it was much more common than in England during the eighteenth century, it appears to have come to an end in both countries about the same time. I am not aware of any proofs that it survived the French Revolution, and it is probable that that event, directly or indirectly, put an end to it. In England it seems gradually to have dwindled, and to have become extinct before the end of the century. If the same was the case in other countries, it would afford another instance of the fundamental community of development which seems to govern at least our part of the civilised world, regardless of national differences or boundaries. The different countries of the world seem to throw off evil habits, or to acquire new habits, with a degree of simultaneity which is all the more remarkable for being the result of no sort of agreement. At one time, for instance, they throw off Jesuitism, at another the practice of torture, at another the judicial ordeal, at another burnings for heresy, at another trials for witchcraft, at another book-burning; and now the turn seems approaching of war, or the trade of professional murder. The custom here to be dealt with, therefore, holds its place in the history of humanity, and is as deserving of study as any other custom whose rise and decline constitute a phase in the world's development.
CHAPTER I.
Sixteenth Century Book-Fires
FIRE, which is the destruction of so many things, and destined, according to old Indian belief, one day to destroy the world, is so peculiarly the enemy of books, that the worm itself is not more fatal to them. Whole libraries have fallen a prey to the flames, and oftener, alas! by design than accident; the warrior always, whether Alexander at Persepolis, Antiochus at Jerusalem, Cæsar and Omar at Alexandria, or General Ulrich at Strasburg (in 1870), esteeming it among the first duties of his barbarous calling to consign ideas and arts to destruction.
But these are the fires of indiscriminate rage, due to the natural antagonism between civilisation and military barbarism; it is fire, discriminately applied, that attaches a special interest and value to books condemned to it. Whether the sentence has come from Pope or Archbishop, Parliament or King, the book so sentenced has a claim on our curiosity, and as often on our respect as our disdain. Fire, indeed, has been spoken of as the blue ribbon of literature, and many a modern author may fairly regret that such a distinction is no longer attainable in these days of enlightened advertisement.
To
