The censorship of the Church of Rome and its influence upon the production and distribution of literature, volume 2 (of 2)Putnam, George Haven
History
The censorship of the Church of Rome and its influence upon the production and distribution of literature, volume 2 (of 2)
Putnam, George Haven
Freedom of the press; Liberty of conscience; Prohibited books
The English titles of the first half of the 18th century include
the _Tale of a Tub_ by Swift, _Pamela_ by Richardson, and _Robinson
Crusoe_ by Defoe. The latter came to the attention of the indexers
through a French edition printed in 1750 and prohibited in 1756. The
French names of the same period include the _Contes et Nouvelles_
of La Fontaine; the _Vie de Jacqueline, Comtesse de Hainaut_, of
Mlle. de La Roche-Guilhem, printed in 1702 and prohibited in 1727;
_Lettres Historiques et Galantes de deux Dames de Condition_, by Mme.
Dunoyer, printed in 1704 in seven volumes, prohibited in 1725 and
again by Benedict in 1758; _Les Emportements Amoureux de la Religieuse
Étrangère_, printed anonymously in 1707, prohibited in Rome 1727, and
in Spain in 1790. Molière escapes condemnation in Rome as well as in
Spain. The _Don Quixote_, of Cervantes was marked by Sotomayor for
correction but only in the case of a single sentence. The Lisbon Index
of 1624 finds occasion for the cancellation in the same work of a
number of paragraphs.
=11. Secret Societies.=--Clement XII and Benedict XIV condemned,
in Bulls issued in April, 1738, and March, 1751, the associations
of _Libri Muratori_, or freemasons. The members of these societies
were rendered liable to the excommunication _latae sententiae_, and
bishops and inquisitors were instructed to take measures against them
as heretics. In September, 1821, Pius VII issued a similar Bull
against the _Carbonari_. A Bull issued in March, 1825, by Leo XII
repeats the text of the three Bulls above specified and confirms their
instructions. In the Bull of Pius VII, is prohibited the possession
or the reading of all catechisms of the _Carbonari_, of the minutes
of their meetings, of their statutes and statements of purposes, and
of all works written in their defence, whether these be in print
or in manuscript. Through some oversight, this important general
prohibition did not find its way into the Index. It is also the case
that but very few titles of works on freemasonry are included in the
Index lists after Clement XII. The Church seems to have relied, for
the suppression of this literature, on its general prohibitions. In
May, 1829, Pius VIII issued an encyclical condemning the teachings of
the freemasons and of kindred secret societies. Pius IX takes similar
ground in an encyclical of November, 1846, and in the allocution of
September, 1865. In April, 1884, Leo XIII devotes an encyclical to the
injurious teachings of the sect “_masonum_.” With this encyclical, is
connected an instruction of the Inquisition under which the faithful
are forbidden to have any dealings with such societies. In January,
1870, the Inquisition declared, in response (apparently) to some formal
application for instructions, that the Irish and American Fenians had
placed themselves under the general condemnation.[48]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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