XVIIème siècle : courage, les précurseurs !
The inquisition: torture, even the stakeThe mental and social universe of the epoch remained saturated by religious sentiments, and the savants could not escape this pressing reality. There is thus merit in reminding ourselves that, amongst other revealing paradoxes, Galileo almost became a monk and that Pascal denounced a rationalist Christian to the ecclesiastical authorities. The confrontations with dogma were however real indeed. The interdiction of Copernicus’ system is emblematic. When Galileo made his Copernican beliefs public, he renounced them before the tribunal of the Inquisition, during his 1633 trial, and had to pronounce a retraction prepared by the Holy Office. But this trial had a considerable impact and contributed to inhibiting generations of thinkers residing on Catholic soil. Not without reason, it could be said: the Italian philosopher, Giordano Bruno, also prosecuted by the Institution for his Copernican ideas, ended up at the stake, burned alive in 1600 after an eight year trial. The nuisance is punishedPrudence was the rule all the more so in that the civil and ecclesiastical authorities set up systems to monitor printed material. Censorship was often carried out a priori. In France every book had to be endowed with royal privilege and carry the name of the author and the printer. The fines were heavy, in particular for offending printers. To prevent this danger it was necessary to know what was and was not tolerated. Which, under the Ancien Régime, was not at all easy! Thus, the Protestant philosopher Pierre Bayle’s General Critique, printed in the United Provinces, was a refutation of the Jesuit Louis Maimburg’s History of Calvinism. The latter, with the persistence of a wasp, took endless heavy steps to ban its distribution. The police officer whom Maimburg kept bothering thus decided to punish the irritating author by granting him justice beyond his wildest hopes. He announced, by every town crier in Paris and by 3,000 posters, the destruction of the copies of General Critique which had been confiscated. The next day everybody set out to obtain a copy! |
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