A look at some of the books that have been banned in the past.

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In the last episode I spoke about the reasons why people want to ban certain books. It turns out that people want to ban books because it offends them. The reality is, in all cases of book bans, the people who want to ban certain books want to do so for one of two reasons. Either they are afraid of the ideas being expressed or they have a lust for power and control. One such example of that is:

The Chinese emperor Shih Huang Ti is often considered to be one of, if not the, most innovative rulers of all time. He is reported to have introduced wooden houses, carts, and boats. He is also credited with the introduction of the bow and arrow as weapons of war. There are those who say he invented script and introduced the concept of coins. He is said to have buried alive 460 Confucian scholars to control the writing of history in his time. In 212 B.C., he burned all the books in his kingdom, retaining only a single copy of each for the Royal Library and even those were destroyed just before his death. His ego, something that is pretty common with almost everyone I’ll mention in today’s show, let him believe that if all previous historical records were destroyed, then history could be said to begin with him.

Born approximately in 43 BC, Publius Ovidius Naso now known to us as Roman poet Ovid is often considered one of the finest poets to have ever lived. He is regarded as one of the “big 3” in Roman poetry, along with Virgil and Horace. He is probably best known for his romantic poetry and his work managed to get him exiled by  emperor Augustus to Tomis, the capital of what was the newly-organized province of Moesia, on the Black Sea, where he died while in exile. One of his first works the Amores (The Loves), had an immediate success and was followed, in rapid succession, by the Epistolae Heroidum, or Heroides (Epistles of the Heroines), the Medicamina faciei (“Cosmetics”; Eng. trans. The Art of Beauty), the Ars amatoria (The Art of Love), and the Remedia amoris (Remedies for Love), all reflecting the brilliant, sophisticated, pleasure-seeking society in which he moved.  Even after almost 1500 years his poetry proved to be controversial by some. All Ovid’s works were burned by Girolamo Savonarola in Florence in 1497.

Savonarola, was a Florentine religious fanatic with a large following, he was one of the most notorious and powerful of all censors. He is best known for instigating the great “bonfires of the vanities” which destroyed books and paintings by some of the greatest artists of Florence. Due to his popularity, many popular songs were denounced, and some were turned into hymns with new pious lyrics. In a master moment of irony, in May of 1498 Savonarola who hung from a cross and burned to death. Simultaneously all of his writings, sermons, essays, and pamphlets were destroyed. As for Ovid, his work still proved controversial, and an English translation of Ars Amatoria was banned by U.S. Customs in 1928.

Morality and religion often comes into play when people decide to ban  or burn books.

In 640 AD, the caliph Omar burned all 200,000 volumes in the library at Alexandria in Egypt. Why? In doing so, he said: “If these writings of the Greeks agree with the Book of God (the Koran) they are useless and need not be preserved; if they disagree, they are pernicious and ought to be destroyed.” The citizens did receive one benefit from his decision. When he had the books burned, it provided six months’ fuel to warm the city’s baths.

Western religious leaders are often some of the most intense opponents of books and publications they disagree with. Between 1524–26 several thousands of copies of William Tyndale’s English translation of the New Testament were printed in Germany and smuggled into England. Once discovered the bishop at London’s Roman Catholic church ordered that they were to be publicly burned. In those days, church authorities in England insisted that the Bible should and would be available only in Latin. This ensured that only they would be able to read and interpret it, they feared that if the ordinary person was able to read the scripture, they might lose control. In 1536, as a result of a plot masterminded by the English, Tyndale was arrested in Belgium, tried for heresy, and strangled and burned at the stake near Brussels. A few of his translations were burned with him. Today, only three original copies of Tyndale’s New Testament survive.

The Roman Catholic Church had always put out a list of what books they considered safe for their followers. This tradition dated back almost to the earliest days after Constantine made the church an official government body. About 70 years after Tyndale in 1559 Pope Paul IV established the Index Librorum Prohibitorum. For more than 400 years this was the definitive list of books that Roman Catholics were told not to read. It was one of the most powerful censorship tools in the world.

Remember in the last episode I spoke about after the Civil War,  around 1870, a government official named Anthony Comstock convinced Congress to pass a law prohibiting the mailing of “pornographic” materials. Under the Comstock Act the definition of pornography was really about as vague as it could be, pornographic included books such as anatomy textbooks, doctors’ pamphlets about reproduction, anything by Oscar Wilde, and even The Canterbury Tales. Who was Anthony Comstock? He was a veteran of the American Civil War where he fought for the Union. Around 1872, he started working with the Young Men’s Christian Association in New York City. Yes, he worked with the YMCA, now this was well before the Village People made the YMCA famous among the disco crowd. He was one of the most powerful American reformers, and over 40 years he was one of the leading voices in a crusade against what he considered obscenity in literature and in other forms of expression.

When we consider forms of expression, it’s important that we understand that in today’s world we are also talking about videos and even to a lesser degree music.

In 1934 the Catholic church created, the National Legion of Decency, also known as the Catholic Legion of Decency. This was a Catholic group started by the Archbishop of Cincinnati, John T. McNicholas. It’s stated purpose was to identify any and all objectionable content in motion pictures. Members were asked to pledge to patronize only those motion pictures which did not “offend decency and Christian morality”. The concept soon gained support from other churches and spread to other denominations. While condemnation by the Legion would often hurt a film’s chances for success because it meant that a significant number of Catholics plus their Protestant allies would avoid attending any screening of the film. As is the case with almost every form of condemnation or prohibition the blacklisting often backfired when it was found that they helped draw attention to those films. This attention usually resulted in the film being more successful than it would have been on its own merits. One film I remember from my youth  as being listed as objectionable, was the John Wayne, Stewart Granger, and Capucine movie, “North To Alaska” because it was a John Wayne movie, I wanted to go see it, my parents though refused to allow me to go, because the Legion of Decency labeled it as objectionable. That is just one example of how we view films has evolved over time.

Those who propose book bans and those who implement them are close to any viewpoint other than their own and they are incapable of explaining why they’re beliefs make more sense.

I think that’s going to do it for this episode, next week, I’ll look deeper into one of the other reasons people want to ban or censor books and that is how those books discuss  history and race.  Remember everything that happens in the United States happens because of politics and the selection of books for libraries and schools are always influenced by politics.

As with all of my work, I approach things from the perspective of a historian and the interdisciplinary perspective, in that, I believe there are no simple answers to the questions we face as a society. Until then, read what you want to read and encourage others to do the same.

Peace y’all

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