oks of Livy is in the Vatican most painfully defaced by
some pious father for the purpose of writing on it some missal or
psalter, and there have been recently others discovered in the same
state. Inflamed with the blindest zeal against everything pagan, Pope
Gregory VII. ordered that the library of the Palatine Apollo, a treasury
of literature formed by successive emperors, should be committed to the
flames! He issued this order under the notion of confining the attention
of the clergy to the holy scriptures! From that time all ancient
learning which was not sanctioned by the authority of the church, has
been emphatically distinguished as _profane_ in opposition to _sacred_.
This pope is said to have burnt the works of Varro, the learned Roman,
that Saint Austin should escape from the charge of plagiarism, being
deeply indebted to Varro for much of his great work "the City of God."

The Jesuits, sent by the emperor Ferdinand to proscribe Lutheranism from
Bohemia, converted that flourishing kingdom comparatively into a desert.
Convinced that an enlightened people could never be long subservient to
a tyrant, they struck one fatal blow at the national literature: every
book they condemned was destroyed, even those of antiquity; the annals
of the nation were forbidden to be read, and writers were not permitted
even to compose on subjects of Bohemian literature. The mother-tongue
was held out as a mark of vulgar obscurity, and domiciliary visits were
made for the purpose of inspecting the libraries of the Bohemians. With
their books and their language they lost their national character and
their independence.

The destruction of libraries in the reign of Henry VIII. at the
dissolution of the monasteries, is wept over by John Bale. Those who
purchased the religious houses took the libraries as part of the booty,
with which they scoured their furniture, or sold the books as waste
paper, or sent them abroad in ship-loads to foreign bookbinders.[23]

The fear of destruction induced many to hide manuscripts under ground,
and in old walls. At the Reformation popular rage exhausted itself on
illuminated books, or MSS. that had red letters in the title page: any
work that was decorated was sure to be thrown into the flames as a
superstitious one. Red letters and embellished figures were sure marks
of being papistical and diabolical. We still find such volumes mutilated
of their gilt letters and elegant initials. Many have been fou