Page:A history of the Inquisition of the Middle Ages, volume 3.djvu/630

 614: INTELLECT AND FAITH. had fallen, that in this comprehensive measure to restrict the li- cense of the press it seems not to have been even thought of as an instrumentality, and that dependence was placed on the episcopal organization alone. The archbishops, however, were as usual too much engrossed in the temporal concerns of their princely prov- inces to pay attention to such details, and there is apparently no result to be traced from the effort. The evil continued to increase, and in 1515, at the Council of Lateran, Leo X. endeavored to check it by general regulations still more rigid in a bull which was unani- mously approved, except by Alexis, Bishop of Amalfi, who said that he concurred in it as to new books, but not as to old ones. After an allusion to the benefits conferred by the art of printing, the bull proceeded to recite that numerous complaints reached the Holy See that printers in many places printed and sold books translated from the Greek, Hebrew, Arabic, and Chaldee, as well as in Latin and the vernaculars, containing errors in faith and pernicious dogmas, and also libels on persons of dignity, whence many scandals had arisen and more were threatened. Therefore forever thereafter no one should be allowed to print any book or writing without a previous examination, to be testified by manual subscription, by the papal vicar and master of the sacred palace in Eome, and in other cities and dioceses by the Inquisition, and the bishop or an expert appointed by him. For neglect of this the punishment was excommunication, the loss of the edition, which was to be burned, a fine of a hundred ducats to the fabric of St. Peters, and suspension from business for a year. Persistent con- tumacy was further threatened with such penalty as should serve as a warning deterrent to others.* The precaution came too late. These rules were probably enforced only where there was an Inquisition iu working order. In the edition of Nifo's work, Be Ccelo et Mundo, printed at Na- ples in 1517, there is an imprimatur by Antonio Caietano, prior of the Dominican convent, reciting the conciliar decree, and stating that in the absence of the in- quisitor he had been deputed by the Vicar of Naples to examine the work, in which he found no evil. In the Venice editions of Joachim of Flora, printed in 1516 and 1517, there is not only the permission of the inquisitor and of the Patriarch of Venice, but also that of the Council of Ten, showing that the press was subjected to no little impediment. In the contemporaneous Lyons edition of Alvaro Pelayo's Be Planctu Ecclesi®
 * Concil. Lateran. V. Sess. ix. (Harduin. IX. 1779-81).