Journey from St. Petersburg to Moscow by Irina Reyfman (top 10 novels of all time .txt) 📕

A Short Account of the Origins of Censorship84

If we say and confirm with evident proofs that censorship and the Inquisition have one and the same root; that the founders of the Inquisition invented censorship, that is, the mandatory examination of books before they see the light of day, then, while this will be saying nothing new, it does allow us to extract from the obscurity of past times, adding to the many others, clear proof that priests were always the inventors of the chains whereby human reason has at various times been weighed down; and that priests always clipped the wings of reason to hinder its flight toward majesty and freedom.

As we traverse epochs and centuries that have passed, we everywhere encounter features of power that torment; everywhere see force rising up against truth, sometimes superstition taking arms against superstition. The Athenian people, incited by hierophants, outlawed the writings of Protagoras,85 ordered that all copies be confiscated and burned. Was it not the same people that in its madness consigned to death, to its indelible shame, the very personification of truth, Socrates? In Rome we find more examples of such ferocity. Titus Livy recounts that the writings found in the grave of Numa were burned by order of the Senate. At different epochs it happened that books of augury were ordered surrendered to the Praetor. Suetonius recounts that Caesar Augustus ordered that close to two thousand such books be burned. Yet one more example of the incongruity of human reason! Can it be that in prohibiting superstitious writings these rulers thought that superstition would be destroyed? Each person individually found himself banned from having recourse to divination, which was used not infrequently to assuage a pang of grief; permission remained only for the state predictions of auguries and haruspices. But if in time of enlightenment they had got it into their heads to prohibit or burn books teaching divination or propagating superstition, would it not be amusing if truth itself took up the scepter of persecution against superstition? And that truth sought, for the vanquishing of error, the support of power and the sword, even though the sight of truth alone is the harshest scourge of error?

But Caesar Augustus visited his persecutions not on divination alone: he ordered the books of Titus Labienus to be burned. “His persecutors,” says the rhetorician Seneca, “devised for him a new type of punishment. It is unheard of, most unusual, to derive an execution from learning. But to the state’s good fortune this rational ferocity was discovered after Cicero. What might have happened if the Triumvirate had decided that it was good to condemn the mind of Cicero?” But the tyrant soon took revenge on the person who demanded the burning of Labienus’s works.86 During his own lifetime he saw his own works condemned to the pyre.*87 “It was not some evil example that was followed but his own,” says Seneca.†88 May heaven permit that villainy always rebound on its inventor and that anyone mounting persecution of thought would always see his own thoughts mocked and condemned to vilification and destruction. If there is an act of revenge that can ever be excused, then perhaps this is it.

During periods of plebeian rule in Rome, persecution of such a kind was only visited on superstition, but during the Empire it extended to all firm convictions. In his History, Cremutius Cordus89 named Cassius for having dared to mock the tyranny Augustus exercised against the works of Labienus, the last Roman. The Roman Senate, groveling before Tiberius, to please him ordered Cremutius’s book burned. But many copies survived. “All the more reason,” says Tacitus, “one can mock the care of those who dream that in their omnipotence they are able to annihilate the memory of the next generation. Although power might well unleash furious punishment upon reason, its ferocity has caused shame and disgrace for itself, but glory for them.”

Jewish books did not escape burning during the reign of Antiochus Epiphanes, the Syrian king.90 Similar fates were meted out to Christian writings. The Emperor Diocletian ordered books of Holy Scripture to be placed in the fire.91 But the Christian dogma, having achieved a victory over persecution, subdued its very torturers and now remains as true testimony that the harassment of ideas and opinions not only lacks the force to destroy them but rather implants and propagates them. Arnobius92 rightly protests against such persecution and martyrdom. “Some declare,” he says, “that it is useful for the state that the Senate ordered the writings serving as proof of the Christian confession, which refute the significance of ancient religion, to be destroyed. But to prohibit writing and to wish to destroy what is promulgated is not to defend the gods, rather it is to fear the testimonials of truth.” Nevertheless, after the spread of the Christian confession, its priests displayed just as much hostility to writings that opposed them or were of no benefit to them. Not long before had they criticized this severity among the pagans, not long before had they considered it a sign of mistrust regarding what they defended; yet they themselves were soon armed with omnipotence. The Greek emperors, more occupied by ecclesiastical debates than matters of state, and for that reason ruled by priests, mounted persecution against all those whose understanding of the deeds and teachings of Jesus differed from their own. Such persecution also extended to the product of mind and reason. Already the tormentor Constantine, called the Great, following the decision of the Council of Nicaea relegating Arius’s teaching to anathema, banned his books, condemned them to be burned, and anyone who possessed these books was sentenced to be executed.93 Emperor Theodosius II ordered the condemned books of Nestorios to be collected and consigned to the fire.94 At the Council of Chalcedon, the very same resolution was adopted for the writings of Eutychus.95 In the Pandects of Justinian are preserved a