Introduction María José Vega Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona Julian Weiss King’s College London La experiencia enseña y los sabios lo escriben, que los hombres se hacen tales cuales son los libros que leen. (Juan Bernal Díaz de Luco, Aviso de curas, 1543)1 The printing press ushered in the birth of the public sphere in the modern state, through the dramatic multiplication and public circulation of texts and ideas. These were the conditions in which emerged a pressing need to create institutional and ideological mechanisms that would help shape public opinion and beliefs. Of course, censorship as such has its roots in Antiquity, but it is only systematically organized on a large scale following the first papal attempts in 1487 to control the circulation of books.2 Although initially they had only local application, by 1515 mechanisms were put in place to control the univer- sal Church. The Lutheran Reform, and the offensive against Lutheran writings, required a more coherent response, and it was this that inspired the first sys- tematic indices, which continued well into the xxth century. Book censorship can be understood as one of the first and most direct mechanisms for the con- trol of the public sphere: a way of moulding the thoughts of individual readers by intervening in the texts they read; a way of regulating, simultaneously, texts and social conduct. Book censorship, therefore, is more than a means of eradi- 1. «Experience teaches and wise men write written, albeit in summary and fragmentary that men become exactly like the books they fashion, in the xvith century inspired by the read». need to provide ideological support for the 2. On censorship in Antiquity, see Cramer control of book production. Early examples (1945) and Gil (1961; 2nd ed. 1984); for can be found in the De libris comburendis by the censorship of Latin literature in the High the theologian Conrado Bruno, and more gen- Middle Ages, see Godman (2000); on the erally in the various treatises adversus haereses. compilation of the firstIndices , and the insti- The first attempt at a panoramic overview, tutionalization of their procedures, see Febvre again written from an apologetic standpoint, & Martin (1958), Brambilla (2000), Frajese is the Storia polemica della proibizione dei libri (2006). Histories of censorship started to be (1777) by Francesco Antonio Zaccaria. Reading and Censorship in Early Modern Europe, 9-24 10 María José Vega, Julian Weiss cating dissent, whether by assimilating or suppressing oppositional and alter- native views. As it strives to exercise this form of control, it also participates in the broader process of defining and propagating a complex matrix of cultural, religious and political practices. This collection of essays, based on the papers of an exploratory workshop funded by the European Science Foundation and held in Barcelona 2007, examines the multifaceted fashion in which early modernity approached the problems and possibilities of book censorship. The contributors consider the moral, religious, political and literary dimensions of censorship, approaching it not only as an institutional practice, but also as a discourse which plays a constitutive role in setting the conceptual and practical limits of freedom of conscience and expression in a variety of domains. In both respects, the institutional and the discursive, this volume builds upon recent (and not so recent) research into early modern censorship. Its focus is Catholic Europe —Spain, Portugal, Italy, and France— but at several points it draws on, and we hope feeds back into, scholarship on a much broader geographical range.3 Since the 1980s studies into censorship in early modern England, for example, emphasize how censorship entails more than the outright repression of ideas by an outside authority; it can become internalized within a particular discourse, which is to say that it is not experienced as conscious self-censorship, but natu- ralized as the right limits or the decorum of a discursive practice.4 This approach gives full weight to the idea that censorship straddles the private and the public spheres. But our understanding of its public or institu- tional dimension has been much enriched by recent archival research. In the ten years that followed the opening of the archives of the Holy Office in 1998, we have learned a great deal more about the history of censorship and the books that were included in the Indices. This archival material has given us a much sharper picture of the vast array of ideas and texts (from narrative fiction to history, from devotional literature to lyric poetry) that were expurgated or subject to prohibition. We now have at our disposal much more information about the delays, inefficiency, conflicts and difficulties that beset, at various times and places, the plan to develop effective censorship; moreover, we should never confuse ideological aspiration with practical reality.5 Even so, the poli- 3. The bibliography on literature and censor- (1993), Clare (1999), Halasz (2003) and more ship in Counter-reformation Europe is substan- recently Raz-Krakotzkin (2007). For further dis- tial; selected examples include Révah (1960), cussion of these trends, see the essay by Weiss in Russell (1978), Régo (1982), Domergue (1996), the present volume. Alcalá (2001), Prosperi (2003), Rozzo (2005). 5. Fragnito (2001a), Frajese (1998, 2002), Mc- We shall return to some of these, and refer to Kitterick (2003). For a pioneering reinterpreta- others, in the course of the following discussion. tion of the supposed effects of censorship on 4. Representative examples of these studies in- profane literature in post-Tridentine Spain, see clude the monographs of Patterson (1984), Burt Russell (1978). Reading and Censorship in Early Modern Europe Introduction 11 cies of the Papacy and ecclesiastical and civil authorities dramatically altered the European cultural landscape. Their continued and systematic attempts to prohibit, expurgate and generally control the circulation of books conditioned the cultural habits and intellectual framework of Europe from the second half of the sixteenth century onwards. As we have mentioned, historical research into the censorship and ex- purgation of books took a new turn in 1998, when the Archives of the Congregazione dell’Indice were opened up to academic scholars. This move regenerated interest into the institutional structures of censorship and the Church’s intervention in the dissemination of both manuscript and printed books. In addition, it encouraged scholars to rethink the ways people wrote during periods of intolerance and persecution, and to look again at the practices of dissimulation, self-censorship and ambiguity. The principal his- torical monographs on censorship —from the nineteenth-century classics by Reusch (1885) and Hilgers (1904), to those of Luigi Firpo (1950), Ro- tondò (1963), López (1972) and Grendler (1981)— were obviously written without full access to this vast storehouse of documentary evidence. The proceedings of the Friuli conference on censorship, compiled by Ugo Rozzo (La censura libraria nell’Europa del secolo sedicesimo, 1997), illustrate the state of scholarship on the subject on the eve of the opening of the Rome archives, and the volume contains a thorough review of previous work. In the same year, Gigliola Fragnito published her fundamental monograph, La Bibbia al Rogo, which examines the censorship of vernacular Scriptures and the cultural impact of Bible burning in the Catholic world (especially Italy, Spain, France, and Portugal). In addition, in 1996 the Geneva publishing house Droz completed the monumental ten-volume edition of the Index des livres interdits (1984-1996), under the direction of Jesús Martínez de Bujanda: the documentation provided by these detailed lists, together with their critical apparatus, has been of enormous help to literary and cultural historians alike. Since 1998, the discovery of new documents relating to the planning and execution of these indices has continued to enrich our understanding of the history of forbidden books, and work on them demonstrates beyond doubt that scholarship on early modern censorship has entered a new era. The main changes are seen in those studies that concern the broad impact and implications of censorship, particularly its dynamic involvement in the construction of the modern polis, in its political, cultural, and social dimen- sions. New documentary evidence allows for a clearer understanding of the organizational aspects of Church administration in Catholic countries, the precise hierarchies within the Inquisition and the conflicts between the Holy Office and the Congregation of the Index. New light has also been shed on the procedures governing the granting of licences to, or the prohibition and expurgation of, scientific, philosophical and legal works, as well as the Reading and Censorship in Early Modern Europe 12 María José Vega, Julian Weiss treatment of a whole spectrum of texts —particularly vernacular fiction and Judaic writings— that were felt to threaten true faith and piety.6 In short, the most significant recent trends in scholarship enable a more supple conception of censorship, and dwell not simply on its negative and re- pressive aspects (based on a simple dichotomy between repression and freedom), but on its constitutive role in the construction of civic life. Even a heterodox like Jean Bodin, writing in his influential Six livres de la république (1576), could defend censorship on the grounds