Books in those early times, whether orthodox or heterodox, appear to have
had a precarious existence. The heathens at each fresh outbreak of
persecution burnt all the Christian writings they could find, and the
Christians, when they got the upper hand, retaliated with interest upon
the pagan literature. The Mohammedan reason for destroying books--"If
they contain what is in the Koran they are superfluous, and if they contain
anything opposed to it they are immoral," seems, indeed, _mutatis mutandis_,
to have been the general rule for all such devastators.

The Invention of Printing made the entire destruction of any author's
works much more difficult, so quickly and so extensively did books
spread through all lands. On the other hand, as books multiplied, so
did destruction go hand in hand with production, and soon were printed
books doomed to suffer in the same penal fires, that up to then had been
fed on MSS. only.

At Cremona, in 1569, 12,000 books printed in Hebrew were publicly burnt as
heretical, simply on account of their language; and Cardinal Ximenes, at
the capture of Granada, treated 5,000 copies of the Koran in the same way.

At the time of the Reformation in England a great destruction of books
took place. The antiquarian Bale, writing in 1587, thus speaks of the
shameful fate of the Monastic libraries:--


"A greate nombre of them whyche purchased those superstycyouse mansyons
(_Monasteries_) reserved of those librarye bookes some to serve
their jakes, some to scoure theyr candelstyckes, and some to rubbe
theyr bootes. Some they solde to the grossers and sope sellers,
and some they sent over see to yeS booke bynders, not in small nombre,