The History of Censorship

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I, Galileo, being in my seventieth year, being a
prisoner and on my knees, and before your
Eminencies, having before my eyes the Holy
Gospel, which I touch with my hands, abjure,
curse, and detest the error and the heresy of the
movement of the earth. Galileo, Italian
astronomer, mathematician and physicist
(15641642)
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The History of Censorship

• Censorship Timeline

?
2004
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The earliest examples of censorship

• 1352 BC-1336 BC Pharaoh Akhenaten Pharaoh
  Horemheb 1352

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This process of continuous alteration was
applied not only to newspapers, but to books,
periodicals, /----/, photographs to every kind
of literature or documentation which might
conceivably hold any political or ideological
significance. Day by day and almost minute by
minute the past was brought up to date. In this
way every predication made by the Party could be
shown by documentary evidence to have been
correct nor was any item of news, or any
expression of opinion, which conflicted with the
needs of the moment, ever allowed to remain on
record. All history was a palimpsest, scraped
clean and reinscribed exactly as often as was
necessary. (George Orwell 1984)
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Timeline of early communication

• 200.000 BC Thoughts
• Mime, Action, Sounds
• Speech
• Pictographs 4000BC-3500BC
• 2000-1000BC development of Phoenician script
• 1000-400BC development of Greek script
• 403BC standardisation of Ionian script (the
  basis of the Roman/Latin alphabet as we know it)

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Knowledge is Power (Francis Bacon 1561-1626)
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Censor censure to assess Censors Office
in Rome - 443BC
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Plato The Republic 360BC

• The poet shall compose nothing contrary to the
  ideas of the lawful, just, or beautiful or good,
  which are allowed in the State nor shall he be
  permitted to show his compositions to any private
  individual, until he shall have shown them to the
  appointed censors and the guardians of the law,
  and they are satisfied with them.

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• Aesop Fables the 6th Century BC
• Socrates 470-399BC
• Arius 333AD
• Method Physical distruction of individuals
  or/and their ideas

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• Wherever they burn books, they will in the end,
  burn human beings
• (Heinrich Heine, 1823)

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Heresy

• Belief contrary to the authorised teaching of
  oness natural religious community or an opinion
  opposed to the usual or conventional belief.

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Processes for Prosecuting Heresy

• 2-stage A trial re-affirmation of the
  Christian faith
• 3-stage version 1 A trial Excommunication-
  re-affirmation of the Christian faith
• 3-stage version 2 A trial Excommunication
  Atonement Burning at the Stake

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Methods of thought control 1314 Jacques
Molay, Grand Master Templars, burnt at the
stake 1431 Jean dArc, burnt at the
stake 1415 Jan Hus, theologian, burnt at the
stake 1498 Savonarola, preacher, burnt at the
stake 1528 Hubmair Austria Anabaptist, burnt
at the stake 1536 Tyndale, reformer
translator of New Testament, burnt at the
stake 1543 First Protestants burnt at the stake
by Spanish Inquisition. 1612 last recorded
burning of heretics in England 1633 Galileo,
scientist, forced by Inquisition to recant
Copernicus theories.
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500 years of censorship

• 1467 Decree of Pope Innocent VII sanctioned
  examining and licencing of all books by the
  Church authorities
• 1479 Pope Sixtus IV granted the fullest powers of
  censorship to the University of Cologne
• 1486 The Archbishop of Mainz put the
  responsibility for censorship on the Professors
  of Mainz University
• 1501 the first censorship organisation included
  Cologne, Mainz, Trier and Magdeburg provinces
• 1515 Censorship Decrees of the Lateral Council
  for the entire Church

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1520 Pope Leo X forbade all writings of Martin
Luther 1542 Reorganisation of the General
Inquisition and establishing of the Universal
Roman Inquisition the Congregation of the Holy
Office with its Inquisitional Tribunal 1545
first catalogue of prohibited books and
authors 1555 confiscation of all Talmudic books
from Jews 1559 Index Librorum Prohibitorum 1564
Index Tridentius the Congregation for the
Indexes of Prohibited Books 1948 the last issue
of the Index 1965 decree of Pope Paul VI that
abolished the Indexes.
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• Fear is the origin of all censorship, fear of
  losing undisputed authority and control
• (Anonymous)
• Beneath the rule of men entirely great, the pen
  is mightier than the sword
• (Edward Bulwer-Lytton, novelist 1803-1897)

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Methods of Censorship

• Pre-printing age (before the 1440s)
• - erasure of all past reference to an individual
• - book burning
• - verbal counter-argument
• - excommunication
• - execution of the individual

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Methods of Censorship

• Post Printing age (from the 1440s onwards)
• - Two main types of censorship prescribed in The
  Church decrees pre-publication censorship and
  publishing licenses and condemnation of already
  published books (post publication censorship)
• Church designated censors
• Printed lists of banned publications the
  Indexes.

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2000 BC
1600s
2000-1000 BC Phoenician Script 1000-400 BC
Development of Greek Scripts 443 BC Roman Office
of Censor created 403 BC Standardisation of
Ionian script (the basis of the alphabet as we
know it). 399 BC Socrates death 360 BC Platos
rationale for censorship 1231 AD Inquisition
begun 1440s Inventing of Printing 1540s
Reformation began 1559 Index Librorum
Prohibitorum and the other printed lists of
prohibited books 1600s Emergence of State
censorship