Page:A history of the Inquisition of the Middle Ages, volume 3.djvu/631

CENSORSHIP OF BOOKS. 015 Except with regard to witches, the machinery of persecution was too thoroughly disorganized to curb the rising tide of human in- telligence which speedily swept away all such flimsy barriers. We have seen how prolonged and unsatisfactory was the attempt to silence Reuchlin. The printing-press multiplied indefinitely the satires of Erasmus and Ulric Hutten, and when Luther appeared it scattered far and wide among the people his vigorous attacks on the existing system. It required time and the exigencies of the counter-reformation to perfect a plan by which, in the lands of the Roman obedience, the faithful could be preserved from the insidious poison flowing from the fountain of the printing-press. (1517), however, there is no imprimatur, and evidently there was no censorship, and the same is the case in such German books of the period as I have had an opportunity of examining.