Another embarrassment which afflicted men of learning, was the danger of possessing books by heretics and the difficulty of procuring them.[130] Yet they could not carry on their Biblical studies without reference to such authors as, for example, Erasmus or Reuchlin.  The universities loudly demanded that books of sound erudition by heretics should at least be expurgated and republished.  Yet the process of disfiguring their arguments, effacing the names of authors, expunging the praises of heretics, altering quotations and retouching them all over, involved so much labor that the demand was never satisfied.  The strict search instituted at the frontiers stopped the importation of books,[131] and carriers refused to transmit them.  In their dread of the Inquisition, these folk found it safer to abstain from book traffic altogether.  Public libraries were exposed to intermittent raids, nor were private collections safe from such inspection.  The not uncommon occurrence of old books in which precious and interesting passages have been erased with printer’s ink, or pasted over with slips of opaque paper, testifies to the frequency of these inquisitorial visitations.[132] Any casual acquaintance, on leaving a man’s house, might denounce him as the possessor of a proscribed volume; and everybody who owned a book-case was bound to furnish the Inquisitors with a copy of his catalogue.  Book-stalls lay open to the malevolence of informers.  We possess an insolent letter of Antonio Possevino to Cardinal Sirleto, telling him that he had noticed a forbidden book by Filiarchi on a binder’s counter, and bidding him to do his duty by suppressing it.[133] When this Cardinal’s library was exposed for sale after his death, the curious observed that it contained 1872 MSS. in Greek and Latin, 530 volumes of printed Greek books, and 3939 volumes of Latin, among which 39 were on the Index.  But charity suggested that the Cardinal had retained these last for censure.

[Footnote 130:  Sarpi’s Letters abound in useful information on this topic.  Writing to French correspondents, he complains weekly of the impossibility even in Venice of obtaining books.  See, for instance, Lettere, vol. i. pp. 286, 287, 360, vol. ii. p. 13.  In one passage he says that the importation of books into Italy is impeded at Innsbruck, Trento, and throughout the Tyrolese frontiers (vol. i. p. 74).  In another he warns his friends not to send them concealed in merchandise, since they will fall under so many eyes in the custom-houses and lazzaretti (vol. i. p. 303).]

[Footnote 131:  It was usual at this epoch to send Protestant publications from beyond the Alps in bales of cotton or other goods.  This appears from the Lucchese proclamations against heresy published in Arch.  Stor. vol. x.]

[Footnote 132:  I may mention that having occasion to consult Savonarola’s works in the Public Library of Perugia, which has a fairly good collection of them, I found them useless for purposes of study by reason of these erasures and Burke-plasters.]