Censorship in the Renaissance

Abstract

During the Middle Ages and Renaissance, Western attitudes to censorship were determined principally by Christianity, the hegemonic religious and political discourse in Europe. While the religions of the Hellenistic and Roman world, within which Christianity was born and developed, were concerned for the proper performance of religious ritual, the earliest documents of Christianity – like those of Judaism, from which it sprang – were even more deeply motivated by a concern to identify, articulate, and maintain correct beliefs (“orthodoxy”). Accordingly, Christian censorship represents an attempt to control both inward beliefs and their outward expression. The word “censorship” can refer to customs or laws that prohibit the expression of certain opinions, to the legal processes through which conformity to such norms is achieved (whether before or after publication), or to the punishments imposed on those who refuse to conform. It is essentially an imposition of authority for the purpose of creating agreement or silencing dissent.

This entry first explores medieval mechanisms of censorship and then describes the new institutions and practices of censorship developed in response to the invention of printing and the Protestant Reformation. Finally, it briefly describes some important medieval and Renaissance thinkers and writers whose work was subject to ecclesiastical or state censorship.