Marco Dente (Early 16th century)
Book burning is real.
Many of us still resent the fire at Alexandria, and personally, I find it hard to imagine the destruction of the university at Nalanda in the late 12th century, when it is said it took many months for the great repository of Hindu and Buddhist texts to be burned down.
And July 21st has a place in the history of book burnings. The last official book burning took place at Oxford University on July 21st, 1683. It’s worth noting.
The university published the following account of the event:
“The University of Oxford, at its General Assembly, July 21st, 1683, passed judgment against certain pernicious books and abominable doctrines, translated and published by order into English, which are destructive to the sacred person of the Sovereign, his State and Government, and all human society.”
This is an interesting document.
Now, this story has a backstory: it depicts an assassination attempt on King Charles II and his brother.
This prompted me to do some soul-searching at the university about the doctrines and ideas of the time that had at least indirectly contributed to the conspiracy, including the idea that state power derives from the people, an assertion that less than 100 years ago would cause a great stir somewhere across the Atlantic and was considered extremely dangerous at the time.
Chief among the books containing such harmful teachings is Samuel Rutherford’s Rex, RexRutherford, a Scottish Presbyterian minister, provided what may be considered a first draft of John Locke’s more developed social contract theory, along with other proposals from Hobbes and Milton, and the group also included Presbyterians, Quakers, and Socinians (it would not be wrong to call them Unitarians here).
Members of the university were forbidden to study these documents.
And the remaining manuscripts in their libraries were to be burned…
First, it’s good to think about who “they” or “their” are, especially since sometimes they might be me. At times like these, a little introspection is always good. We are too easy to see ourselves as heroes instead of villains. It’s good to think about what we would hold back if given power.
Secondly, this is a very good example of how these attempts at repression fail. They don’t always fail. But in this case they did, and they failed spectacularly…
And it’s good to remember Ray Bradbury, author of the classic book-burning novel. Fahrenheit 451warns, “You don’t have to burn books to destroy a culture; you just get people to stop reading.” In our cluttered culture, there are so many ways we lose treasure troves of wisdom in our efforts to eliminate evil. And sometimes that wisdom is evil.
There is a difference between not wanting books to be banned and accepting that everything is true or deserves it. Counterarguments are always open to consideration, or should be. It’s okay to ignore them. I see this as a positive understanding of Bradbury’s observation. Some things just aren’t worth sustained attention. You don’t have to read them all. In fact, you can’t. There are just too many of them out there now. But the good news here is that you don’t have to think too deeply about something someone has invented and proclaimed.
But we can apply some general principles about where to focus our attention. It’s a little different for each of us. For all of us, this requires care and consideration and effort, but…
In other words, it’s much easier to burn books.
And… but.
But here today, it might be good to remember the blatant acts of oppression — the burning of books, ideas, people — and, with that, how this tendency lives on in our culture in ways both subtle and frighteningly overt.
Not to mention what lurks in our hearts.
And I think of the opposite, something else, which is always, and only partially, expressed in many words: multiculturalism. Globalism. Cosmopolitanism. Universalism.
Curiosity.
That’s probably the best word for it.
An endless curiosity…
A day to stop and think…
