Lisa Jardine

Worldly Goods

Just as the attempts to deter maverick printers from plagiarizing other printers' publications proved of limited force, given the temptation to make a quick financial killing with a pirate edition, so censorship legislation ran up against powerful financial pressures which militated against co-operation, this time on the part of the booksellers and financial backers. By the beginning of the sixteenth century there existed a thriving and powerful network of financial interests for whom the guaranteed profits of the book trade were of greater importance than directives from officials of the Church concerning the reputability of the material they were selling.

In Florence, Duke Cosimo de' Medici was at first apparently happy to co-operate with the Pope's Holy Office (its censoring centre) in Tuscany, even though by implication it gave the Catholic Church powers which interfered with his own. In 1549 Cosimo himself issued a decree against Lutheran works and ordered anyone owning heretical writings to hand them over to the Church authorities within fifteen days, on pain of a 100 ducat fine and ten years' imprisonment.

In 1559, however, Pope Paul IV issued the first list of forbidden books for the entire Catholic Church. It was received in Florence by one of Duke Cosimo's secretaries, who drafted an opinion on it for the Duke. If Cosimo were to comply with the Church’s directive, the cost in books lost from private libraries alone would amount to more than 100,000 ducats. He pointed out that what was at issue was not heretical books as such, but a large number of other categories which the Index included: books authored by 'heretics', but not themselves on the subject of religion; books condemned merely because they were published in France or Germany; Bibles; books which did not give offence but which were issued by publishing houses which had at another time issued heretical works. In his view there would be no objection to implementing the full Index if the Inquisition were prepared to pay for the value of the books, but failing that, he advised procrastination.

After months of unsatisfactory negotiation Cosimo authorized a token public book-burning—calling in a small number of books limited to 'religion or sacred things, or magic, spells, geomancy, chiromancy, astrology and other similar matters'. The Inquisition's delegate in Florence agreed that books needed by lawyers, physicians and philosophers should be exempted (with special emphasis on the importance of Jewish medical books for intellectual and medical progress), particularly since these professions had become largely dependent on books imported from Lyon and Basle, rather than printed locally. By this token gesture Cosimo expressed the hope that he could satisfy the Church while sparing 'the poor booksellers'.

Throughout these discussions it is clear that the Medici had a strong political position, which involved protecting if at all possible the financial interests of the book trade, even where this conflicted with the wishes of the Catholic Church. To comply with the full list would have ruined the Florentine book trade, in which the Medici family had a considerable financial stake. Over the next ten years the Florentine authorities contrived to be sufficiently dilatory in their efforts to control the print-houses to ensure that prohibited books continued openly to be distributed, and Medici profits, as represented in the sums tied up in existing stocks of such books, were not damaged.

In 1570 Torelli, the ducal secretary, informed the Duke that he had had a meeting with the Florentine booksellers and did not find them to be selling forbidden books. He explained that the booksellers considered the officers of the Inquisition over-zealous and the request that booksellers compile their own lists of prohibited volumes 'impertinent'. Why could not the officers go round the book warehouses and compile their own lists? The further suggestion that the books of deceased persons should not be allowed to be sold until they had been inspected by the Inquisition was, Torelli advised, unfair, since such a restriction did not apply to any other category of second-hand sale, and would hinder the free workings of the book trade. All in all, Torelli's view was clearly that the Medici had too great a stake in the Florentine book trade to countenance any kind of outside interference in its operation.