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Joseph McCabe writes:

The Encyclopedia is, as its name implies, an ancient British institution inspired by the great French Encyclopedia of the 18th century. As the American reading public increased it served both countries, and by 1920 the special needs of American readers and the great development of science and technics made it necessary to prepare an entirely recast edition. It now had an American as well as a British staff and publishing house. and it was dedicated to King George and President Hoover. The last trace of the idealism of its earlier publishers disappeared. What bargains were secretly made to secure a large circulation we do not know but when the work was completed in 1928 the Westminster Catholic Federation which corresponds to the Catholic Welfare organization in America, made this boast in its annual report:

“The revision of the Encyclopedia Britannica was undertaken with a view to eliminate matter which was objectionable from a Catholic point of view and to insert what was accurate and unbiased. The whole of the 28 volumes were examined, objectionable parts noted, and the reasons for their deletion or amendment given. There is every reason to hope that the new edition of the Britannica will he found very much more accurate and impartial than its predecessors.”

THE POPE’S EUNUCHS

A few years ago I had occasion to refer in one of my books to
the male soprani of the papal chapel at Rome. These castrated
males, sexually mutilated, as every priest and every Italian knew,
for soprani in the choir of the Sistine Chapel, were the amusement
of Rome when it developed a large degree of skepticism but a grave
scandal to the American and British Catholics who began to arrive
about
the middle of the last century. One of the vices which the
Spaniards had brought to Italy in the 16th century along with the
Borgia family and the Spanish Roman Emperors was the falsetto
singer. There were artists who could sing falsetto with
distinction, but as the opera gained in popularity in Italy the
practice began of emasculating boys with good voices and retaining
them as male soprani or, as the Italians, with their usual lack of
Christian reticence about sex called them, the castrati. They were
in every opera in the 18th century, but foreign visitors were never
reconciled to them. The famous English weekly,. The Spectator,
wrote about “the shrill celestial whine of eunuchs,” and by the end
of the 18th century they began to fade out of the opera-house.

But, as the word “celestial” indicates, they were found also
in the choir of all churches that were proud of their music,
particularly in the chapel of the Vatican Palace. the Sistine
Chapel, one of the greatest shrines of art as well as of virtue and
piety in Rome. And the church, clung to their eunuchs when public
opinion almost drove them out of opera. The plea seems to have been
that there was some indelicacy, or risk of it, in having females in
the church choir, so the priests chose to ignore the rather
indelicate nature of the operation of emasculation. The fact was as
well known as the celibacy of the clergy. Grovels standard
“Dictionary of Music and Musicians” (1927) says in a section titled
“Castrati”:

“Eunuchs were in vogue as singers until comparatively recent
times; they were employed in the choirs of Rome.”

So Macmillan’s and all other leading dictionaries of music,
and English and American visitors to Rome before 1870 who wrote
books rarely failed to mention, with smirks of humor or frowns of
piety, how the beautiful music of the papal choir was due in large
part to manufactured soprani. In the later years of the last
century
I talked with elderly men who had, out of curiosity, dined
or lunched with these quaint servants of God.

can reader wrote me that a Catholic friend, who had
doubtless, as is usual, consulted his pastor, indignantly denied
the statement. It was one of the usual “lies of Freethinkers.” For
an
easily accessible authority, reliable on such a point, I
referred him to the Encyclopedia Britannica. In all editions to
1928 the article “Eunuchs,” after discussing the barbaric African
custom
of
making eunuchs for the harem, said:

“Even more vile, as being practiced by a civilized European
nation, was the Italian practice of castrating boys to prevent the
natural development of the voice, in order to train them as adult
soprano singers, such as might formerly be found in the Sistine
Chapel. Though such mutilation is a crime punishable with severity,
the supply of soprani never failed as long as these musical powers
were in demand in high quarters. Driven long ago from the Italian
stage by public opinion they remained the musical glory and the
moral shame of the papal choir till the accession of Pope Leo XII,
one of whose first acts was to get rid of them.”

My correspondent replied, to my astonishment, that there was
no such passage in the Britannica, and I began the investigation of
which I give the results in the present little book. I found at
once
that in the 14th edition, which was published in 1929, the
passage had been scandalously mutilated, the facts about church
choirs suppressed, and the reader given an entirely false
impression of the work of Leo XII. In this new edition the whole of
the
above passage is cut out and this replaces it:

“The Italian practice of castrating boys in order to train
them as adult soprano singers ended with the accession of Pope Leo
XIII.”

The reader is thus given to understand that the zealous Pope
found
the shameless practice lingering in the opera-houses and
forbade it. The fact, in particular, that the Church of Rome had
until
the year 1878 not only permitted this gross mutilation but
required it for the purpose of its most sacred chapel — that Pope
Pius IX, the first Pope to be declared infallible by the Church,
the only modern Pope for whom the first official stage of
canonization was demanded, sat solemnly on his throne in the
Sistine Chapel for 20 years listening to “the shrill celestial
whine of eunuchs” — were deliberately suppressed. Those facts are
so glaringly inconsistent with the claims of Catholic writers in
America that the suppression was clearly due to clerical influence,
and I looked for the method in which it had been applied.

The Encyclopedia is, as its name implies, an ancient British
institution inspired by the great French Encyclopedia of the 18th
century. As the American reading public increased it served both
countries, and by 1920 the special needs of American readers and
the
great development of science and technics made it necessary to
prepare an entirely recast edition. It now had an American as well
as a British staff and publishing house. and it was dedicated to
King George and President Hoover. The last trace of the idealism of
its earlier publishers disappeared. What bargains were secretly
made to secure a large circulation we do not know but when the work
was completed in 1928 the Westminster Catholic Federation which
corresponds to the Catholic Welfare organization in America, made
this boast in its annual report:

“The revision of the Encyclopedia Britannica was undertaken
with a view to eliminate matter which was objectionable from a
Catholic point of view and to insert what was accurate and
unbiased. The whole of the 28 volumes were examined, objectionable
parts noted, and the reasons for their deletion or amendment given.
There is every reason to hope that the new edition of the
Britannica will he found very much more accurate and impartial than
its predecessors.”

This blazing Indiscretion seems to have struck sparks in the
publishing offices in London and New York — later reprints of this
emasculated edition have the imprint of “The University of
Chicago,” which seems to have taken over the responsibility — for
on
August
9, 1929, a singular public notice appeared in what is
called the Agony Column of the London Times. I should explain to
American readers that the first page of this famous paper is given
up to advertisements and public and private notices and the two
central columns are so much used by separated and broken-hearted
lovers (”Ethel. Where are you? I suffer agony for you. Your adoring
George,” etc.) and ladies who have lost their pets or are in need
of money etc., that many frivolous folk take the paper for the
humor of those two columns. One of the longest notices that ever
appeared in it was that of August 9., It rung:

“Westminster Catholic Federation (in large type). On behalf of
the Westminster Catholic Federation we desire to state that it has
been brought to our attention that the wording of the second
paragraph of the report of the Vigilance Sub-Committee of the
Federation, (page 18 of the Federation’s 21st Annual Report)
concerning the forthcoming edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica
has apparently given rise to a misunderstanding. We therefore wish
to make it clear that it was far from our intention in the above-
mentioned report to suggest that the Federation has exercised any
influence whatever upon the editing of the Encyclopedia. Such a
suggestion would be devoid of any vestige of foundation. The facts
are that the Federation offered to the Editor of the Encyclopedia
its assistance in checking statements of fact appearing in articles
in the previous edition dealing with the Catholic Church in its
historical, doctrinal, or theological aspects. This offer was
accepted, and the Federation was thus enabled to draw attention to
certain errors of date and other facts regarding the teaching and
discipline of the Catholic Church. Beyond this the Federation has
had no hand whatever in the preparation or editing of articles for
the new edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica on whatever subject,
and any suggestions to the contrary is, as we have said, without
the slightest foundation.

A.J., London, W.C.2.”

I have stressed the essential part of this singular
message so that the reader will bear in mind that Catholic
authorities gave the public their solemn assurance that they had
requested — demanded might be a better word — only alterations of
wrong dates and statements about the teaching and discipline of the
Church.

Penitence is a familiar and beautiful practice in the Catholic
world
but we common folk like to have truth even in penitence. The
example
I have already given of the suppression of material facts
and a natural comment on them in regard to eunuch singers and the
entirely false impression conveyed by the sentences which Catholics
supplied gives the lie at once to this apology. Undisputed facts
which
are strictly relevant to an examination of Catholic claims
have
been suppressed. They have nothing to do with dates or the
teaching and discipline of the Church. It is an axiom of Catholic
moral theology that suppression of the truth is a suggestion of
untruth,” and the substituted passage goes beyond this. I propose
to show that this introduction of a, painfully familiar Catholic
policy has been carried right through the Encyclopedia. Naturally
the immense majority of its articles do not in any way relate to
the church, and I do not claim that I have compared every short
notice
or every sentence in longer articles, in the 11th and 14th
editions of the Britannica. Even these short unsigned notices,
referring to such matters as popes and saints, have often been
falsified, and I give a few examples. But I am mainly concerned
with important alterations. There are still passages in the
Encyclopedia which the Catholic clergy do not like. Writers who are
still alive may have objected to the adulteration of their work, or
the
facts
may be too notorious for the editors to permit
interference. But I give here a mass of evidence of the corrupt use
of the great power which the Catholic Church now has: a warning of
what the public may expect now that that Church has, through its
wealth and numbers, secured this pernicious influence on
publications, the press, the radio, and to an increasing extent on
education and even the cinema.

---

CASTRATING THE ENCYCLOPEDIA

It will be useful to give first the outcome of a somewhat
cursory survey, page by page, of the first few volumes of the
Encyclopedia. More important — in their bearing on the Church –
articles in later volumes commonly have the initial X at the close,
which seems to be the cloak of the Catholic adulterator. This will
enable any reader to compare for himself passages in the 11th and
the 14th editions, but the conspirator shows his hand even in large
numbers of short unsigned, especially biographical, notices. It is,
of course, understood that the work had to be considerably
abbreviated to accommodate new developments of science and life, in
the 14th edition, but when you find that the curtailing consists in
suppressing an unpleasant judgment or a fact about a Pope while
unimportant statements of fact are untouched, and when you find the
life of
a
saintly man or the flattering appreciation of his work
little affected while the life or work of a heretic is sacrificed,
you have a just suspicion.

An example is encountered early in the first volume in the
short notices of the Popes Adrian I and Adrian II. Adrian was the
Pope of Charlemagne’s time, and every historian knows that the
emperor came, as he shows in his letters, to despise the Pope and
to defy him on a point of doctrine; ‘for at that time the use and
veneration of statues in the churches was made a doctrinal issue
between East and West. The notice of Adrian in the older edition of
the Encyclopedia was one of those inexpert paragraphs by some man
who knew nothing about the importance of the quarrel, but a
priestly hand has untruthfully inserted in the new edition:

“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.

h 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.

cle 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.

sing 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.

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.

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.

---

THE TAMING OF HISTORY

The short and worthless note under “Chivalry” in the old
Encyclopedia would in any new edition that frankly aimed to give
the reorder summaries of modern knowledge have been replaced by
some account of the present general agreement of historians that
the alleged Age of Chivalry (110-1400 A.D.) is sheer myth. No
leading historical expert on France, Germany, England, Italy, or
Spain during that period recognizes it. They all describe such a
generally sordid character in the class of knights and nobles,
particularly in what are considered by romantic writers the
specific virtues of chivalry — chastity and the zeal for Justice
– that the student of general history feels justified in
concluding that, on our modern idea of chivalry, this was precisely
the most unchivalrous section of civilized history. Of this truth
not, a syllable is given, not even a hint that the myth is
questioned. So editors, moral essayists and preachers, who take
their history from the Encyclopedia, continue to shame our age with
reminders of the glorious virtues of the later Middle Ages,
However, we will return to this when we come to “Knighthood” and
“Troubadours” where we shall find a little more satisfaction.

The article on “Confucius” in the 11th edition was written by
a Protestant missionary, Dr. Legge, and he was not only a fine
scholar of Chinese but a singularly honest type of missionary. In
the 14th edition his excellent five pages are cut to three. One
recognizes the need for abbreviation, though when one finds a four-
page article on Falconry, which is really rather rare today, 16
pages on football, etc., one feels that the work of condensing
might have been done differently. However in the case of a great
Atheist like Confucius an Encyclopedia that would please the clergy
must not pay too many compliments, and the Catholic X, who probably
knows as little about Chinese as about biochemistry valiantly cuts
the work of the expert to three pages, adding his X to Legge’s
initials at the foot. One illustration of the way in which it is
done
will suffice. Confucius so notoriously rejected belief in gods
and spirits that Legge’s statement of this has to remain. But there
is one point on which Christians hold out desperately, Legge told
the
truth about it, and X cuts it out.

It is whether Confucius anticipated Christ by many centuries
in formulating the Golden Rule, or, to meet the better-informed
apologists, whether Confucius recommended it only in a negative
form. As nothing is more common, and probably has been since the
Stone Age, than to hear folk say, “Do as you would be done by,” or
some
such phrase, which is the Golden rule in fireside English, the
fuss about it is amusing. However, the champions of Christ’s unique
moral genius will have it that Confucius gave it only in the
negative form. “What you do not like when done to yourself do not
do to others.” As the Christian decalogue consists almost entirely
of negations, that is not bad. But in the 11th edition Legge goes
on to explain that when a disciple asked the master if it could be
expressed in a word he used a compound Chinese word which means “As
Heart” (or Reciprocity), and Legge says that he conceived the, rule
in its most positive and most comprehensive form. The Rev. Mr. X
suppresses this to save space and Inserts this pointless sentence:

“It has been said that he only gave the rule in a negative
form to give force to a positive statement.”

So the preacher end pamphleteer continue to inform folk on the
authority of J. Logge in the Encyclopedia Britannica that Confucius
knew the Golden Rule only in the inferior negative form.

s no need to let X loose with his little hatchet upon
the article “Constantine.” It was, like “Charlemagne,” “Justinian,”
and most such articles already subservient to piety and an outrage
on historical truth. Constantine’s character is falsified by
suppressing facts. For instance, in profane (and ancient Roman)
history you will read that Constantine was driven from Rome by the
scorn of the Romans because he had had his wife and his son
murdered, probably in a fit of jealousy. Here his quitting Rome and
founding Constantinople is represented as a matter of high strategy
and a core for the interests of religion. Not a hint about the
“execution” of his wife, bastard son, and nephew. The Romans
compared him to Nero.

In 20 pages on “Crime” we do not get any statistical
information whatever about the relation of crime to religious
education, which after all is of some interest to our age, so,
skipping a few minor matters, we come to “Crusades.” Again the
article in the old Encyclopedia was so devout and misleading that
X could not improve upon it. It admits that Europe had become
rather boorish owing to the barbaric invasions but claims that it
did provide the Church with the grand force of knight-hood to use
against the wicked Moslem:

“The institution of chivalry represents such a clerical
consecration, for ideal ends and noble purposes, of the martial
impulses which the Church had endeavored to cheek….”

And so on. A lie in every syllable. The knights of Europe
were, with rare exceptions, erotic brutes — their ladies as bad –
as all authoritative historians describe them. The Pope — his
words
are preserved — dangled the loot of the highly civilized
East before their eyes in summoning the first Crusade; and the
story, almost from beginning to end, is a mixture of superstition,
greed, and savagery. The only faint reference to the modern
debunking of the traditional fairy tale is:

“When all is said the Crusades remain a wonderful and
perpetually astonishing act in the great drama of human life.”

Even a cleric must be 150 years old and ignorant of history to
write honestly like this article.

Pope “Saint” Damasus I retains his nimbus in the new great
Encyclopedia though he is now known to have been an unscrupulous
Spanish adventurer and, as contemporary priests said, “tickler of
matrons’ ears.” A few remarks that were made in the short article
in the 11th edition about the incredible massacres at his election
and the impeachment of him later (for adultery) in the civil court
are cut out. But while “Damasus” is abbreviated thus by cutting out
references to his misdeeds, the article “Darwin,” is shortened by
suppressing whole paragraphs of Professor Poulton’s fine
appreciation of his character and work and the world-honors he
received. “David” is in this modern encyclopedia treated as much
more important than Darwin, and, while even theologians now often
reject him as a myth or a dim shapeless figure, almost the whole
biblical account of him is given as history.

But I have overlooked the short article on the “Dark Age,”
which is nauseous. There was no article in the 11th edition on it,
so an obscure professor at a third-rate British University has been
commissioned to write one. The phrase was, he says, “formerly used
to cover the whole period between the end of the classical
civilization and the revival of learning in the 15th century.”
Bunk. No historian extended it beyond the end of the 11th century.
In
short,
he
copies certain American professors of history who
cater to Catholics and who give no evidence that they can even read
medieval literature. The period is only dark “owing to the
insufficiency of the historical evidence” yet “great intellectual
work was done in unfavorable conditions.” No on except an expert
today reads any book written between 420 and 1100 A.D.; and if that
doesn’t mean a Dark Age we wonder what the word means. The writer
does not even know that it was “the Father of Catholic History,”
Cardinal Baronius, who coined the phrase.

Even worse, from the historical angle, is the article
“Democracy.” It is said that “there was no room” for the idea of
democracy in the Dark Age,” but “Christianity with its doctrine of
brotherhood and its sense of love and pity had brought into being
an idea unknown to the pagan world, the idea of man’s inherent
dignity and importance.” We resent this dumping of the sermons of
priests into a modern encyclopedia, but it is even worse when the
emancipation of the serfs and the granting of charters to cities
are traced to that source. The purely economic causes of those
developments are treated in every modern manual. What is worse, the
writer conceals, or does not know, that when the democratic
aspiration did at length appear in Italy the Papacy fought it
truculently for two centuries. I find only one scrap of virtue in
the article. American Catholics had not yet invented the myth that
Jefferson got the idea of democracy from the Jesuit Suarez, so it
makes no appearance here, but the writer, not anticipating it,
says:

“The revolt of the colonies was not, strictly speaking,
inspired by a belief in democracy though it resulted in the
establishment of a republic,”

How
many times have I pointed that out against the Jesuits!

cle “Education” is another beautiful piece of work –
from the Catholic angle. The historical part of it was written for
the earlier edition by a strictly orthodox Christian schoolmaster,
Welton, and was a sheer travesty of the history of education as it
is now written in all manuals, yet the article in the new edition
is
signed
“X and C.B.” (Cloudsley Brereton, a British inspector of
schools with not the least authority but with the virtue of faith).
In point of fact it is Welton’s original article a little condensed
but little altered. They could not well have made it worse from the
historical point of view. The abridgment has cleared away most of
the few good points about Roman education, because any reference to
the system of universal free schooling in Roman days clashes with
the clerical slogan, which is the theme of this article, that the
new religion “gave the world schools.” “It was,” says the writer,
“into this decaying civilization that Christianity brought new
life.” Although only a few catholic schools are mentioned the
reader
is given the impression that the new religion inspired a
great growth of schools in an illiterate world. The undisputed
truth is that by 350 A.D., before Christianity was established by
force, there were free primary and secondary schools everywhere,
and by 450 A.D. they had all perished: that in 350 the majority of
the workers was literate, and by 450 — and for centuries afterward
– probably not 1 percent of them could read. Of course it is all
put down to the barbarians. “Most of the public schools
disappeared, and such light of learning as there was kept burning
in the monasteries and was confined to priests and monks.” The
monks were, as I have repeatedly shown from Christian writers from
Augustine to Benedict, mostly an idle, loose, and vagrant class,
and the few regular houses later established were interested only
in religious education. Pope Gregory I forbade the clergy to open
secular schools.

The article proceeds on these totally false lines through the
whole of the Middle Ages. The work of Charlemagne, which is now
acknowledged to have been paltry and to have perished at his death,
is grossly misrepresented, and the fact that he was inspired in
what educational zeal he had by the school-system of the anti-Papal
Lombards is concealed. Not a word is said about the Lombard system.
It is almost as bad in explaining why at last — six centuries
after
the Papacy took over the Roman rule — schools did begin to
spread. There is just one line of reference to the Spanish-Arabs
who inspired it by their restoration of the Roman system of free
general education. Not a word is said about the fact that in Arab-
Spain there were millions of books, finely written on paper and
bound, while no abbey in Europe had more than a few hundred
parchments. The origin of the universities is similarly
misrepresented, It is all covered by this monstrous statement:

“On the whole it may be concluded that in medieval times the
provision of higher instruction was adequate to the demand and that
relatively to the culture of the time the mass of the people were
by no means sunk in brutish ignorance.”

“Brutish” is, of course, part of the trick. Read it simply as
a denial that the mass of the people were totally illiterate and
then ask your-self how it is that, even after all the work, of the
Jesuits and the Protestants, still by the middle of the 18th
century between 80 and 90 percent of the people of Europe were
illiterate. The writer is so reckless in clerical myths that he
even
says
that the Age of Chivalry greatly helped:

“The education of chivalry aimed at fitting the noble youth to
be a worthy knight, a just and wise master, and a prudent manager
of an estate.”

You might just as well pretend that Cinderella is a true
account of certain events in the Middle Ages. The whole long
article which is signed X is an outrage when it is presented to the
20th century. The falsehood is carried on over the Reformation
period and into the supposed account of the real beginning of
education of the people in the 18th century.

I
should have to write another encyclopedia if I proposed to
analyze the hundreds of articles in the Britannica which are, like
this, just tissues of clerical false claims, It might be said that,
like the religious literature in which these myths still flourish,
the Encyclopedia has to cater to the religious public. That plea is
in
itself based upon an anachronism and on untruth. There is
abundant evidence that today the majority of the reading public,
whatever they think about God, do not accept the Christian
religion. In Britain and France the clergy frankly acknowledge
this,
and it
is concealed only by sophistry in America. But I am
not suggesting that an Encyclopedia that professes to have been
rewritten to bring it into harmony with modern life and thought
ought to exclude religious writers. I say only that when they are
entrusted with articles which are wholly or in part historical they
must conform to modern historical teaching. These articles, judged
not by atheistic but by ordinary historical works, are tissues of
untruth; and a good deal of this untruth, the part which chiefly
concerns me here, has been inserted in the new edition by the
Catholic “revisers” who lurk behind the signature X.

As this mark X is in the new edition added to the initials of
Mark Pattison at the foot of the article “Erasmus” we look for
adulterations. As, however, the original article softened the
heresies of the great Dutch humanist there is not much change. Just
a few little touches make him less important and nearer to
orthodoxy, and passages reflecting on the foul state of the Church
at the time are excised. With the subject “Evolution,” on the other
hand, no modern editor would dare to allow a Catholic writer to
insert his fantastic views in a publication that professes to be
up-to-date in science. But a place is found for reaction. The
British, Professor Lloyd Morgan is commissioned to write for the
new edition a special article on the evolution of the mind, and it
is based upon the eccentric theory of “emergent evolution” worked
out by him in support of religion, which was dying when he wrote
the article and is now quite dead in the scientific world. Next is
added a section on ethics and evolution by Sir Arthur Thompson, a
Unitarian whose peculiar twists of the facts of science to suit his
mysticism have no place whatever outside religious literature.

The article “Galilee” would be examined eagerly by most
critics for evidence of this clerical “reviser.” But even in the
11th edition the article was written by a Catholic astronomer, Miss
Agnes Clerke, and X seems to have been given the task of cutting
her five pages down to two (while 16 are devoted to football), that
gives
him opportunities. He leaves untouched the statement that at
the
first condemnation Galileo was ordered to write no more on the
subject and “he promised to obey”; which is seriously disputed and
rests on poor evidence. Both Catholic writers refuse to insert the
actual sentence of condemnation, which pledged the Roman Church to
the position that it is “formal heresy” to say that the earth
travels round the sun. When he comes to the second condemnation X
suppresses Miss Clerke’s hint that Galileo had ridiculed the Pope
in his Dialogue, which was the main motive of the Pope’s vindictive
action, and attributes the procedure to Galileo’s supposed breaking
of his promise. He saves a precious line by cutting out Miss
Clerke’s perfectly true statement that he was detained in the
palace
of the Inquisition. In short, it is now a sound Catholic
version of the condemnation of Galileo from first to last, and it
does not warn the reader or take into account in the least the fact
that since Miss Clerke wrote her article Favar has secured and
published (in Italian) new and most important documents on the
case,
and they have made the character and conduct of the Pope more
contemptible than ever.

The
fine eight-page article on Gibbon by the learned Professor
Bury in the earlier edition could not expect to escape. Space must
be
saved; though one would hardly realize this when one finds 60
pages devoted to Geometry, which no one ever learns from an
encyclopedia. The reviser condenses the six and a half pages of
Gibbon’s life and character to one page and then sublimely adds his
X to Bury’s initials as the joint authors of the article. You can
guess
how much of Gibbon’s greatness is left.

On the other hand the notice of Pope “St.” Gregory I, the Pope
who forbade the opening of schools and made the Papacy the richest
landowner and slave-owner in Europe by persuading the rich that the
end of the world was at hand and they had better pass on their
property to the church, remains as fragrant as ever in the new
edition. So does the account of Gregory VII (Hildebrand), the
fanatic who violently imposed celibacy upon the clergy (impelling
mobs to attack them and their wives), who put the crown on Papal
Fascism, who used forgeries and started Wars in the interest of the
Church, who hired the savage Normans to fall upon the Romans (who
then drove him into exile), etc. Naturally, the modern reader must
not know these things.

The article “Guilds” in the 11th edition; by Dr Gross, is the
source
of the monstrous Catholic claim that the Church inspired
these medieval corporations of the workers. It is preserved in all
its untruthfulness in the new edition. After a short and disdainful
notice
of various profane theories of the origin of the Guilds he
says:

“No. theory of origin can be satisfactory which ignores the
influence of the Christian Church.”

It was, as usual, the sublime and unique Christian doctrine of
the brotherhood of man: yet this had been the cardinal principle of
Stoicism and Epicureanism 300 years B.C. The statement is, in the
mouth of an expert on the Guilds, breath-taking in its audacity.
The documents preserved in the Migne (Catholic) collection show
clearly that the Guilds were pagan in origin — they were most
probably relies of the old Roman trade unions — and that the
Church fought them truculently for 100 years after their appearance
in Germany. Gross shows that he has read these documents. He says
that the Guilds were suspected of political conspiracy and opposed
on that ground. On the contrary they were denounced as pagan orgies
(suppers, like those of the Roman unions, at which priests got
drunk
and behaved improperly.) X, of course, leaves this pious
creed in all its purity.

l, like Gibbon, gets his distinction reduced in the grim
need of curtailing the old articles: a need which looks peculiar
when, a few pages later, General Smuts is invited to contribute a
four-page article on his ridiculous “Philosophy” (Holism), which
has
never been taken seriously. But it favors religion and — not
to put too fine a point on it — Smuts rendered high political
service to Britain. However while space is so precious the reviser
of the Encyclopedia finds it necessary to add this to the decimated
article on Haeckel: “Although Haeckel occupies no serious position
in the history of philosophy there can be no doubt that he was very
widely read in his own day and that he is very typical of the
school
of extreme evolutionary thought.”

The
last three words give the writer away. It is only the
Catholic writer who makes a distinction between schools of
“evolutionary thought.” As to his having been widely read, no
scientific work since Darwin’s “Origin” had anything like the
circulation of Haeckells “Riddle.” It sold millions of copies in
more
than 20 languages. And a serious modern writer on Haeckel
would have pointed out that while he despised philosophers and
never claimed to be one, he remarkably anticipated modern thought
in insisting that matter and energy are just two aspects of one
reality. Of this fundamental doctrine of his the writer says not a
word.

Even
the article “Heresy” of the old edition, though certainly
not written by a heretic, suffers the usual discriminating process
of curtailment. The writer had said:

“As
long as the Christian Church was itself persecuted by the
pagan empire it advocated freedom of conscience . . . but almost
immediately after Christianity was adopted as the religion of the
Roman Empire the persecution of men for religious opinions began.”

That of course is cut out. Then a long list of Catholic
persecutions in the Middle Ages is cut out and replaced by this
grossly misleading sentence:

“The heresies of the Middle Ages were not matters of doctrine
merely (however important) but were symptoms of spiritual movements
common
to the people of many lands and in one way or other
threatening the power of the Roman Catholic system.”

An article on the subject which frankly aimed at providing
facts
for modern folk would have at least mentioned the death-
sentence for heresy, which is obstinately kept in force in Catholic
Canon
Law today. Not a word about it, though on this subject of
penalizing religious opinions it is the question most frequently
asked today.

The article “Hospitals” gives us a choice specimen of the art
of
X-ing.
It consist of two parts, history and modern practice. To
the historical section, which it is of considerable interest to the
Catholic propagandist to misrepresent, X does not append his mark,
but he puts it to the section on modern practice, of which he knows
nothing. Was this due to an editorial or typographical error?
Listen. The old article properly gave a gummary account of the
ample provision for the sick in many pre-christian civilizations,
especially the Roman, and added:

“In Christian days no establishments were founded for the
relief
of the sick till the time of Constantine.”

He
might have added that even then they were few and were
merely intended to keep the Christian sick away from the pagan
temples of Aesculapius which were the chief Roman hospitals. All
this is cut but and replaced by the totally misleading or totally
false statement:

“But although hospitals cannot be claimed as a direct result
of Christianity no doubt it tended to instill humanist views, and
as civilization grew men and women of many races came to realize
that the treatment of disease in buildings set apart exclusively
for the care of the sick were in fact a necessity in urban
districts.”

We have several good and by no means anti-Christian histories
of hospitals today. They show a fine record in India under the
Buddhists King Asoka and a creditable record for the Greek-Roman
world in imperialist days. They show also that the Christian record
the period of confusion after the fall of Roman Empire but from 450
to the 18th century is miserable; and thus in an encyclopedia that
advertises that it is rewritten in order to ensure confidence that
the reader is getting what is generally agreed upon by the experts
in each department, writers are permitted to take the reader even
farther away from the truth than — in articles of this kind –
they
were earlier in the century. A score of articles like this
which
are supposed to prove by historical facts the nature of the
Christian social inspiration and social record are cheap and
untruthful religious propaganda.

Even in the short notice of Hypatia the clerical surgeon has
used his knife. Short as it was, we shall be told that it had to be
curtailed (though the editor spares eight pages for Icelandic
literature) but the omissions are significant. The earlier article
rightly said that she was a “mathematician and philosopher,” and
contemporaries speak of her works on mathematics not philosophy.
Yet even the word “mathematician,” which does not take up much
space does give us a better idea of the solid character of Hypatia,
is cut out. The earlier writer says that she was “barbarously
murdered by the Nitrian monks and the fanatical Christian mob,”
that the Caesareum to which her body was dragged was “then a
Christian church” and that the remains of the aged scholar (as she
was)
were burned piecemeal. All the phrases I have italicized
(BOLD) are carefully cut out, as is also the whole of the following
passage:

“Most prominent among the actual perpetrators of the crime was
Peter
the Reader (cleric), but there seems little reason to doubt
the complicity of Cyril (the archbishop).”

So the “correction of dates” and curtailing some articles to
admit
new matter” just happen to take a form which greatly reduces
the
guilt of the Christian Church in the foulest crime of the age;
for the greatest lady in the whole Greek world at the time was
stripped in the street and her flesh cut from her bones with broken
pottery by monks and people directly inflamed against her by the
archbishop. This is the sort of thing for which the University of
Chicago now stands sponsor.

ote on “Idealism,” which is colorless, I notice that
the improvers of the old Britannica have recommended a work by “J.
Royce”;
a point which must rather annoy the professors since Josiah
Royce is one of the most distinguished philosophers America has yet
produced. More important is the great saving of space in reducing
the size of the article “Illegitimacy.” In face of the drivel that
Catholic apologists talk about influence of their church on sexual
conduct we have been accustomed to point out, amongst other things,
that bastards are far more common in countries where the Roman and
Greek churches are, or were until recent years, more powerful. In
the old Britannica the article gave a wealth of statistics,
particularly about Ireland, to help the student on this point. Out
they
have all gone — to find more space, of course, for cricket
and football. “Illiteracy” is just as little seriously informing
for the inquirer who wants to know whether it is true that the
church
is the Great Educator.

The article on “Immortality” was much too pious in the old
edition of the Encyclopedia to need any “improvement.” It stands,
like a hundred other articles, as a monument of what respectable
folk thought in Victorian days. It was out of date even in 1911.
Since then the belief in immortality is almost dead in philosophy,
and the teaching of psychology today emphatically excludes it. Even
theologians doubt it or at least widely admit that attempts to
prove it are futile. Of this state of modern thought the article
gives no more idea than it does of Existentialism.

Similarly, the article “Infallibility” in the old edition was
written by a Catholic and needed no “correction of dates.” But it
was better not to let the reader know that it was written by a
Catholic, so away go his initials, The article “Infanticide” would
be considered by many more important than archery and croquet and
other genteel sports of our grandmothers, because it is one of the
familiar claims of the apologist that while the ancient Romans were
appallingly callous on the subject the new religion brought the
world a new sense of the importance of even a newborn babe’s life.
The old edition was certainly defective in its account of the
practice in ancient Rome but even the little it said has been cut
out. An inquirer into the subject will not get one single ray of
light on Roman practice from the new article; and it is candidly
signed
X.

---

POPES AND INQUISITORS

Then we come to the long string of Popes who adopted the name
“Innocent” when they donned the white robes of “the Vicar of
Christ.” We know little about some of them, but others are so well
known, and there is so little dispute about their character, that
the name is a mockery. All that the Catholic editor could do in
such cases was to make a few of those neat little cuts with his
scissors that at least make the record seem grayish instead of
black. For instance, under “Innocent III” the old article spoke
about
the “horrible massacre” of the Albigensians which he ordered.
The word “horrible” has been cut out; it was, no doubt, too strong
an expression for the fact that only a few hundred thousand men,
women, and children were savagely massacred because they would not
bow to Rome. No one doubts the religious sincerity and strict
personal conduct of Innocent III, but this article does not give
the reader the least inkling of the perfidy, dishonesty, and
cruelty into which his fanaticism led him.

It is different with Innocent VIII, an elderly roue who got
the papacy in the fight of the factions and immensely promoted the
debauchery of Rome and the Vatican. The old article said,
moderately enough:

“His youth, spent at the Neapolitan court, was far from
blameless, and it is far from certain that he was married to the
mother
of his numerous family.”

As he was credited by public opinion with only 16 children the
censor must have thought this excessive, so cut out the whole
passage. Naturally he cut out also the later passage: His curia was
notoriously corrupt, and he himself openly practiced nepotism in
favoring his children, concerning whom the epitaph is quoted: “He
guiltily begot six sons and as many daughters, so that Rome has the
right to call him Father.” Thus he gave to his undeserving son
Franceschetto several towns near Rome and married him to the
daughter of Larenzo de Medici (the greatest prince of Italy).

is is cut out of the new edition of the Encyclopedia,
which
was to appeal to all by its accuracy. There