Thus, with the freedom of conscience, was born the freedom of the press. But it had to pass
through a severe ordeal, even in Protestant countries, and was constantly checked by Roman
authorities as far as their power extended. The German Empire, by the Edict of Worms, made itself
an ally of the pope against free thought and free press, and continued so until it died of old age in
1806.^748 Fortunately, the weakness of the empire and the want of centralization prevented the
execution of the prohibition of Protestant books, except in strictly papal countries, as Bavaria and
Austria. But unfortunately, the Protestants themselves, who used the utmost freedom of the press
against the Papists, denied it to each other; the Lutherans to the Reformed, and both to the
Anabaptists, Schwenkfeldians and Socinians.^749 Protestant princes liked to control the press to
protect themselves against popery, or the charges of robbery of church property and other attacks.
The Elector John Frederick was as narrow and intolerant as Duke George on the opposite side. But
these petty restrictions are nothing compared with the radical and systematic crusade of the Papists
against the freedom of the press. King Ferdinand of Austria ordered, July 24, 1528, all printers and
sellers of sectarian books to be drowned, and their books to be burnt. The wholesale burning of
Protestant books, including Protestant Bibles, was a favorite and very effective measure of the
Jesuitical reaction which set in before the middle of the sixteenth century, and was promoted by
the political arm, and the internecine wars of the Protestants. Pope Paul IV. published in 1557 and
1559 the first official Index Librorum prohibitorum; Pius IV. in 1564, an enlarged edition, generally
known as Index Tridentinus, as it was made by order of the Council of Trent. It contains a list of
all the books forbidden by Rome, good, bad, and indifferent. This list has been growing ever since
in size (1590, 1596, 1607, 1664, 1758, 1819, etc.), but declining in authority, till it became, like
the bull against the comet, an anachronism and a brutum fulmen.^750
§ 93. Protestantism in Saxony.
H. G. Hasse: Meissnisch-Albertinisch-Sächsische Kirchengesch. Leipz. 1847, 2 parts. Fr. Seifert:
Die Reformation in Leipzig, Leipz. 1881. G. Lechler: Die Vorgeschichte der Reform. Leipzigs,
- See also the literary references in Köstlin, II. 426 and 672.
Electoral Saxony was the first conquest of the Reformation. Wittenberg was the centre of the
whole movement, with Luther as the general in chief, Melanchthon, Jonas, Bugenhagen, as his
aids. The gradual growth of Lutheranism in this land of its birth is identical with the early history
of the Reformation, and has been traced already.
In close connection with the Electorate is the Duchy of Saxony, and may here be considered,
although it followed the movement much later. The Duchy included the important cities of Dresden
(^748) Kapp, l.c., p. 536 sqq., shows that the Edict of Worms, drawn up by the papal legate Aleander, is the beginning of the German
book-censorship, and not, as usually supposed, the recess of the Nürnberg Diet of 1524. "Wie Rom," he says (539), "die Wiege der
Büchercensur für die ganze Welt, so ist Worms ihre Geburtsstätte für Deutschland." The restriction of the press, however, was begun in
Germany, as we have seen, already in 1486, by Elector Berthold of Mainz.
(^749) "Derselbe Luther," says Kapp, p. 552, "welcher das Papstthum für noch lange nicht genug zerscholten, zerschrieben, zersungen,
zerdichtet Und zermalet hielt, rief schon 1525 die Censur für seinen nunmehrigen Standpunkt zur Hilfe." He refers to his attempt to secure
a prohibition of Carlstadt’s writings in Saxony.
(^750) Fr. Heinrich Reusch (old catholic Prof. at Bonn): Der Index der verbotenen Bücher, Bonn, 1883-85, 2 vols. Of older works we
mention, Fr. Zaccaria, Storia polemica delle proibizioni de’ libri, Rom., 1777; and Jos. Mendham, The Literary Policy of the Church of
Rome exhibited in an account of her damnatory Catalogues or indexes, both prohibitory and expurgatory, London, 1826, 3d ed. 1844.