Summary Of Debora Shuger's Censorship

Debora Shuger begins probing into English censorship of the sixteenth century from the List of Prohibited Books, the Index librorum prohibitorum. Some scholars believe that Tudor censorship produced no such lists; however, Shuger argues that actually it was the Tudor monarchs that published the first Index librorum prohibitorum, which is an extension of heresy laws (56). Heresy is deemed as a danger of ideas, especially concerned by the Roman Catholic Church, and the English monarchs viewed similarly:

. . . one of only two thought crimes in the Western legal tradition (treason being the other). It concerns ideas, not utterances or actions. The censorship codes based on heresy law retain this focus on ideological transgression; that is, they

Initially, censorship was a preventative restriction on people’s liberty of words. For the authority like the Tudor monarchs and the Roman Church, they used censorship to make their social status concrete, to protect their predominance over what people could know and which way people should follow. If not using censorship, rebellious ideas might crawl into publications and circulate far and wide. Even if rulers were supposed to guide their countries on people’s behalf, many of them were only thinking for themselves, their close friends, and their kinsmen. As a whole, therefore, hereditary rulers would protect their heirs from any risk of losing their crown, so they would make sure to repress threats like rebels and deviated thinking. As for the Roman Catholic Church, it was one of the dominant powers over Europe in the sixteenth century because religion played a crucial role at that period. When priests or the important figures of the church wanted to intervene with politics, they might exert people’s obedience to Christianity to guide their ideology. The fastest way was Bible censorship. Although the church should basically focus on religious affairs, it had got accustomed to interfering with politics because during the past, many rulers would consult the religious power to make policy. The clergy, after all, were still humans. Once power was at hand, most people, including the clergymen, would not let go of it. In response to the rising monarchy, the church must find a way to stabilize its orthodox position in case losing its influence. Coincidentally, both the leader of a country and the leader of religion chose censorship to realize their