Printing and Censorship

Definition: Making multiple copies of a document by impression against a tool (for example, type or a plate) covered with ink

Significance: Printing, rather than copying by hand, made books much easier to produce, and radically altered the relationship between the publisher and the censor

Printing in Europe had a rather positive beginning for those with concerns about censorship. By the time Johann Gutenberg of Mainz, Germany had developed his printing process using movable type in 1450, there had been numerous instances of censorship, especially on the part of the church at the time. With the advent of printing in Europe, however, church authorities labeled the press as a gift of God, seeing it as a device to further the work of the church.

Printing as a Threat

The printing press was soon seen as a threat for the spread of heretical doctrines, and even the scriptures presented a problem, for, if they were made readily available through printing, people everywhere would be reading the Bible and interpreting it in their own way.

Within a few years following 1450, town councils and church authorities were carefully reviewing printed books, censoring those considered dangerous politically or in a religious sense. Bible translations in the vernacular were considered especially dangerous, but there was little concern for printed books that were obscene or sexually explicit. By the beginning of the sixteenth century, censorship was considered a duty for anyone in the leadership of the Christian church, and that sense of duty intensified with the Protestant Reformation.

The introduction of printing with movable type into Europe was a strong factor in the success of the Reformation, and the Roman Catholic church attempted to stem the tide through the issuance of various lists of banned books. An official list of prohibited books was issued by the Catholic church in 1559, under the authority of Pope Paul IV, and this was replaced by Pius V with the Index Librorum Prohibitorum in 1564. The premise for such lists was that reading certain works could undermine the faith or morals of Catholics.

Even though there was little consistency for listing books in the index, it remained as a guideline to reading for Catholics into modern times, finally coming to an official end in 1966. Officially, the Catholic church banned books as part of its mission of saving souls. There were others who exercised book banning for quite different reasons. Henry VIII of England issued a list of banned books in 1529. Although this was not an extensive list, it did limit the availability of materials about England, especially those issuing from foreign presses.

Other censorship attempts by European governments usually combined political, religious, and economic motives. Some governments, such as the council in Venice, were striving to control or eliminate competition for officially sanctioned printers. The licensing of some printers, such as John of Speyer and Aldus Manutius, while denying licenses to others, had the effect of controlling what was available to the reading public.

There were European governments that made printing enterprises difficult by trying to control or edit all published materials. The result of overzealous control was the movement of promising printers to other countries or the demise of successful book industry enterprises. An example of the latter is the decline and eventual demise of the highly successful Frankfurt book fair after the event was placed under the jurisdiction of the narrow-minded imperial censorship commission in 1579. The fair survived until 1750, but never with any degree of its former prominence, because censorship had driven the book industry to other markets.

Among the early printers who moved to escape official censors were Johann Froben of Germany and Robert Estienne of France. Froben established himself as a printer in Basel, Switzerland in 1516. There he could print the works of Desiderius Erasmus and other scholarly writers without interference. Estienne experienced great difficulty through repeated censorship attempts, even though his printing enterprise was under the protection of Francis I, King of France. Even his title of Printer to the King did not protect him adequately from attacks instigated by the University of Paris. Estienne was a Humanist who supported the ideals of the Reformation. Relying on early Bible translations, he corrected obvious errors in the New Testament, and this practice drew criticism and sometimes resulted in Estienne seeking refuge in the king’s court. In 1550 he moved his press to Geneva to be freed from harassment by theological censors.

Heretical and other objectionable writings were the focus of concern in England when Queen Elizabeth I exercised censorship through granting the Stationers’ Company a monopoly of printing in 1559, and censorship intensified with the establishment of the Star Chamber in 1585. The licensing of the Stationers’ Company was modified and the Star Chamber was abolished through actions of the Long Parliament in 1641, creating for a short time freedom of the press. In 1642 Parliament began to prosecute printers and writers judged to be abusing their freedom. Licensing was again put into practice, and new moves toward censorship inspired John Milton to write Areopagitica (1644), a pamphlet objecting to censorship and promoting freedom of the press.

The Threat Spreads to America

With only a few modifications, James Franklin was using the same printing press design in Boston in 1717 as Gutenberg had used in 1450. As long as he and other early American printers devoted their presses to ballads, poems, songs, Bibles, and school books, there was usually little to fear from censors. When American printers employed their presses in the criticism of colonial authorities and the British crown, those in authority attempted to retaliate through censorship. In spite of the limited advancement in printing technology over more than two centuries, the press provided the means for widespread expression of opinion and fact.

John Peter Zenger, a New York printer and publisher of the New York Weekly Journal was tried in 1735 for libelling Governor William Cosby. He was acquitted on the grounds that the published statements were true. The printing press allowed Isaiah Thomas to launch bitter, sarcastic, and sometimes fierce criticism against British authority in the colonies. He published the newspaper, The Massachusetts Spy, in Boston, but in 1775 had to move his printing enterprise to Worcester because of pressure from the British.

In the nineteenth century advances in printing technology made it increasingly difficult for censors to exercise control of the press. Friedrich Koenig, a German, is credited with the steam-powered cylinder press in 1811. The rotary press was developed by an American, Richard Hoe, in 1846. Ottmar Mergenthaler, a German in the United States, introduced the linotype in 1884, and in 1905 Ira Rubel invented offset printing. With so many presses in operation and the speed with which printing could be done, it became more difficult for the censor to work with any efficiency. The advent of the computer and on-line access has made it virtually impossible fully to control expression, except in isolated cases or by the most extreme measures.

The proliferation of books and other materials through the printing press has, from 1450 to the present, caused concern for the censor. The concerns for the early censor settled on ecclesiastical matters and rapidly spread to a variety of religious, political, and moral issues. Those several areas remain at issue, but printing has made the censor’s job more difficult.

Bibliography

Henri-Jean Martin, The History and Power of Writing (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994), translated by Lydia G. Cochrane, describes written communication in its various forms and the effects it has had upon civilization. Douglas C. McMurtrie, The Book: The Story of Printing and Bookmaking (London: Oxford University Press, 1943), is an overview of early book production and detailed accounts of printers of Europe and early America. George Putnam’s Books and Their Makers During the Middle Ages (New York: Hillary House, 1962) describes production and distribution of literature from the fall of the Roman Empire to the close of the seventeenth century. S. H. Steinberg’s Five Hundred Years of Printing (Baltimore, Md.: Penguin Books, 1961) recounts the stories of printers, privileges, and censorship to the twentieth century. Isaiah Thomas’ The History of Printing in America (New York: Weathervane Books, 1970), edited by Marcus A. McCorison, details the work of printers in North America from the Massachusetts Bay Colony to the years following the American Revolution.