Supervision of Books in a Manuscript Culture: Theory and Practice of Censorship in Late Medieval England

Eva Schaten

Supervision of Books in a Manuscript Culture: Theory and Practice of Censorship in Late Medieval England

Berlin · Bruxelles · Chennai · Lausanne · New York · Oxford

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Schaten, Eva, 1978- author.

Title: Supervision of books in a manuscript culture : theory and practice of censorship in late medieval England / Eva Schaten.

Description: Berlin ; New York : Peter Lang, 2025. | Series: Münsteraner

Monographien zur englischen Literatur = Münster monographs on English literature ; 43 | Originally presented as the author’s thesis (doctoral) - Universität Münster, 2022. | Includes bibliographical references.

Identifiers: LCCN 2024059119 (print) | LCCN 2024059120 (ebook) |

ISBN 9783631917831 (hardback) | ISBN 9783631924877 (ebook) |

ISBN 9783631924884 (epub)

Subjects: LCSH: Censorship--England--History--To 1500. |

Manuscripts, Medieval--England. | Christian literature,

English (Middle)--History and criticism.

Classification: LCC Z658.G7 S33 2025 (print) | LCC Z658.G7 (ebook) |

DDC 303.3/76094209024--dc23/eng/20250208

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2024059119

LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2024059120

Bibliographic Information published by the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek

The Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliografie; detailed bibliographic data is available in the internet at http://dnb.d-nb.de.

Zugl.: Münster (Westfalen), Univ., Diss., 2022

Cover illustration:
Münsteraner Schloss.

By courtesy of the Westfälische Wilhelms-Universität, Münster.

DE 6

ISSN 0934-0300

ISBN 978-3-631-91783-1 (Print)

E-ISBN 978-3-631-92487-7 (E-PDF)

E-ISBN 978-3-631-92488-4 (E-PUB)

DOI 10.3726/b22221

© 2025 Peter Lang Group AG, Lausanne (Switzerland)

Published by Peter Lang GmbH, Berlin (Germany)

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All rights reserved.

All parts of this publication are protected by copyright. Any utilization outside the strict limits of the copyright law, without the permission of the publisher, is forbidden and liable to prosecution. This applies in particular to reproductions, translations, microfilming, and storage and processing in electronic retrieval systems.

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Contents

Abbreviations

Acknowledgments

Introduction: Censorship in the Late Medieval Manuscript Culture

Chapter 1
The Elements and Instruments of Supervision

1.1 Introduction

1.2 The Suppression of Doctrines

1.2.1 Lists of Errors

1.2.2 Condemnations and Prohibitions

1.2.3 Refutations

1.3 The Supervision of Books

1.3.1 Pre-Censorship and the Approbation of Books

1.3.2 The Condemnation and Prohibition of Books

1.3.3 Confiscation and Book-Searches

1.3.4 The Burning of Books

1.3.5 The Correction of Manuscripts: Expurgation and Erasure

1.3.6 Warning the Reader

1.3.7 Retentio - Keeping Books under Surveillance

1.4 The Censure of Persons

1.4.1 Inquisitional Proceedings and Canon Law

1.4.2 Gathering Information: The System of Informants

1.4.3 Cursing (and Preserving) the Memory

1.4.4 Isolation and Sentence of Silence

1.4.5 Identifying Scribes

1.4.6 Licensing of Readers and Translators

1.5 Evasive Strategies

1.5.1 Taking Precautions: Revocatio Conditionalis and Patronage

1.5.2 Material Revision: Hiding Books, Texts, Authors, and Owners

1.6 Conclusion

Chapter 2
Ecclesiastical Censorship and Religious Writings in Late Medieval England

2.1 Introduction Types of Heretics in Late Medieval Europe

2.2 Academic Prelude: Philosophical Censorship in the Thirteenth Century

2.3 The Suppression of Original Dissent

2.3.1 Pre-Wycliffite Dissent at Oxford University

2.3.2 John Wycliffe and his Pupils

2.3.2.1 Early Proceedings

2.3.2.2 The Blackfriars Council (1382)

2.3.2.3 The Oxford Constitutions (1407/09)

2.3.2.4 The Condemnation at Oxford (1411)

2.3.2.5 The Councils of Rome (1412/3) and Constance (1414–1418)

2.3.2.6 The Council of Basle (1433)

2.3.3 The Suppression of Non-Wycliffite Original Dissent

2.3.3.1 William Swinderby (fl.1382–1392)

2.3.3.2 Walter Brut (d.1401/2)

2.3.3.3 William Taylor (d.1423)

2.3.3.4 William White (d.1428)

2.3.4 The Case of Bishop Reginald Pecock (d.1459)

2.3.4.1 Early Opposition against Pecock

2.3.4.2 Inquisitorial Proceedings

2.3.4.3 The Abjuration of a Bishop

2.3.4.4 Publication and Implementation of the Condemnation

2.3.4.5 The Denial of Reinstatement and Forced Retirement

2.3.4.6 Renewal of Suppression in Yorkist England

2.3.4.7 Conclusion: Reginald Pecock as Author, Heresiarch, and Scapegoat

2.4 The Censorship of Books and the Suppression of Lollardy

2.4.1 Introduction - The Strange Case of the Lollards and their Books

2.4.2 Legislation against Lollard books

2.4.2.1 The Proclamations of the 1380s and 1390s

2.4.2.2 1395 and the aftermath

2.4.2.3 The Statute of 1401

2.4.2.4 The Statutes of 1414 and 1416

2.4.2.5 The Wycliffite Controversy in the 1420s: Renewed Effort and Standardization of Procedures

2.4.2.6 Conclusion

2.4.3 The Role of Books in the Jurisdiction against Lollardy

2.5 The Importance of Positive Intervention

2.6 Conclusion

Chapter 3
Civil Censorship and Political Writings in Late Medieval England

3.1 Introduction

Case Study: The Bill-Campaign of William Tailboys

3.2 Slander, Defamation, and Famous Libels

3.3 Treason and Sedition

3.3.1 Henry IV and the Shadow of Richard II

3.3.2 Treason by Writing in the Later Fifteenth Century

3.4 The Call for Rebellion

3.4.1 The Peasants’ Revolt and Rebellions of the late Fourteenth Century

3.4.2 The Oldcastle Revolt of 1414

3.4.3 The Rebellion of 1431

3.4.4 The Rebellion of 1450

3.5 Political Propaganda as Positive Intervention

3.5.1 The Public Correspondence between Richard, Duke of York, and Henry VI

3.5.2 Propaganda in the 1480s

3.6 Conclusion

Chapter 4
The Censorship of Books of Magic

4.1 Introduction

4.1.1 The Concept of Magic in late medieval Europe

4.1.2 The Usual Suspects: Who owned Books of Magic?

4.2 Legislation against Books of Magic

4.3 The Role of Books in the Jurisdiction against Magicians

4.4 Civil Censorship of Books of Magic

4.5 The Selective Condemnation of Astrology

General Conclusion

Bibliography

Acknowledgments

This dissertation was submitted to and accepted by the Philosophische Fakultät of the University of Münster in 2022. The initial research was carried out as part of the project “Book Censorship and Book Destruction in late medieval and early modern England” at the Cluster of Excellence “Religion and Politics” (2008–2012). The leader of the project and my doctoral supervisor was Prof. Dr. Gabriele Müller-Oberhäuser, to whom much of the credit for the completion of his monograph is due. I would like to thank her for her patience, encouragement and unfailing support over the years. My secondary supervisor, Prof. Dr. Sita Steckel, provided me with a historian’s insight and gave me many invaluable notes on continental connections, for which I am grateful.

For many years, I have enjoyed the companionship of fellow book historians at the English Seminar in Münster and have benefited from their moral and intellectual support. In particular, I would like to thank Dr. Janika Bischof, Dr. Simon Rosenberg, Dr. Dörthe Gruttmann, Uta Schleiermacher, Mirjam Christmann and Dr. Sandra Simon, as well as – of course – Birgit Hötker-Bolte. Many additional words of encouragement were provided by the team at the Ehrenpreis Centre of Swift Studies, Prof. Dr. Hermann-Josef Real and Dr. Kirsten Juhas.

Finally, I would like to express my sincere gratitude to my family, especially my mother Edeltraud and my husband Frank, for supporting me throughout my long academic journey.

Introduction
Censorship in the Late Medieval Manuscript Culture

Many of the religious and political conflicts in late medieval England had their origins in the formation of new communities of interest, intent on implementing their own ideas for reforming society and church. This challenge to the status quo was intensified by the rise of literacy among the lay population, who began to communicate their views in writing and to develop their own textual traditions outside the established channels. Vernacular books and especially smaller forms of writing such as pamphlets became instrumental in spreading and sustaining dissenting opinions as they had the capacity to disseminate information beyond local and temporal restrictions. Neither church nor crown embraced the laity’s intrusion into areas of knowledge and communication that had been the privilege of the clergy, protected not least by the bulwark of the Latin language. While dissent within the church was not a new phenomenon, the emergence of loudly voiced and written criticism from a new angle and the uprising of the commons in both the religious and secular spheres, forced the ruling class into action, attempting to restore order, preserve customs, and maintain the equilibrium of power. One consequence of this struggle for authority was the advancement of censorship.

My aim in this study is to trace the legal and judicial evolution of book censorship in England in the late medieval manuscript culture, beginning in the late thirteenth century and ending in the early years of the Tudor reign. This explicitly includes failed attempts and aborted legislation – there was a definite limit to censorship, as will become clear. The subject of my research is the theory and practice of censorship regardless of subject or language. I will consider evidence from across the range of late medieval literature, focusing on three main areas: religious writings, political tracts, and books of magic. The choice of topics is entirely determined by the evidence available.

The term censorship was not used in its modern sense until the late sixteenth century and did not come into common usage in the nineteenth century.¹ Its use for the late medieval era, particularly for the manuscript culture, therefore require justification. In 1942, George Flahiff proposed a definition that aptly describes the practice of censorship in the manuscript culture:

Censorship of books, in its broadest sense, is supervision over books exercised by a lawful authority to protect its subjects against the ravages of pernicious writings. Censorship is either ecclesiastical or civil, according as it is practised by the spiritual or secular authority.²

Flahiff makes two significant observations. Firstly, he characterises medieval censorship as supervision, which implies more than the mere act of suppression. Secondly, not only were heretical subjected to censorship, but civil (or political) censorship was also practised before the advent of printing.

Flahiff’s definition of censorship as supervision and his inclusion of civil censorship will provide the starting point for the following survey. The lawful authorities include the church on local and national level, but also king and council, town governments, universities, religious orders, and the Roman Curia. Supervision literally means “looking over” something – it implies that the supervisor has a higher status and is therefore a person of authority in possession of legal instruments. This definition accordingly excludes reactions by private individuals: An erasure in a manuscript executed by a reader who is personally offended cannot be called censorship - unless he was acting under an official mandate.³

The focus of this study will not be on the content of censored books, but on the development of instruments and strategies to cope with written threats to traditional values. Or, to quote Flahiff again: “It is not the heretics themselves that concern us here; nor is it their doctrines, but simply the treatment accorded to their books.”⁴ The sources identifying these instruments are varied: On the one hand, evidence can be gathered from normative texts against dissent, which frequently mention writings – regardless whether they were issued by an ecclesiastical or secular authority. These include ecclesiastical and parliamentary statutes, proclamations, and episcopal orders, as well as papal bulls. On the other hand, there are surviving manuscripts of condemned texts, chronicles, refutations, and trial records. These sources reveal a variety of methods of implementing and responding to supervision, ranging in intensity from the burning of books and capital punishment to gentle warnings and clandestine erasures.

These interventions, however scattered and heterogeneous, can be sorted into three categories according to their primary target. In this threefold approach I follow Luca Bianchi, who devised a “typologie des interventions de la censure”, based on his observations of interferences with the circulation of scholastic theology in the late medieval university, particularly Paris. Bianchi has identified three areas in which interventions were made: (1) doctrines, (2) books, and (3) persons.⁵ In the first chapter, this basic threefold typology is used to categorise instruments employed by ecclesiastical and secular authorities in late medieval England, according to their primary target. Some modifications to the itemisation of instruments have been made to fit the altered research question: The instruments described by Bianchi are means of doctrinal control used by the French academic and ecclesiastical authorities in an intramural environment, affecting both the oral and written dissemination of doctrines. However, since the focus of the present study is on the suppression of written communication in the manuscript culture of late England, some of the instruments that only affected oral dissemination do not apply. In addition, new instruments were developed or adapted for making interventions outside the academic sphere and these are included below, as are evasive strategies used by authors and manuscript owners to avoid suspicion.

Flahiff defined censorship as supervision, which explicitly included preventive and precautionary measures such as licensing. This broad understanding reflects the situation in late medieval England very well: Books, their production, and their use were subject to suppression and alteration, but also, in some cases, received support. Repressive or negative interventions – most often associated with the term censorship – were, for example, the condemnation of books, their burning, expurgation, and their use as evidence in trials for heresy or treason. Supportive or positive interventions are often described as campaigns for orthodoxy: propaganda such as sermons and proclamations, the licensing and approval of books for limited audiences, and investment in education. All these interventions, however, both negative and positive, can be understood as an interruption of the liberty of thought and expression.⁶

Interventions can also be understood as attempts to eradicate what is perceived to be false and to establish the truth: Negative interventions often necessitate concurrent positive interventions, as suppression invariably creates a void that must be filled by propaganda and the supplication of the official version of the facts and faith. Communication can only be effectively controlled if forbidden beliefs and opinions are replaced by the “correct” alternative.⁷ This can be observed particularly in the supervision of political literature, where the connection between censorship and propaganda as related fields in the history of communication has been emphasized - and the message conveyed by propaganda is always presented as true, inevitable, and without alternative.⁸ An example of this is the struggle for the English throne between Lancastrian and Yorkist contenders, which was not only fought on countless battlefields, but could also be described as “cyclical public relations conflict” with both parties vying for the favourable opinion of the public.⁹ Some elements of positive intervention will be sketched at the end of the second and third chapters and mentioned throughout; unfortunately, they are too numerous and multifaceted to be discussed comprehensively in this study. The focus will be on negative interventions, i.e. attempts to inhibit or disrupt written communication.