CASTRATING THE ENCYCLOPEDIA

"The friendly relations between Pope and Emperor were not disturbed by the difference which arose between them on the question of the veneration of images."

Here, instead of abbreviating, the editor gratuitously inserts new matter, and it is untruthful. The Pope, whose safety depended upon the favor of Charlemagne, said little, it is true, but at a time when "the veneration of images" -- as historians persist in calling statues. -- was the greatest issue in the Church, Charlemagne put his own name to a book in which Roman practice and theory were denounced as sinful, the whole Gallician Church was got to support him, and the timid protests of the Pope were contemptuously ignored.

The touch in the notice of Pope Adrian II has just as little to do with dates and discipline and is just the suppression of a fact which the Church does not like. The real interest of the Pope is that he presided over the Church in the latter part of the 9th century, the time when it was sinking into its deepest degradation. The appalling coarseness of life is seen in the fact that the Pope's daughter was abducted by the son of a bishop and brother of a leading cardinal, and when the Pope got the Emperor to send troops, he murdered them. The notice of the Pope in the 11th edition adds that "his (the noble abductor) reputation suffered but a momentary eclipse," which is perfectly true, for the abducting family were high both in church and nobility and the Romans in large part supported them. But the sentence has been cut out of the new edition. Little touches of that sort, not always condensing the text but always -- and generally untruthfully -- in the interest of the Church occur repeatedly.

Such articles as "Agnosticism" and "Atheism". did not concern the Catholic Church in particular and were left to more honest but hardly less bigoted clerical writers. I need say of them only that they reflect the cloudy ideas of some theologian and tell the reader no more about the situation in these matters today than if they had been written by a Hindu swami. A different procedure is found when we come to "Alban." The old notice. said that he is usually styled "the proto-martyr of Britain," and added "but it is impossible to determine with certainty whether he ever existed, as no mention of him occurs till the middle of the 6th century"; which is correct. But these zealots for correctness of dates and discipline have, in the new edition, turned him into an indisputably real saint and martyr. He is now "the first martyr of Britain" and all hints of dispute about his historicity are cut out.

We pass to "Albertos Magnus" -- why an Encyclopedia in English should not say Albert the Great is not explained; possibly the epithet is less offensive to the eye in Latin -- and this article is condensed (as the whole new editions had to be) in a peculiarly clerical manner. The original writer had never properly informed the reader that Albert was so much indebted to Aristotle for his "science" that he was known to Catholic contemporaries as "the Ape of Aristotle" and that he was apt to be so inaccurate that he described Plato (Who lived a century before the Stoic school was founded) as a Stoic. These things are sacrificed in the sacred cause of abbreviation but new compliments, such as that Bacon called Albert "the most noted of Christian philosophers" are inserted to fill the gaps.

The article "Albigensians" is one in which a modern student would most surely expect a modern encyclopedia to replace the conventional old article by one in line with our historical knowledge. Instead of this we get a page article reduced to half a page, and this is done chiefly by cutting out 25 lines in which the older writer had honestly explained that the Pope turned the brutal Knights of France upon the Albigensians only when 20 years preaching failed to make the least impression on them and 10 lines showing what "vast inquests" of the Inquisition were still needed after years of slaughter by the Pope's savage "crusaders." We therefore recognize the anointed hand of the abbreviator. And it is clear that the editor or sub-editor cheated the public of a most important truth by entrusting this article to Catholic "correctors of dates and discipline." We now fully realize the importance from the angle of the history of civilization of this brilliant but anti-Christian little civilization in the South of France (close to Arab Spain) and what Europe lost. Of the brutality of the massacre and the Pope's dishonesty in engineering it the reader is, of course, given no idea, though these are found in the Pope's extant letters.

Even such articles as that on "Alembert" -- the famous French skeptic and scientist D'Alembert -- seem to have been handed over to the clerical shearer, for the proper appreciation of his character and ability and his work against the Jesuits are the chief material that has been abbreviated, but we turn with more interest to the "Alexander" Popes. I need not say, that anybody who expects an up-to-date account of the great Alexandrian schools of science and of the splendor of life under the early Ptolemies will be deeply disappointed, but it is chiefly the name of Pope Alexander VI which here catches the eye,

Catholics long ago abandoned their attempts to whitewash the historical figure of that amazingly erotic and unscrupulous Spaniard and especially after the work of the Catholic historian Dr. L. Pastor it is impossible to suggest outside the Sunday School that there has been any libelling of this Pope. What the clerical retouchers have mainly done is to remove sentences in which the older writer correctly, though only casually and incidentally, let the reader know that such a Pope was possible only because the Church was then extraordinarily corrupt. He admitted, for instance, that Alexander bad been notoriously corrupt for years, as a cardinal, when he was elected Pope:

"Although ecclesiastical corruption was then at its height his riotous mode of life called down upon him a very severe reprimand from Pope Pius II."

This is cut out, of course, though we still have the letter in which the Pope -- himself a rake in his early years, by the way -- describes the cardinal's scandalous life. Cut out also (for abbreviation) is this passage:

"A characteristic instance of the corruption of the papal court is the fact that Borgia's daughter Lucrezia lived with his mistress Giulia, who bore him a daughter, Laura, in 1492 (the year of his consecration as Pope)."

In short, while it would have elicited the scorn of historians to attempt to suppress all mention of Alexander's mistresses and children the article of the 11th edition, which was correct as far as it went, is so manipulated that the reader has no idea that the Cardinal was brazen in his conduct at the actual time of his election and entertained his mistress, who was painted on one of the walls of the Vatican Palace as the Virgin Mary, and his children in the "sacred Palace"; and that this was due to the general sordid corruption of the Church. Sexual looseness was the least pernicious of Borgia's vices, but where the old article noticed that his foreign policy was inspired only by concern to enrich his children and "for this object he was ready to commit any crime and to plunge all Italy into war," this Catholic stickler for accuracy has cut it out.

Soon after Alexander we come to Antonelli. This man was Cardinal Secretary of State to Pope Gregory XVI and Pope Pius IX, who is counted a saint by American Catholics. He was the son of a poor wood-cutter and he died a millionaire: he left $20,000,000 -- leaving a bastard daughter, a countess to fight greedy relatives for it. He had refused to take priestly orders because he wanted freedom. His greed, looseness and complete indifference to the vile condition of the Papal States were known to everybody. In the 11th edition we read of him:

"At Antonelli's death the Vatican finances were found to be in disorder, with a deficit of, 45,000,000 lire. His personal fortune, accumulated during office, was considerable and was bequeathed almost entirely to his family. . . . His activity was directed almost exclusively to the struggle between the Papacy and the Italian Risorgimento, the history of which is comprehensible only when the influence exercised by his unscrupulous grasping and sinister personality is fully taken into account."

The last part of this now reads "Is comprehensible only when his unscrupulous influence is fully taken into account." Apart from the one word "unscrupulous" the reader is totally misled as to his character.

The article on Aquinas was already written favorably to the Church and only a few light touches were needed.. But the eagle eye caught. a sentence, perfectly accurate but offensive to Catholics, in the short notice of the noblest figure of the 12th century, Arnold of Biresoi &. It said:

"At the request of the Pope he was seized by order of the Emperor ... and hanged."

Out goes the reference to the Pope, who had tried for years to catch Arnold before he acted on a perjured passport from the Emperor; and no idea is given of the remarkable position of the premature democrat in the history of European thought.

More amusing is the manipulation of the notice of "Arthur" of Britain. In the 11th edition he is frankly presented to the reader as a myth, as the popular conception of him certainly is. All that we can say with any confidence is that there seems to have been a sort of captain named Arthur in the ragged military service of one of the half-civilized and wholly brutal British "kings" after the departure of the Romans. In this new compendium of modern scholarship (now sponsored by the University of Chicago) Arthur has been converted into an undisputed and highly respectable reality; a "King of Britain" who led his Christian armies against the pagan Anglo-Saxons. And this is done on the authority of a monk who wrote two and a half centuries later! There is no proof that this fine achievement is due to the Catholic Federation, but just as detectives look for the trade-mark of a particular burglar when a bank has been robbed....

"Athanasius, Bishop of Alexandria" becomes, by the same process "Athanasius the Great, saint, and bishop of Alexandria," and so important to us moderns that, in spite of the needs of space for new thought, the long article (by a cleric), is lengthened in the new edition. The short article on Atheism, which follows closely upon it, is, as I said, quite worthless. A British royal chaplain writes on it as if it were a point in dispute in some Pacific Island, instead of a burning question of our time. He seems to have been totally unaware of, or indifferent to, the fact that a few years earlier the majority of American scientists had (in Leuba) declared themselves Atheists, and that in the seven years before he wrote his article tens of millions of folk, from Annam across Europe to Chile, had abandoned the churches to embrace Atheism. Naturally a learned staff which announces in the preface to the Encyclopedia that it considers that the wicked materialistic, philosophy of the 19th century has been slain by the new science thinks such things beneath its notice.

Early in the B's we get the same light touches of the clerical brush. The long and appreciative article on the great jurist and Atheist Jeremy Bentham -- that he was an outspoken Atheist is, of course, not stated -- one of the most powerful idealists of the post-Napoleonic period, is mercilessly cut, while the old notices of the insignificant Pope Benedicts remain. At least, I notice only one cut. It is said in the old article that "Benedict IX, perhaps the vilest man who ever wore the tiara -- his almost immediate successor spoke of his "rapes, murders, and other unspeakable acts" -- appears to have died impenitent." That is cut out. It saves so much space.

A long article is inserted in the new edition on "Birth Control": a subject that had no article in the old edition. This consists of the findings of a series of conferences on the subject mostly overshadowed by church influence. These fill several pages while the elementary grounds for seeing the necessity of it -- the rapid multiplication of population in modern times -- are barely noticed. A section on the religious attitude is written by the Rev. Sir James Marchant, a parson of the Church of England who is fanatically Catholic in sex-matters. It begins with the plump untruth that "it's now recognized that the objections on religious grounds to birth control must be fully heard," and it consists mainly of a sort of sermon by the Cardinal Archbishop of Westminster, whose views are "shared by many other religious communities." We should like to hear of one which as a body has condemned birth control. Then the mysterious X appears at last with a tendentious summary of the whole article -- against birth control. Strange stuff for a modern encyclopedia.

Even the article on Bismarck is retouched, mainly in the section which describes his great struggle with the Catholics of Germany, and the article "Body and Mind" is as modern as the Athanasian Creed. No evidence appears that this new article, so profoundly important in view of the advanced condition of American psychology -- four manuals out of five refuse to admit "mind" -- was written by a Catholic, so I will be content to say that it is an affront to American science. Later appears another new article "Bolshevism." But there was, naturally, no article with that title in the 11th edition so that the Catholic censor knew nothing about it until it appeared in print. Its accuracy and coldness must have pained him. It is written by Professor Laski.

I say the Catholic censor but there was obviously team-work on both sides of the Atlantic, though Gildea is the only sophist mentioned on the American side. And the next item to catch the clerical eye and raise the clerical blood-pressure was the fair article on "Giordano Bruno," in the 11th edition. You can almost see the fury with which the three columns are reduced to less than a column in the 14th edition, and this is done by cutting out about 100 lines of sober appreciation of the great ex-monk and scholar's ability and character. Cutting out flowers is not enough. A new paragraph informs the innocent reader:

"Apart from his disdainful, boasting nature and his attack on contemporary Christianity, the chief causes of Bruno's down-fall were his rejection of the Aristotelic astronomy for the Copernican ... and his pantheistic tendencies."

The undisputed truth is that he was burned alive by the Papacy, which came to a corrupt agreement with the Venetians in order to get hold of him and satisfy its bitter hatred of the critic.

"Buddha and Buddhism"' are mangled In the new edition in the most extraordinary fashion. Twelve pages of sound, useful matter are cut down to three; as if Buddhism had meantime died in the East and ceased to be of any interest to westerners. Between the publication of the two editions of the Encyclopedia a good deal has been written on the creed of Buddha, and it is quite generally agreed by experts on the religion or on India that he was an Atheist. Not a single word is said about the question, and the reader is left at the mercy of every pamphleteer who talks about the "religious genius" of the man.

More definitely and recognizably Catholic is the tampering with the notice of St. Catherine. There are two saints of that name, Catherine of Alexandria and Catherine of Siena, and the 11th edition rightly said:

"Of the former history has nothing to tell ... that St. Catherine actually existed there is no evidence to disprove, and it is possible that some of the elements in her legend are due to confusion with the story of Hypatia."

This was moderate enough. We do not have to "disprove" the existence of martyrs, and the supposed evidence in favor of her historicity is now rejected even by some Catholic experts on martyrs, while the details are often comical and the general idea is certainly based upon Hypatia. Yet in this severely-examined and up-to-date compendium of knowledge we find the first sentence of the above changed to: Of St. Catherine of Alexandria history has little to tell." The rest is cut out and, we are brazenly told that "her actual existence is generally admitted." The article on Catherine of Siena was already inaccurately favorable to Catholic claims in the 11th edition, so it is allowed to stand. The masterful Siennese nun had nothing like the political influence ascribed to her, and it was not she but the threats of the Romans that brought the Popes back from Avignon to Rome.

In the article "Church history," to which in the new edition, the ominous X is appended, there are just slight changes here and there in the generally orthodox article. The treatment is as far removed from modern thought as Alaska is from Florida. It is much the same with the string of Popes who had the name Clement, The reader is still not told that many historians refuse to admit "Clement I" as the first of the Popes -- he is completely ignored in the Letter of the Romans to the Corinthians of the year 96 A.D. and many of the other Clements, who were notoriously of disreputable character, are discreetly retouched, though the earlier notices let them off lightly. Clement V, a Plrench adventurer, who sold himself to the French King on vile conditions in order to get the, Papacy, has the words "in pursuance of the King's wish he summoned the Council of Vienna" (to hold a trial of the monstrous vices of his predecessor and the still more scandalous vices of the Knights Templer, as we shall see) changed to: "Fearing that the state would proceed independently against the alleged heresies he summoned the Council of Vienna"; which is one sort of abbreviation and leaves the reader entirely ignorant of the character of the Pope. Clement VI, a notoriously sensuous and dissipated man, is left in his Catholic robes. Of Clement VII the earlier edition said: "Though free from the grosser vices of his predecessors he was a man of narrow outlook and interests." The whole of this is cut out, suppressing both his vices and those of his predecessors. Clement XIV is said to have suppressed the Jesuits only because he thought it necessary for the peace of the Church. This is a familiar Jesuit claim and an audacious lie. In the bull of condemnation Clement endorses all the charges against the Jesuits

The article "Conclave" sounds like one that was ripe for the shearer, but even in the 11th edition it was written by a priest. And it had a Jesuit touch that the censor is careful not to correct. As the leading authority it names a Catholic work which, in any case, few have any chance to consult, while it does not mention the standard history of Papal Conclaves, that of Petrucelli della Gattina (four volumes of amazing disclosures), of which there is now an English version (V. Petrie's "Triple Crown," 1935). But of little tricks of this kind, especially in pressing "Sound" authorities upon the reader and concealing from him that there are good critical works that he ought to read, there is so much that it would be tiresome to trace it all. We will consider larger matters.