day of January, 1486, Berthold, the archbishop of Mentz, issued a mandate in which he forbade all persons from printing, publishing, buying or selling books translated from the Greek or Latin, or any other language, before the written translation had been approved by a committee which should be appointed for the purpose from the faculty of the University of Mentz. The penalties were excommunication, confiscation of the books, and a fine of 100 florins of gold.[1]
In Italy the revival of classical literature opened a new field for the publisher, but the demand for Latin authors was limited. In this country, and in others, eagerness for books in the native language was manifested; for books that plain people could read; for books that represented the life and thoughts of the living and not of the dead. The world was getting ready for new teachers and for a new literature—for Luther and Bacon, for Galileo and Shakespeare.
- ↑ The mandate is too long for an unabridged translation, but the following extracts will fairly set forth the reasons for his action:
Although, by a certain divine art of printing, abundant and easy access is obtained to books in every science … yet we have perceived that certain men, led by the desire of vainglory or money, do abuse this art; and that which was given for the instruction of human life is perverted to purposes of mischief and calamity. For, to the dishonoring of religion, we have seen in the hands of the vulgar certain books of the divine offices and the writings of our religion translated from the Latin into the German tongue. … Some volumes on this subject, certain rash unlearned simpletons have dared to translate into the vulgar tongue, whose translation … many learned men have declared unintelligible, in consequence of the very great misapplication and abuse of words. … Let such translators, if they pay any regard to truth, say whether the German language be capable of expressing that which excellent writers in Greek and in Latin have most accurately and argumentatively written on the sublime speculations of the Christian religion and the knowledge of things. They must acknowledge that the poverty of our idiom renders it insufficient, … they must corrupt the sense of the truth in the sacred writings … which, from the greatness of the danger attendant upon it, we greatly dread; for who would leave it to ignorant and unlearned men and to the female sex, into whose hands copies of the Holy Scriptures may have fallen, to find out the true meaning of them?
This was not the first restriction imposed on the liberty of the printers, for the University of Cologne in 1479 had assumed the right to control the printing of books by Quentell and Winters.
