Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 19.djvu/738

Rh 714 P R E P R E mined by the penal code. Press offences are to be tried by jury. Censorship is abolished, and is never to be re-established. No previous authorization is necessary for the publication of newspapers. No sureties are to be demanded from journalists, writers, editors, or printers. The press is not to be subjected to regulation of ad vertisements. No newspaper or publication is to be suspended or suppressed. Every author is responsible for his writings ; in default of the author, the manager or editor is responsible. Every news paper must have a responsible manager in the possession of civil and political rights. Russia. The position of the Russian press generally is regulated by a law of 6th April 1865. The effect of that law is to exempt from preventive censorship (if published in St Petersburg or Moscow) all newspapers, periodicals, and original works and trans lations not exceeding a certain number of pages, and (wherever published) all Government publications, matter printed by aca demies, universities, and scientific bodies, and maps, plans, and charts. Everything printed and published that does not fall within any of these categories must, before issue to the public, be submitted for the approval of Government censors stationed in different parts of the empire. The minister of the interior lias power to dispense with the preventive censorship in the case of provincial newspapers and periodicals. In St Petersburg and Moscow the periodical press is subject to corrective censorship for infringement of the numerous restrictive regulations contained in the code, and supplemented at times by secret instructions from the minister of the interior to editors and publishers. It should be observed that, apart from the code, the sustained display of a spirit hostile to the Govern ment renders the publisher of a periodical liable to punishment. The penalties established by the law of 1865 for offences against the press regulations consist in the infliction of a series of warnings published in the Official Gazette. A first warning merely enjoins more care for the future ; a second is followed by suspension for a certain period, sometimes by a prohibition to insert advertisements ; a third by suppression, and perhaps prosecution of the offending conductor. By imperial ukase of 2d June 1872 the jurisdiction of the judicial tribunals over press offences was practically transferred to the minister of the interior, except in the case of violation of private rights, as by libel. The law of 1865 was modified in 1874 by a regulation to the effect that all publications appearing at longer intervals than one week should be submitted to the central board of censors. This is applied to all periodicals that had been formerly published without preventive censorship. By a ukase issued in 1881 a committee of four members is entrusted with the decision of all matters relating to the press submitted to it by the minister of the interior. The strictest supervision is exercised over the foreign press, periodical and otherwise. None but a few privi leged individuals, such as members of the royal family, foreign diplomatists, and editors of newspapers in the capital, may receive foreign publications free of censorship. The censorship consists in blackening out, and sometimes in the excision, of whole columns and sheets of publications that may be deemed pernicious. Only such periodicals as are placed on a list approved by the board of censors are allowed to be received through the post -office by non- privileged persons. Telegraphic messages to newspapers are subject to strict censorship. The Russian telegraphic press agency is entirely under official management. _ Spain. There was probably no country where restrictions on the liberty of the press were at one time more stringent than in Spain. From the first use of printing up to 1521 censorship was exercised by the crown ; after that date the Inquisition began to assume the right, and continued to do so up to its suppression in 1808. In 1558 Philip II. denounced the penalty of death against even the possessor of a book upon the Index. Expurgatorius of the Inquisition. Some of the greatest names in Spanish literature were sufferers : Castillejo, Mendoza, Mariana, and Quevedo incurred the displeasure of the Inquisition ; Luis Ponce de Leon was imprisoned for his translation of the Song of Solomon. The last Index appeared in 1790. 1 In 1812 the constitution promulgated by the regency in the name of Ferdinand VII. provided by art. 371 that all Spaniards should have liberty to write, print, and publish their political ideas without any necessity for licence, examination, or approbation pre vious to publication, subject to the restrictions imposed by law. Art. 13 of the constitution of 30th June 1876, promulgated on the accession of Alphonso XII., practically re-enacts this provision. Sweden. - The press law of 16th July 1812 is one of the funda mental laws of Sweden. It is an expansion of art. 86 of the con stitution of 6th June 1809. Liberty of the press is declared to be the privilege of every Swede, subject to prosecution for libellous writing. Privileges of individuals as to publication are abolished. 1 he title and place of publication of every newspaper or periodical must be registered, and every publication must bear the name of the printer and the place of printing. Press offences are tried by a jury of nine, chosen, respectively by the prosecutor, the prisoner and the court. The verdict of two-thirds of the jury is final. 1 SeeTicknor, Hist, of Span. Lit., vol. i. p. 422 ,s/., vol. iii. p. 363. Switzerland. Liberty of the press is secured by art. 45 of the constitution of 1848, re-enacted by art. 55 of the constitution of 29th May 1874. Each canton has its own laws for the repression of abuse of the liberty, subject to the approbation of the federal council. The confederation can impose penalties on libels directed against itself or its officers. (J. W+.) PRESTER JOHN. The history of Prester John is that of a phantom, taking many forms. It no doubt originally was based on some nucleus of fact, or connected itself with some such nucleus, though what that nucleus was has been much controverted and is extremely difficult to deter mine. But the name and the figure which it suggested occupied so prominent a place in the mind of Europe for two or three centuries that a real history could hardly have a stronger claim to exposition here than this history of a will-o -the-wisp. Before Prester John, eo nomine, appears upon the scene we find the Avay prepared for his appearance by the pre sentation of a kindred fable, and one which certainly en twined itself with the legends about Prester John after his figure had lodged itself in the popular imagination of Europe. This is the story of the appearance at Rome (1122), in the pontificate of Calixtus II., of a certain Oriental ecclesiastic, whom one account styles &quot;John, the patriarch of the Indians,&quot; and another &quot;an archbishop of India.&quot; This ecclesiastic related the most wonderful stories of the shrine of St Thomas in India, and of the posthumous and still recurring miracles which were wrought there periodically by the body of the apostle, including the distribution of the sacramental wafer by his hand, and many other marvellous things. We cannot regard the appearance at Rome of the personage who related these marvels in presence of the pope as a mere popular fiction : it rests on two authorities apparently independent (one of them a letter from Odo of Rheims, abbot of St Remy from 1118 to 1151), for their discrepancies show that one was not copied from the other, though in the principal facts they agree. N early a quarter of a century later Prester John appears upon the scene, in the outline, at least, of the character which long adhered to him, viz., that of a Christian con queror and potentate of enormous power and splendour, who combined the characters of priest and king, and ruled over vast dominions in the far East. This idea was uni versal in Europe from about the middle of the 12th century to the end of the 13th or beginning of the 14th. The Asiatic story then gradually died away, but the name remained as firmly rooted as ever, and the royal presbyter was now assigned a locus in Ethiopia. Indeed, as we shall see, it is not an improbable hypothesis that from a very early date in the history of this phantom its title was assigned to the Abyssinian king, though for a time this identification was overshadowed by the prevalence of the Asiatic legend. At the bottom of the double allocation there was, no doubt, that association or confusion of Ethiopia with India which is as old as Virgil, and perhaps much older. The first mention of Prester John occurs in the chronicle of Otho or Otto, bishop of Freisingen. This writer states that when at the papal court in 1145 he met with the bishop of Gabala (Jibal in Syria), who related how &quot;not many years before one John, king and priest (rex et sacer- dos), who dwelt in the extreme Orient beyond Persia and Armenia, and was, with his people, a Christian but a Nes- torian, had made war against the brother kings of the Persians and Medes, who were called Samiards (or Sanjards), and captured Egbatana their capital. The battle with those princes endured three days, but at last Presbyter John for so he was wont to be styled routed the Per sians with immense slaughter. After this victory the aforesaid John was advancing to fight in aid of the church