unless it were approved and licensed under the hands of two or three gluttonous friars. For example: Let the chanceller Cini be pleased to see if in this present work be contained aught that may withstand the printing. Vincent Rabbata, vicar of Florence. I have seen this present work, and find nothing athwart the catholic faith and good manners; in witness whereof I have given, &c. Nicolo Cini, chancellor of Florence. Attending the precedent relation, it is allowed that this present work of Davanzati may be printed, It may be printed, July 15. Vincent Rabbata, &c. Friar Simon Mompei d'Amelia, chancellor of the 13. Sure they have a conceit, if he of the bottomless pit had not long since broke prison, that this quadruple exorcism would bar him down. I fear their next design will be to get into their custody the licensing of that which they say Claudius intended, (2) but went not through with. Vouchsafe to see another of their forms, the Roman stamp; Imprimatur, If it seem good to the reverend master of the Imprimatur, Friar Nicholo Rodolphi, master of the holy palace. 14. Sometimes five imprimaturs are seen together dialogue wise in the piazza of one titlepage, (25) Quo veniam daret flatum crepitumque ventris in convivio emittendi. Sueton. in Claudio.-MILTON. complimenting and ducking each to other with their shaven reverences, whether the author, who stands by in perplexity at the foot of his epistle, shall to the press or to the spunge. These are the pretty responsories, these are the dear antiphonies, that so bewitched of late our prelates and their chaplains, with the goodly echo they made; and besotted us to the gay imitation of a lordly imprimatur, one from Lambeth-house, another from the west end of Paul's; so apishly romanizing, that the word of command still was set down in Latin; as if the learned grammatical pen that wrote it would cast no ink without Latin; or perhaps, as they thought, because no vulgar tongue was worthy to express the pure conceit of an imprimatur; but rather, as I hope, for that our English, the language of men ever famous and foremost in the achievements of liberty, will not easily find servile letters enow to spell such a dictatory presumption Englished. 15. And thus ye have the inventors and the original of book licensing ripped up and drawn as lineally as any pedigree. We have it not, that can be heard of, from any ancient state, or polity, or church, nor by any statute left us by our ancestors elder or later; nor from the modern custom of any reformed city or church abroad; but from the most antichristian council, and the most tyrannous inquisition that ever inquired. Till then books were ever as freely admitted into the world as any other birth; the issue of the brain was no more stifled than the issue of the womb: no envious Juno sat cross-legged over the nativity of any man's intellectual offspring; but if it proved a monster, who denies but that it was justly burnt, or sunk into the sea? But that a book, in worse condition than a peccant soul, should be to stand before a jury ere it be born to the world, and undergo yet in darkness the judgment of Radamanth and his colleagues, ere it can pass the ferry backward into light, was never heard before, till that mysterious iniquity, provoked and troubled at the first entrance of reformation, sought out new limboes and new hells wherein they might include our books also within the number of their damned. And this was the rare morsel so officiously snatched up, and so illfavouredly imitated by our inquisiturient bishops, and the attendant minorites their chaplains. That ye like not now these most certain authors of this licensing order, and that all sinister intention was far distant from your thoughts, when ye were importuned the passing it, all men who know the integrity of your actions, and how ye honour truth, will clear ye readily. 16. But some will say, what though the inventors were bad, the thing for all that may be good. It may so; yet if that thing be no such deep invention, but obvious and easy for any man to light on, and yet best and wisest commonwealths through all ages and occasions have forborne to use it, and falsest seducers and oppressors of men were the first who took it up, and to no other purpose but to obstruct and hinder the first approach of reformation; I am of those who believe, it will be a harder alchymy than Lullius (26) ever knew, to sublimate any good use out of such an invention. Yet this only is what I request to gain from this reason, that it may be held a dangerous and suspicious fruit, as certainly it deserves, for the tree that bore it, until I can dissect one by one the properties it has. But I have first to finish, as was propounded, what is to be thought in general of reading books, whatever sort they be, and whether be more the benefit or the harm that thence proceeds. 17. Not to insist upon the examples of Moses, Daniel, and Paul, who were skilful in all the learning of the Egyptians, Chaldeans, and Greeks, which could not probably be without reading their books of all sorts, in Paul especially, who thought it no defilement to insert into holy Scripture the sentences of three Greek poets, (27) and one of them a tragedian; the question was notwithstanding some (26) Raymond Lully was born at Palma, capital of the island of Majorca, about the year 1235. His system, known under the name of Ars Lulliana, was very celebrated in the fourteenth, fifteenth, and sixteenth centuries. Some authors, as Bouelles, say he died at Tunis, in 1314: others contend that having been wounded on the coast of Africa, whither he had gone to convert the Mohammedans, he sailed for Majorca, and died in sight of land, in 1315, aged eighty years. Vernon relates that he visited England for the purpose of inciting king Edward to make war against the Turks; but this is altogether erroneous. His works are exceedingly numerous. (27) The three Greek poets quoted by St. Paul, are, 1. the Cretan Epimenides, Epist. to Titus, i. 12; 2. Aratus, Acts, xvii. 28; and 3. Euripides, or, according to others, Menander, 1 Corinth. xv. 33. times controverted among the primitive doctors, but with great odds on that side which affirmed it both lawful and profitable, as was then evidently perceived, when Julian the Apostate, and subtlest enemy to our faith, made a decree forbidding Christians the study of heathen learning; (2) for, said he, they wound us with our own weapons, and (28) "The edict itself," observes Gibbon, "which is still extant among the epistles of Julian, (xlii.) may be compared with the loose invectives of Gregory, (Orat. iii. p. 96.) Tillemont (Mem. Eccles. t. vii. p. 1291) has collected the seeming differences of ancients and moderns. They may be easily reconciled. The Christians were directly forbid to teach, they were indirectly forbid to learn; since they would not frequent the schools of the Pagans." Of the Apostate's prohibiting the Christians from teaching, he gives the following account: "A just and severe censure has been inflicted on the law which prohibited the Christians from teaching the arts of grammar and rhetoric. The motives alleged by the emperor to justify this partial and oppressive measure, might command, during his lifetime, the silence of slaves, and the applause of flatterers. Julian abuses the ambiguous meaning of a word which might be indifferently applied to the language and the religion of the Greeks: he contemptuously observes, that the men who exalt the merit of implicit faith are unfit to claim or to enjoy the advantages of science; and he vainly contends, that if they refuse to adore the gods of Homer and Demosthenes, they ought to content themselves with expounding Luke and Matthew in the churches of the Galilæans. In all the cities of the Roman world, the education of the youth was entrusted to masters of grammar and rhetoric; who were elected by the magistrates, maintained at the public expense, and distinguished by many lucrative and honourable privileges. The edict of Julian appears to have included the physicians, and professors of all the liberal arts; and the emperor, who reserved to himself the approbation of the candidates, was authorised by the laws to corrupt, or to punish, the religious constancy of the most learned of the Christians."—(Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, iv. 111, 112, and note.) |