Page:The Roman index of forbidden books.djvu/17

Rh when, in the fifteenth century, was invented printing, which popes and bishops hailed as a "divine art" and eulogised as the greatest blessing of God's providence in the natural order. It spread rapidly. Before the year 1500, the city of Rome alone had one hundred and ninety printing establishments. The oldest of them, in the first seven years of its existence, produced not less than twenty-eight works in forty-seven editions, the total number of pages being one hundred and twenty-four millions.

As to the moral quality of the books printed at that period, a German, Wimpheling, writes with pardonable pride in 1507: "We Germans practically control the whole intellectual market of civilized Europe; the books, however, which we bring to this market are for the most part high-class works, tending to the honor of God, the salvation of souls, and the civilisation of the people." How soon, alas, was this to change! Even while these words were written, the evil was already striking root, and steps had been taken by the civil as well as by the ecclesiastical power, to