Early Censorship in Paris: A New Look at the Roles of the Parlement of Paris and of King Francis I

Abstract

^ears about the spread of ideas deemed dangerous or false remain deep ithin the consciousness of even our post-Enlightenment world.Not urprisingly then, social groups in earlier centuries habitually tried to uppress such ideas to promote order in this world and to secure salvation ri the next.Then, as now, most people differed not so much on whether to ;nsor as on what to censor.Few objected when the advent of printing from movable type prompted spate of new legislation to stop the rapid spread of errors made possible / the printed book.First popes, then princes and magistrates, drafted laws lUing either for the submission of manuscripts prior to printing or for the îstruction of offensive books already produced.Secular authorities sought rst to control political tracts, but they readily supported the clergy in uppressing books declared heterodox.By the end of the sixteenth century, atalogues of prohibited books had appeared in over a dozen major centres iroughout Europe, and the Index librorum prohibitomm established in the a of Trent in 1559 continued to censor books until its abolition during iie Second Vatican Council in 1966.^Thecontroversy over censorship ontinues recurrently at all levels of government and social groups.Franz Reusch's pioneering study in the nineteenth century of the early ensorship of printed books^was far too vast a project for the restricted cale he employed.Only recently has the subject engaged the efforts of an ditor who has mustered the scholarly and financial resources equal to the ask The "Index des Livres Interdits" series under the direction of J.-M.De îujanda at the Centre d'Études de ia Renaissance in the Université de -îcnaisance and Reformation / Renaissance ct Réforme, XXV, 2 (1989) 173

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