Between policing and literary criticism: Habsburg censorship of literature in Lombardy-Venetia

Abstract

The article looks at censors’ statements from the Venice State Archive and asks whether the parallels between censors speaking on literary texts and the mode of literary criticism can be productively analyzed with the help of these archival materials. The Venetian censorship bureau, established in 1814/15 in the context of the Kingdom of Lombardy-Venetia and forming part of Habsburg Empire, is a welcome source given the comparative paucity of censors’ statements in other parts of the Empire in the early nineteenth century and during the pre-revolutionary Vormärz period. In particular, the paper examines a set of censors’ statements from 1818, containing on the whole arguments in favor of the publication of manuscripts (or circulation of foreign books). Among them figure a number of justification strategies employed by the censors, which point beyond the usual censorship categories of offences against religion, the authorities and morals. The paper looks at various statements on “modern classical” texts (e.g. Schiller’s “Song of the Bell”, Ossian, James Thomson), as well as the ways censors developed in order to engage with contemporary literature. The main case study in this respect is dedicated to the Italian translation of a historical novel by Jane Porter, The Scottish Chiefs (1810), published as I capi scozzesi in 1822–23. The way censors reflected critical discourses on the one hand, and reacted to materials from the books on the other, immediately situates them in the context of literary criticism and the statements themselves are found to constitute a valuable source for book history, the history of reading, as well as for the development of censorship in the nineteenth century.

Censorship in Lombardy-Venetia

In some ways, the organizational structures of Habsburg censorship in Lombardy-Venetia between 1814/15 and 1848 form a unique solution to a problem that was both political and administrative. At the same time, there are parallels to other regions and ‘provinces’ of the Empire, as well as those of other European powers during the first half of the nineteenth century, and they should eventually be taken into account to reach a fuller understanding of the political influence on the production and circulation of literature and other printed material at the time. Due to the complexity of the issue, this paper is limited to the period of formal censorship in Lombardy-Venetia, but its implications point beyond this scope. Formal censorship above all means pre-publication censorship. The Austrian presence in the region continued until 1859 (Lombardy) and 1866 (Venetia), respectively; the Austrian Littoral, as is well known, was part of the Habsburg Empire until the end of the First World War. In the second half of the nineteenth century, the control of public discourse would shift from pre-publication censorship to a wide range of strategies, including prosecution on the basis of criminal law, high mandatory deposits for newspapers and magazines, newspaper taxes, and so on. Many of those had already been tried out under Chancellor Metternich, and the liberalization of censorship laws in 1848 should not be confused with a more permissive general attitude of the Habsburg authorities.¹

In 1814/15, however, a series of practical considerations informed the way censorship was organized. Under Napoleonic rule, the Regno d’Italia had united Lombardy and the Veneto, with Milan as the principal city. The Austrians tried to find a solution to treat Milan and Venice, traditional rivals, more or less equally, all the while putting to use the administrative structures of the French. In addition, the viceroy of Lombardy-Venetia as well as the regional governments had to answer to Vienna (for a thorough historical overview see Meriggi, 1987). This also applied to the censorship offices, of which there were two—in Milan and Venice—apart from regional censors in fifteen major towns (details in Syrovy, 2021, pp. 87–90). The amount of necessary correspondence and other paperwork was immense, and it took a Viennese Hofkommission until 1818 to figure out the niceties of the organizational structure, concerning, among other things, the relation between center and periphery in the new parts of the Monarchy. While efforts to Germanize the bureaucracy were not relevant to Lombardy-Venetia, the question of autonomy certainly was. According to the 1815/16 censorship law, the Italian censors could not legally prohibit books or manuscripts, even though they could license them for print. Of course, the ulterior Viennese decisions were based on the prior work of regional censors (for reasons of linguistic competence alone), but the general arrangement was often contested and would not be completely settled even by 1848. The work of the censors—as well as that of other administrative structures in Lombardy-Venetia—was therefore characterized by complex legal frameworks, various paths of communication and, not least worrisome, a long distance between Milan, Venice, and Vienna. Fortunately, this situation also produced a rich documentation that allows us to reconstruct many of the finer points of practical censorship.

The sources

The scarcity of material from the censors’ desks is a commonplace in Habsburg censorship studies. German-language statements on censored books are mostly limited to a few examples from 1805 and 1810–11, salvaged from the 1927 fire at the Vienna Palace of Justice.² These and a few nineteenth century copies from the Vienna municipal library (Wienbibliothek), as well as the eighteenth century notebook of Gerard van Swieten, written in a form of shorthand,³ make up most of the extant sources of specific judgments on texts, at least those I have been able to inspect: Documents from the Hungarian censorship offices would have to be considered separately. In the case of famous works of literary history, scholars from the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries sometimes excerpted statements, often in order to point out the supposedly erroneous judgements of the censors. However, for the most part, the Vormärz era in particular has to be reconstructed piecemeal.

The situation is less daunting in Milan, where the Archivio di Stato holds a great number (upward of 200 boxes) of police records in their original contexts. Among those are numerous censorship cases, mostly contentious issues that produced more or less extensive correspondence between Milan and Vienna. Because decisions were usually made in Vienna, the documentation in Milan may miss crucial steps. Still, the materials allow for a glimpse into the daily workings of the censorship offices, and help us better understand the general approach of censors (see my own work with some of the material in Syrovy, 2021; I have also published a few dozen formal censors’ statements from these files at zensur.univie.ac.at/dokumente).

A wealth of material among the holdings of the Archivio di Stato in Venice, too, concerns Austrian censorship, but it is the systematic collection of censors’ statements, sorted by year, that, despite certain lacunae (of which more below), allows for new questions to be asked. We know that censors had to argue their decisions, whether in favor of or in opposition to any work presented to them. While the police files usually contain outstanding and highly interesting cases dealing with conflicts between writers or publishers and the censorship offices, what is not generally visible from this kind of document are details about manuscripts that were either admitted for print right away, or where only minor revisions were effected, and—even more importantly—how censors framed their positive decisions. This is also true for the Austrian documents cited above, which are limited to banned or restricted books (damnatur; erga schedam). The Venetian documents therefore allow for a relatively systematic study of all aspects of the censors’ engagement with manuscripts and printed books, having major implications for a number of questions regarding censorship criteria, the work of individual censors, as well as historical forms of reception. The following is a first attempt to suggest possible paths of inquiry, on the basis of a single year, 1818.

The corresponding box, ASV Ufficio di revisione de’ libri 17 (1818), holds 388 censors’ statements.⁴ They are handwritten on pre-printed forms (Foglio di Censura) with a smaller header and a large main text field divided into two columns each. Top left contains the title, top right the person who handed in the manuscript. The statement itself is usually contained in the bottom right field, and it is signed and dated by the censor. The statements may be continued on the verso side, or might even go on for a number of pages. At times, further leaves were added for reasons of space, or external reviews, providing theological or other expertise, were glued to the forms.⁵ File numbers are partly included on the recto, partly on the verso page. In some instances, more than one file number is used on a single form. As is usually the case with Habsburg censorship, there is a prior distinction between internal manuscripts (censorship; Opere interne) and imported books (revision; Opere straniere). This is reflected in the fact that the two categories run to file numbers 337 and 91, respectively. In other words, there are a total of 428 file numbers, which means that 40 statements are missing from the box (29 interne and 11 straniere). What these missing statements contained is at this point impossible to reconstruct, but information may be supplemented by extant protocolli di censura. It is possible—as we can observe from the situation in Milan—that certain statements were moved to police files (which exist in Venice, as well) and could still be located there. Others may have been sent to Vienna in the original without copying. This would seem to apply in particular to negative decisions, which were made official in Vienna, but at least one decision of non admittitur can be found among the statements in the box.⁶ It might seem reasonable to suppose that certain cases were followed up by revisions and later moved, but more than one case shows a later date with the file correctly in place (N. 43i: August 2, 1819; N. 337i: April 14, 1820). Several statements also have notes referring to earlier files for further clarification (e.g. N. 189i refers to N. 155i), so there was a clear effort to keep the files in order.

Even before turning to the subject matter of the censors’ statements, there are a number of things that can be inferred from the files that warrant closer inspection. A number of censorship sources throw some much-needed light on aspects of the production and circulation of literary texts, which are not adequately reflected by library holdings, for example. This is mainly the case with the Verzeichnisse zugelassener Werke that exist from the early 1800s up to 1848 and list (a) internal works that were licensed to be printed either with or without alterations, as well as (b) imported books that were allowed to circulate freely or with limitations (admittitur or transeat, meaning books could be sold but not advertised).⁷ These are an important bibliographical counterpart to the better known Verzeichnisse verbotener Werke.⁸ Printed in Vienna in monthly fashion, these lists collected information from a number of local censorship offices (Milan, Venice, Prague, Zara). However, by collating the Venetian documents with these lists, it becomes clear that almost 10% (31 titles) of the internal production was not included in the Verzeichnisse of admitted works for 1818 or 1819. Perhaps this means that censorship interventions led to the works being withdrawn. In other cases, there seems to have been a significant delay (N. 157i was only printed in 1828, after 10 years). Generally speaking, the reasons for inclusion or omission of these works are not always perfectly clear.

The Opere straniere files are also an invaluable source for the foreign works presented to the censorship offices in languages other than Italian. It is clear that the Italian censors always examined a significant number of non-Italian foreign books: of the 80 known by title for 1818, 12 are in Italian, three in Latin and 65 in French (of which 37 are almanacs compiled on one form, numbered N. 48–85s). Because French and Latin works were not under the jurisdiction of the Venice censorship office, these would not necessarily show up in the Verzeichnisse, although they sometimes do, and it would be of interest whether the rest at some point was transferred to the Viennese parts of the lists. Occasionally, the expertise of foreign-language reviewers was also needed for Opere interne. One document, N. 332i (an anonymous volume of Sonnets and other Poems, December 22, 1818) explicitly identifies Luigi Minio as “Revisore […] già abilitato da Presidiale decreto alla Censura dei Libri Inglesi.”

Censorship as criticism

Turning toward the specific content of the statements, I have limited myself to observations on literary texts, excluding for the moment historiographical, as well as technical, scientific, religious, philosophical and instructional literature. The literary texts make up about 31% (104 titles) of the identifiable Opere interne and approx. 51% (46 titles) of the Opere straniere. These constitute a wide range of both new and classic titles, magazines, almanacs and anthologies, and they come from all genres: novels, plays and poems. Several well-known names stand out: Dante, Boccaccio, Petrarch, Ariosto, Tasso, Metastasio, Alfieri, Schiller, Racine, Ossian, Thomson; others are completely unknown. The major question concerns the kind of information given by the censors. How do they introduce classics and ‘modern classics’? What do they have to say about contemporary drama and novels? Do they speak primarily as censors or, as it were, as literary critics?⁹

Unfortunately, some statements amount to little more than technical notes on reprints. This is the case with Boccaccio’s Decameron (N. 89i) or Tasso’s Gerusalemme liberata (N. 282i). Other works are considered exempt from censorship by virtue of their ubiquity, and receive an imprimatur with minimal justification. This is true for Ariosto (“Quest’opera è stata tante volte ristampata che non abbisogna d’ulteriori esami”; N. 90i) or Metastasio’s Opere: “La celebrità di questo Autore mi dispensa dall’analizzare le sue Opere note ad ogni classe di persone, e nelle quali secondo il detto di Orazio si trova mescolato l’utile col dilettevole” (N. 155i). These judgments were made by Bartolomeo Gamba (Ariosto, Tasso), the head censor in Venice at the time, and by Giovanni Bonicelli (Boccaccio, Metastasio). Both men convey very similar attitudes to the texts. Bonicelli was a librarian at the Marciana and teacher of rhetoric at the Seminario di Padova (Berti, 1989, pp. 22 f.); Gamba had initially apprenticed as a printer and published extensively on literary and historical topics; he, too, would later be employed as a librarian at the Marciana, after his dismissal as a censor for allowing a treatise critical of Austria to be printed (Berti, 1989, pp. 20–22). It is interesting that Gamba revises his statement in favor of Ariosto from “well known” to “often reprinted,” because the latter is likely more suitable as an argument, but other than that, there is little to be gleaned from this kind of description, and there is no indication that censors were concerned with the correctness or completeness of classical texts.

There is more meat on the bone in the case of Schiller’s Die Glocke (N. 141i), translated and presented to the Ufficio di Censura by Antonio Pochini on June 11, 1818. Pietro Pianton, who was a priest and Carmelite friar with university degrees in Law and Theology, and held the post of censor throughout the existence of the Venetian Ufficio di Censura (1815–1848), gave his imprimatur on the same day.¹⁰

Non è da farsi parola sul merito di questo poemetto com’è nell’originale. La Germania va a diritto gloriosa d’aver un poeta nello Schiller, che vinca gli elogj dei nazionali, e degli Esteri. La versione presentata non è fornita di quel puro e dilicato gusto Italiano, di cui l’avrebbero abbellita un Cesarotti, un Bondi, un Monti, un Arici etc. tuttavolta potrà non dispiacere; e non demerita la pubblicazione anche pel solo oggetto, che vegga l’Italia delle sue spoglie vestita una delle molte produzioni poetiche del celebre Schiller.

Pochini may not reach the level of versification of the best Italian poets,¹¹ but Schiller’s renown, and the fact that there had been no translation of his famous ballad, carry enough weight to allow it to go to print. Once more, the renown of the poet, respected by Germans and foreigners, validates the content of the text. Quite a similar argument is put forth with respect to James Thomson’s The Seasons, translated by Michele Leoni (1776–1858), a still comparatively well-known translator of Shakespeare and other English-language writers, as well as Homer and Tacitus (Millocca, 2005). This time, the statement comes from Bartolomeo Gamba (N. 229i; undated, likely September/October 1818):

Questa è Traduzione di Opera celebre e tenuta fra le Classiche della Nazione Inglese. Il farla conoscere agl’Italiani senza alcuna < alteraz[ione] > non è che rispettare l’Autore, e convien < trascendere > quelle espressioni mal misurate uscite dalla penna di un Poeta eterodosso, e che < men > converrebbero in un Cantico. Rispettando dunque l’originale si possono tolerare esse espressioni anche nella presente Versione che < resta > da questa parte difesa del nome di uno scrittore Inglese famigeratissimo.¹²

But here, in addition to the renown of Thomson and his work, Pianton also advances a theoretical argument concerning the fidelity of translations, in particular the question of stylistic choices, and whether or not the translator should even out the poet’s idiosyncrasies. It is a curious choice for an administrative document, the more so because there seems to be no larger context in which to place this assertion. It very much reads like a fragment of criticism until we look at the printed text. The volume includes a translator’s preface, which clarifies that Leoni decided to modify the text in accordance with certain objections that English critics raised toward the text:

Quando mi accinsi a recare in Italiane [sic] le Stagioni di Thomson, non ignorava la censura a lui fatta, anche da’ suoi Nazionali, di troppo lusso ne’ quadri, di concetti ripetuti, di transizioni alcuna volta sconnesse, e di non sempre acconci episodj. Volendo per conseguenza aver riguardo a questo qualunque siasi giudizio, stimai essere cosa convenevole il modificare ed anche talora lasciar addietro certe immagini ed espressioni, che mi sembravano opposte all’intento. Al qual partito (per non mancar d’altra parte di reverenza verso il poeta) non mi sarei tuttavia indotto, se gli arbitrj, da me giudicati opportuni, stati non fossero in sì picciol numero e sì lievi, da meritare appena ch’io ne rendessi avvertito il Lettore, o temuto avessi di nuocere in modo alcuno alla forma ed allo spirito originale dell’Opera. (Thomson, 1818, p. ix)

In what ways Leoni eventually adapted the text is a matter of further inquiry, but it is certainly in keeping with his usual style of translation, e.g. of Oliver Goldsmith’s The Traveller, where “the poetic form was inappropriate for Italian taste. Therefore it had to be revised” (Broggi-Wüthrich, 2004, p. 309). This also holds true for another project submitted for censorship earlier that year: Nuovi canti d’Ossian recati in versi da Michele Leoni, dated August 28 (N. 208i). This was not a new translation, but the third edition (Venezia: 1818) of Leoni’s translation of John Smith’s Galic Antiquities (1780), first published in 1813.¹³ The labor of revision is amply documented in the prefatory texts, and Gamba too says: “Questa Edizione non è di un’Opera affatti nuova, ma di un Volgarizzamento riveduto, ricorretto, e < ridonato > alla luce dell’Autore Sr. Michele Leoni. Non vi è espressione che sia men che circospetta in tutto il libro, e niente osta alla sua pubblicazione.” With the Nuovi canti, Leoni once again rather freely adapted his sources; “he assimilated the content and reproduced it in the form appropriate to Italian taste” (Broggi-Wüthrich, 2004, p. 309). It is unlikely that the censor did a hands-on comparison, and we may suppose that he once again took his cues from the text at hand.

The case of I capi scozzesi

A particularly interesting case concerns a very recent genre of fiction, the historical novel. On December 10, 1818 (N. 324i), her Italian translator submitted a version of Jane Porter’s The Scottish Chiefs. A Romance (1810) to the Ufficio di Censura. Angiola Peracchi (or Angela, as the censorship form and some sources have it) had translated the novel via a French version published in 1814. Very little is known about Peracchi. She is mentioned in a 1842 bibliography of women writers by Pietro Leopoldo Ferri of Padova under the name Sommariva-Peracchi, and located in Vicenza (Ferri, 1842, p. 344). This is confirmed by the entry in a 1907 volume on Scrittori vicentini, which also provides a birth date in August 1794.¹⁴ Moreover, a publication by the Archivio di Stato in Sondrio photographically reproduces a poem dedicated to her for carnival 1827 where she is addressed as “prima attrice nel teatro di Sondrio.” The poem itself was apparently written on the occasion of her debut as a singer.¹⁵ Before Porter, Peracchi had translated the Lettres de Madame Du Montier (1756) by Jeanne-Marie Leprince de Beaumont, as well as a small volume, La caverna della morte, by August von Kotzebue.¹⁶ Both translations were first published with Batelli e Fanfani in Milan (1817 and 1819, respectively), as would be I capi scozzesi, Romanzo storico, in 1822–23.¹⁷

Due to the administrative division of the censorship offices in Lombardy-Venetia, it appears decidedly odd that a title with a Venetian license should be printed in Milan. And indeed, although I capi scozzesi was licensed for print in Venice by Pietro Pianton in January of 1819 with the formula “omis:^s d:^s correct:^s cor:^s,” that is omissis deletis, correctis corrigendis (“with the requested omissions and corrections”), there are indications of an additional submission to the Milan censors in September 1819.¹⁸ As far as we know, the Venetian license should have still been valid after less than a year (though perhaps not as long as 1822; cf. Syrovy, 2021, pp. 110 f.), but it is just as likely that in order for the novel to be printed in Milan, there needed to be a second, local imprimatur.¹⁹

Unfortunately, neither the Milan documents, nor Pianton’s original statement include indications as to which passages from the novel had to be changed. It is likely that a comparison of the Italian text with its immediate French source²⁰ would yield some results, although this would take considerable effort and not all changes to the text need necessarily represent censorial interventions. Pianton’s statement reads in full:

Ciò che, come suol dirsi, forma l’ossatura del presente Romanzo non è che quanto si legge registrato negli annali della Scozia. Sotto il Regno di Odoardo I. d’Inghilterra comparve su quel Suolo William Vallace [sic], il cui coraggio promosse e sostenne l’ardito disegno di togliere la sua Patria dal giogo straniero. Lo storico Hume parla di questo uomo, e di parecchj Scozzesi, che lo seguirono nell’impresa con un linguaggio, che fa onore: cosa questa assai rilevante, giacchè tanto scrittore non ebbe il dono di non sentire oltre il bisogno l’amor della sua Nazione. La Porter lavora sulle tracce della Storia Scozzese il suo romanzo, e di varie animate dipinture lo fornisce, che lo rendono dove più dolce, dove più patetico, quando più robusto, quando più interessante. V’hanno alcuni tratti non onorevoli veramente al Conquistatore, ed un po’ troppo alterati. Ma nella prefazione opportunamente è prevenuto il lettore a non lasciarsi alla cieca trasportare: e trattandosi di avvenimenti accaduti più secoli addietro, e da più storici commemorati, e lumeggiati col pennello dell’imaginazione, nè in alcun modo insozzati da quello delle passioni, ritenute le poche correzioni già da me fatte, giudico non inutile per quelli, che amano tal genere d’intertenimenti [sic], che vegga tal versione la pubblica luce.²¹

As in the earlier examples, we find that the main interest of the censor is one of literary criticism. Pianton is specifically interested in two aspects of the historical novel that are often discussed in the contemporary literature on the genre: its historical accuracy and the literary quality of the text.²² The “historical skeleton” (l’ossatura), as Pianton calls it, of the novel, is the depiction of the uprising of William Wallace in the context of the reign of Edward I. and his invasion of Scotland, an episode well known today from the film Braveheart (1995). In 1818, judging by Pianton’s argument, it was familiar from David Hume’s The History of England. But once again, it is striking that most of the background information actually comes from the volume in front of the censor. Ferri, the bibliographical compiler of women’s literature, mentions that the translator “premise alla versione alcuni Cenni Storici intorno l’Opera” (Ferri, 1842, p. 344; repeated by Rumor, 1908, p. 116). However, these historical notes are merely a translation of the French Préface du Traducteur, which quotes at length from Hume in order to contextualize the story for its readers.

Indeed, while Hume’s judgment is framed as moderate even there (“le judicieux Hume”; Porter, 1814, p. xij)—a main concern of historical accuracy apparently being a balanced view of things, a “love for [one’s] Nation that does not exceed the necessary measure” (as Pianton says)—the theme alone, an uprising against an occupying power, brushes against what is usually considered objectionable, with unmistakable resonances, even in 1818, of the situation in Venice under Austrian rule. Interestingly, Pianton’s phrase about the “yoke of the foreigners” comes directly from a passage by Hume quoted in the French preface: “[Wallace’s courage] prompted him to undertake, and enabled him finally to accomplish, the desperate attempt of delivering his native country from the dominion of foreigners” (Hume, 1796, p. 299; as “du joug de l’étranger” in Porter, 1814, p. x). No further mention is made of this particular subtext, but a review of Les chefs écossais in Marie-Françoise Raoul’s Le Véridique in 1814 pointed out how easily one could update the situation: “Cette histoire de l’usurpation de l’Écosse, par Edouard premier, semblerait être celle de l’usurpation de l’Espagne par l’Empereur” (Raoul, 1814, p. 28). Raoul pitches “les sublimes vertus d’un patriotisme vrai” against the “crimes odieux d’une infernale politique” (ibid., p. 29). Her reference to Napoleon is no accident, however, because—as the Avertissement of the French edition informs us—the French censors in 1810 refused to allow the text to go to print unless substantial changes were made.²³

But to return to the Venetian statement: As far as the literary quality is concerned, we find two kinds of discourse evoked by Pianton. One is concerned with emotional involvement, the other foregrounds the language of painting. The novel is lively (animato), sweet (dolce), affecting (patetico), vigorous (robusto), and interesting (interessante), and one should take heed not to get carried away (non lasciarsi alla cieca trasportare). What the novel contains, on the other hand, is framed as depictions (dipinture), not very honorable strokes (tratti non onorevoli veramente) and “happenings that are illuminated by imagination’s brush, and not in any way smudged by [the brush] of high emotion” (“lumeggiati col pennello dell’immaginazione, nè in alcun modo insozzati da quelle delle passioni”). Despite indicating “a few corrections,” Pianton emphasizes the usefulness of the novel “for those who love this genre of entertainment.”

Some of these words, too, may partly have been suggested by the French Préface, where the text is repeatedly framed as a kind of painting: “il était bien permis à miss Jane Porter d’ajouter quelques ornemens à la peinture fidèle de son héros;” “[d]ans la peinture de la conduite d’Edouard I^er […], les couleurs sont un peu chargées” (Porter, 1814, p. xij); but the language of painting is something of a commonplace in the discussion of historical novels after Scott and can be found in programmatical texts as well as reviews (Syrovy, 2021, pp. 241; 245). Even if the texts suggest themes, the censors of course can decide on what to emphasize. As Gamba puts it on occasion of a French opera libretto taken from Tasso’s Gerusalemme liberata, “ciò è detto dall’autore nel suo avvertimento, e ciò verificai leggendola io stesso” (N. 10s, March 1818).

All of this further underscores the close proximity of the censors’ statements and the general critical discourse, but it is only by a thorough analysis of texts from the Biblioteca italiana and other critical magazines of the time that the parallels may be understood in a broader context.²⁴

Conclusions

The wider picture of the discourses of censorship and literary criticism in the early 19th century might eventually expand even beyond Lombardy-Venetia or the Habsburg Monarchy. A certain continuity between censorship personnel and other practitioners of literary professions has often been observed (e.g. Albergoni, 2006; Holtz, 2015, p. 21); censors’ statements exist in various European contexts (Rodrigues, 1980, pp. 51–55; Granata, 2006), and it would be worthwhile to collect more of them. As the material examined above indicates, even if limited to Lombardy-Venetia, the various directions such research might take have implications for several fields of inquiry.

• (1) With respect to the administration of censorship, it would help understand censorship criteria beyond the well-known major categories of religion, authority, morals; their relative distribution; timetables of censorship processes; as well as changes to manuscripts or withdrawn titles, etc.

• (2) With respect to individual censors, it would help reconstruct what they examined; their individual profiles; their workload; their judgment over the years.

• (3) With respect to historical forms of reception, it would shed light on the treatment of different genres, canonical texts, new authors, translations and their interpretation.²⁵

Many of these complexities are at the core of a profession that had no immediate work method at their disposal, and therefore arguably borrowed from the praxis of criticism.²⁶ Bartolomeo Gamba was aware of a certain discrepancy between what censors were supposed to do and their practical attitude towards the text, when he pointed out (N. 35i), that his remarks on a book on Petrarca needed to be qualified in this respect: “ciò non risguarda punto l’Ufficio della Censura, e toccherà al pubblico ad essere giudice” (cf. also Kucharczyk, 2002, pp. 300 f.). It is slightly ironic, however, that in order for the public to be the judge, the first judges, the censors, of course had to let the works in question pass.