As a socially embedded practice, early modern censorship aimed to preserve public order. Accordingly, negotiations between censors, authors and printers reflect changing ideas about the public. This chapter examines different rationalities of censorship in eighteenth-century Denmark, focusing on the Faculty of Theology at the University of Copenhagen.¹ It might have been expected that, for instance, religious books were evaluated according to monolithic standards of Lutheran orthodoxy, and indeed theological conflicts are seen to have affected practices of censorship; but these practices cannot easily be reduced to a simple framework. Instead, we argue that the relationship between theological censorship and Enlightenment ideals is complex and somewhat misunderstood in overarching narratives of secularization, which often point to the Struensee regime (1770–1772) as a watershed between robust censorship and freedom of print.

In the Danish monarchy, institutionalized forms of censorship regulation were introduced in the sixteenth century, following the spread of print culture. The Church Ordinance of 1537/1539 stated that nothing could be printed without the approval of the university and the clergy.² The twenty-first chapter of the second book of the Danske Lov (‘Danish Code’, 1683) confirmed such pre-publication censorship, which remained the legal foundation of later practices.³ By contrast, unrestricted freedom of print was introduced in 1770 under the regime of Johann Friedrich Struensee. On 14 September 1770, King Christian VII signed off on this unprecedented freedom.⁴ Unbridled debates immediately ensued; and as early as October 1771, the authorities proclaimed that defamation in print was still considered a crime. An Act of October 1773 further prescribed the imposition of severe fines to combat defamatory speech. In 1799 pre-publication censorship was partly reintroduced, as such a procedure became required of authors who had previously been punished for ‘abusing’ the freedom of print. Despite the short-lived period of the unrestricted freedom of print, the 1770 decree remains a milestone of the Enlightenment and an important step towards the abolition of religiously motivated censorship.⁵ Struensee’s decree did not come as a bolt from the blue, though. Before pre-publication censorship was removed, social changes had taken place – changes which, albeit incrementally, paved the way for what was to come.⁶

Throughout the eighteenth century, the robust requirements of censorship had increasingly become an obstacle to the expanding print culture and the successful business of print houses. This was especially true of print shops located outside the capital. Slowly but steadily, the official system had to adapt to a growing commercial market which developed outside Copenhagen’s city walls. Initially, this adaptation was able to base itself on existing practices because local authorities had long taken an active part in the process of censoring religious manuscripts. Printers outside of Copenhagen were thus accustomed to interacting with bishops and, through these interactions, to securing a written assessment which allowed them to submit manuscripts to the Faculty of Theology. Indeed, bishops would increasingly be entrusted with the evaluation of minor works dealing with religion, while works containing more substantial argumentation still had to be shipped off to Copenhagen. During the 1730s and 1740s, printers in Viborg, Trondheim and Aalborg were also allowed to exercise local censorship; and following the expansion of the book market around the mid-eighteenth century, similar permissions were granted to printers in other provincial towns.⁷ Centralized censorship seems to have adapted to general developments in society and thereby lost, or at least loosened, its iron grip on the public sphere.⁸

The present chapter focuses on such small-scale changes in censorship. These changes not only emerged among local authorities but also in the censorship undertaken at the Faculty of Theology. This development is documented in a surviving protocol that details the censoring of minor works during the period from 1738 until 1770.⁹ The following discussion concentrates on this protocol and the historical period after 1737, when two institutional bodies in the Danish capital became charged with censoring religious writings. This situation was brought about by changes within the religious system itself: these changes deeply affected censorship, moving its exercise from a ‘traditional’ type of authority to the anonymous realm of institutional authority. We present the actual censorship as it is recorded in the protocol: this source reveals how a variety of concerns informed censorship, ranging from theological, stylistic and grammatical to juridical and economic concerns. The latter aspect is discussed with respect to the importation of books, as this activity was perceived in terms of economic theory and in the words of the university professors.

Institutional anonymity

The censorship procedures that were codified in the Danske Lov of 1683 stated that censors were personally responsible for their assessments of manuscripts, and thus the individual censor’s professional evaluation of a manuscript was easily associated with his private conscience. However, with the introduction of the censorship protocols in 1738 the traditional printed personal assessment was replaced by an anonymized protocol, which effectively separated the censor’s official/public duties from his private beliefs and consciousness.

King Christian VI’s reign, lasting from 1730 until 1746, has often been associated with his pious beliefs and ambition to reorganize the Church. Christian and his advisers also implemented financial policies that facilitated what would later be known as ‘den florissante periode’ – that is, the flourishing period (1778–1807).¹⁰ Often overlooked, royal piety also affected the structures of censorship. Strongly inspired by the Hallesian brand of Pietism that had been initiated by August Hermann Francke (1663–1727), the King, among other initiatives, established the Collegium on 1 October 1737. This institutional body was given the task of administering clerical and theological matters pertaining to the Church itself, but also to schools and to the University of Copenhagen. Its duties included the supervision of censorship of theological and religious writings. The emergence of this institution has attracted interest from historians; but little attention has been paid to the actual, and sometimes creative, practices of censorship. Consequently, our focus is on these practices as they unfolded at the Faculty of Theology after the foundation of the Collegium.¹¹

For a long period, during the first decades of the eighteenth century, Christen Worm (1672–1737) had served as Dean of the Faculty of Theology and as Bishop of Zealand. In an unprecedented move, Worm’s successor, Peder Hersleb (1689–1757), declined to head the theological professors. Instead, Hersleb was awarded a prominent position within the Collegium, leaving the Faculty of Theology without a dean. On 24 September 1738, therefore, the professors petitioned King Christian VI that this prominent position should be made a temporary one: each professor should hold office as dean for either six or twelve months. The professors suggested that, alternatively, their most senior member be elected: this would have left Hans Steenbuch (1664–1740) in charge, but owing to old age and failing health Steenbuch had already requested not to be taken into consideration. In further support of making the dean’s position temporary, the professors added that this would help ease the burden of censoring all theological works, which, as ‘the heaviest workload … surpasses the powers of one man’.¹² In the vacuum of 1737, brought about by religious conflicts, the professors were suggesting a rationalization of their organization.

The Crown consulted the Collegium before answering the faculty’s petition. Its members approved the request on condition that an additional change be introduced, a change directly related to the practice of censorship: the name of the professor who acted as censor was no longer to appear on the printed page, where it had featured beneath the imprimatur up to that point. This might seem like a trivial detail, but it was not. The removal of the institutional sign and the censor’s name is accounted for by reference to ‘the reputation of a righteous theologian’. More specifically, the public might infer ‘that a censor is of the same opinion as the book that he has approved’.¹³ We must conclude that the proposed disassociation of the censor’s name from the right to print was intended to facilitate the dissemination of religious literature – that is, pietistic literature – which professors at the Faculty of Theology found questionable. This was undoubtedly an important motive for the faculty’s petition. However, the deletion of the censor’s name, identifying a professional evaluation with a private individual, also has more profound, societal consequences.¹⁴ The Collegium’s suggestion purposefully uprooted any monolithic framework for censorship. It indirectly implied the emergence of a public order wherein theological semantics was gradually losing its relevance while social subsystems and their semantics exercised an increasing influence. This differentiation, and the increase in societal complexity that followed from it, was rooted in the religious system itself. It was not external forces but rather internal conflicts that brought about this professionalization of censorship. This initiative was primarily a means to a theological end: members of the Faculty of Theology could now approve books of a pietistic flavour, although they would not want to be publicly associated with this stance. The anonymity afforded by the protocols has been recognized by other scholars, but the underlying reasons have been interpreted in different ways. For instance, Jakob Maliks has argued that the protocols were introduced as an attempt to conceal the academic discord at the faculty from the public eye.

The Crown implemented what the Collegium suggested, and on 17 October 1738, the Faculty of Theology therefore began keeping two record books or protocols. One protocol, dedicated to ‘major works’, is presumably lost, while a second protocol on ‘minor works’ survives.¹⁵ These protocols constitute a system of support that had not been required before the advent of the Collegium, when the faculty’s dean had overseen all matters of censorship.

In order to document its institutional decision-making processes, the Faculty of Theology kept a special record. At a time when the censor’s name was kept away from the public, the protocols disclose who had carried out individual acts of censorship. In public, readers faced the anonymous ‘Imprimatur In Fidem Protocolli Facultatis’ (‘printed in accordance with the protocols of the Faculty’), while the protocols identify the professors behind the institution’s faceless mask.

Censors in action

The protocol on minor works holds information about more than seven hundred manuscripts.¹⁶ Close to 80 per cent of the submitted manuscripts were approved for printing, whereas 7 per cent were accepted on condition that they undergo some revision. Only 5 per cent could not be printed. A small number of manuscripts were labelled as being outside the faculty’s expertise, while other manuscripts were transferred to the lost protocol on major works. We only find a small number of Latin works, which probably implies that the censored manuscripts targeted a relatively broad readership. Small formats in the vernacular were a popular commodity. Manuscripts in German appear regularly, which is unsurprising since this language was widely spoken and written within the kingdom. We find no manuscripts in French, the preferred language of European courts.

Between 1738 and 1770, ten professors censored minor works submitted to the faculty: Søren Bloch (1696–1753), Erik Pontoppidan the younger, Marcus Wøldike (1699–1750), Jeremias Friedrich Reuss (1700–1777), Christian Langemach Leth (1701–1764), Johann August Seidlitz (1704–1751), Peder Rosenstand-Goiske (1704–1769), Peder Jakobsen Holm (1706–1777), Hans Otto Bang (1712–1764) and Johan Andreas Cramer (1723–1788). These men either held a chair at or were otherwise associated with the Faculty of Theology. In the hands of these professors, state-sponsored Lutheranism served as the standards of censorship. Authors were readily rejected when they did not abide by such standards.¹⁷ In 1750, Seidlitz censored a translation that he could not allow to be printed:

This entry is telling because of the theological tone of the record-keeping, but the professors’ censorship also reveals concerns that lie beyond theology proper. Clearly, standards were not simply a matter of theological orthodoxy; commercial questions and the expectations of buyers come into view as well. Those who exercised censorship seem to have been aware of an expanding market for printed texts, a market where stylistic correctness and aesthetic quality mattered. This aspect comes to the fore in Peder Holm’s assessments.¹⁹ Holm was born in what is now Norway. His theological stance remains unstudied, but he seems to have been critical of the Pietists. A professor from 1738, he was not awarded a chair at the faculty until 1746. The protocol has him active from 1739 until 1769, and he was by far the most productive of all censors. Holm assessed more than 160 manuscripts, of which he only rejected 11. Concerning a manuscript of 1749, Holm concluded that it was fit for printing, ‘but the style and spelling, which are everywhere filled with mistakes, should first be corrected by someone who knows how to write correctly’.²⁰ Two years later, he again approved a manuscript on the condition of certain improvements:

On other occasions, Holm would praise the authors and their manuscripts. In 1760 he assessed a manuscript version of a song that had allegedly been composed by Svendina Finger, the ten-year-old daughter of a vicar from a town near Flensburg. In the protocol, Holm notes that he had actually met the girl and made enquiries about the song before arriving at the conclusion that the young girl had written it: ‘To the many objections, the little maiden answered with such conviction and surprise that I found myself confounded by it and took it not to be beyond belief that she could have authored the song’.²² Holm was clearly impressed by the girl and passed her manuscript for publication, merely adding that the minor errors ‘must be regarded as permissible at her age’.²³ Concerning a Danish translation of A Sure Guide to Hell, Holm strikes a more uncompromising note:

Similar concerns were voiced in relation to a catechism entitled Fattig mands tanker til Gudelige Hiemsbrug, som Bønder og Børn, Der har liten tiid, og mindre nemme, at Føre til videre (‘A poor man’s thoughts: for the godly use in the home by people who, like peasants and children, have little time and ability to educate’).²⁵ The catechism was dated 18 November 1745 in the protocol, and Marcus Wøldike was charged with the task of censoring its seventy-eight pages.²⁶ After studying in Wittenberg and Jena, Wøldike had returned to Copenhagen, where he found employment at the Royal Library. In 1732 he became a professor at the Faculty of Theology, where he remained until his death in 1750. Wøldike was the first professor to lecture on church history, and his Positiones fidei christianæ (1740) was highly influential. The protocol documents Wøldike’s activities as a censor from 1738 until 1750; in 1748 he approved Fattig mands tanker, adding interlinear corrections in the manuscript. In accordance with procedures, the manuscript with the signed ‘Imprimatur in fidem Protocolli Facult[atis] Theolog[i]’ was passed on to the Collegium, which, in this instance, decided against Wøldike and announced its disapproval of the manuscript.²⁷ Members of this body argued that similar books of higher quality were already available. One member remarked: ‘I am of the opinion that we should prevent not only hateful books but also useless books, since the buyer is deceived by the latter, and this [deception] causes disgust among our countrymen’.²⁸ Evidently, censors of religious literature cared not only about orthodoxy but also about quality and supply on the book market.

Pragmatic orthodoxy

No references to atheistic writings are found in the preserved protocol, and explicit criticism of the monarch, the Church or the government is equally absent. However, this does not mean that such writings were not in circulation within the realm of the Danish king. They certainly were; but for obvious reasons, their authors and printers had no reason to hand them in for official approval – such writings travelled through unofficial networks.²⁹ Even so, the censors sometimes saw manuscripts they thought would be inappropriate to print; but even when confronted by texts which originated outside the Lutheran cultural sphere, they occasionally exercised a remarkable pragmatism.

In December 1739 Holm censored a manuscript entitled Eenfoldigt Bibellys, sat imod det exegetiske Mørk. Its author, Hans Tulle (1711–1743), was renowned for his mastery of Hebrew, and in 1736 he had handed in a disputation on how to translate the Bible. His Bibellys actually identifies several mistakes in the Danish translation of 1739. Despite the young man’s obvious talents, his methods did not go down well with the faculty.³⁰ Furthermore, Holm remarks about the manuscript version of the Bibellys that a specific section should include a prohibition in order for the work to be in accordance with the Danske Lov.³¹ The section in Tulle’s work that Holm refers to is entitled ‘on the marriage of stepchildren’, and the censor thus evokes a larger, theological issue.³² At the University of Copenhagen, the first professor of natural law, Andreas Højer (1690–1739), had caused heated debate with his De nuptiis propinquorum jure divino non prohibitis (‘On marriages between closely related persons which are not prohibited according to divine law’). This brief treatise was not just an intellectual challenge; as the main administrative body of the university, the Consistory possessed the tamperret – that is, the authority to decide in such matters – and its members frequently had to consider petitions from Zealanders who wished to marry a not very distant relative. Now, Højer claimed that incest was not a crime because it violated a divine order of things; rather, incest was a punishable offence because it violated a rational ordering of the social world.³³ In Holm’s censoring of Tulle, ideas like those of Højer loom large. The emerging scientific field of biblical exegesis, spearheaded by the Pietists, was raising issues of debate, and Holm’s assessment chimes well with the overall renewal of Old Testament exegesis that made it increasingly problematic to lift juridical precepts from the biblical texts.³⁴

While Holm’s engagement with Tulle is in accordance with an emerging critical rationality within theology, his censorship also involves elements that are more surprising. Since 1729, a popular devotional work had circulated which carried the Danish title Armelle Nicolas gemeenlig kaldet den gode Armelle hendes daglige Omgang med Gud (‘Armelle Nicolas, commonly called the good Armelle, her everyday relations with God’). Originally written in French and published in 1676, the work was ascribed to Jeanne de la Nativité (1731–1798), an Ursuline nun and the superior of a convent in Vannes.³⁵ This text celebrates the mystical experiences of Armelle Nicolas (1606–1671), who was never canonized by Rome but played an important role in French religious worship. Including testimonies by the Jesuits, who had directed the conscience of ‘la bonne Armelle’, the French text was republished several times. In 1704 Pierre Poiret (1646–1719) reedited Armelle’s vita,³⁶ and shortly thereafter, in 1708, Poiret’s edition was translated into German.³⁷ The first Danish edition of 1729 is based on this German version.³⁸ Ten years later, in November 1739, the Faculty of Theology received an official request for publishing the book. This request was filed on behalf of the Danish-German printer Ernst Heinrich Berling (1708–1750); we might infer that Berling recognized that this book was in demand, but before publishing an official edition he had to secure an approval. The initial translation might actually have circulated among clandestine Catholics living in Copenhagen,³⁹ but Berling’s request implies that a broader readership existed for this kind of literature. On 10 November 1739 Holm formulated the following concise censure: ‘I find that this short story of the life and sayings of Armelle should by no means be printed. Laws forbid that it is published together with Pirckheimer’s small book’.⁴⁰ What are we to make of this suggestion? The professor opposes any straightforward publication of this devotional text, but he also rejects Berling’s attempt to publish the popular Catholic text together with a text from a certain Pirckheimer. Now, it is not entirely clear which specific text Holm is referring to. It might be the Denkwürdigkeiten by Caritas Pirckheimer (1467–1563), who was the abbess of a convent of Poor Clares in Nuremberg. This journal describes the period from 1524 until 1528, and the abbess documents how her community struggled as Lutheranism was introduced in the city.⁴¹ We have not found a translation of this work, and it seems a rather strange fit, since Pirckheimer never submitted to the Lutheran authorities.⁴² Another and more likely fit is a booklet that Caritas’ younger brother, the humanist Willibald Pirckheimer (1470–1530), published in 1524 and entitled Wie alle Closter vnd sonderlich Junckfrawen Clöster in ein Christlichs wesen möchten durch gottes gnaden gebracht werden (‘How all religious houses, especially convents housing women who are not nuns, may be brought to a Christian character by the grace of God’). This work was published pseudonymously.⁴³ Willibald offers several suggestions for reform, including that all convents should acquire as many books as possible by Luther, Melanchthon and Bugenhagen.⁴⁴ Furthermore, the author maintains that convents need not be abolished if they work for the common good of society and offer poor relief.⁴⁵ This booklet seems a more likely complement to the book on Armelle: Berling’s suggestion for an intertext reveals an expectation to be able to revise the Catholic work and the intentions of its cloistered author.⁴⁶

Economic reasoning

Since the 1980s, scholars of pre-revolutionary France have pointed to the fact that French censors often prioritized financial concerns over religious orthodoxy; this was true of censorship in eighteenth-century Denmark as well, both in terms of censorship practice and on a legislative level.⁴⁷ During the 1740s, the censors of songs and ballads would sometimes issue tacit printing permissions but specifically asked not to have their names on the printed texts.⁴⁸ They hereby avoided having their private names associated with popular cheap prints, while not hindering printers from producing what was a lucrative commodity.⁴⁹ Consequently, the popularity of prints – that is, their value in the market place – was able to circumvent rigid control of their content: the societal ideals of censorship remained intact, but economic concerns seem increasingly to encroach upon this practice. In general, these concerns chimed with mercantilist principles and, most prominently, with the idea that accumulation of wealth in the national treasuries was a key to prosperity. Indeed, many European governments implemented customs schemes, restrictions on imports and other instruments of protectionism: money flowing outside of a given territory was perceived as detrimental to state finances. In 1759 Erik Pontoppidan expressed similar thoughts in his work Oeconomiske Balance eller uforgribelige Overslag paa Dannemarks naturlige og borgerlige Formule til at giøre sine Indbyggere lyksalige, saavidt som de selv ville skiønne derpaa og benytte sig deraf. After completing his studies in 1718, Pontoppidan had travelled in England and Holland, where he was influenced by, among others, Friedrich Adolph Lampe (1683–1729), who was attempting to translate pietistic trends into a Calvinistic framework. Upon his return to Denmark, Pontoppidan became vicar on the island of Als in the Baltic Sea, and his pietistic leanings soon earned him both enemies and supporters. In 1734 he was awarded a position affiliated to the parish of Hillerød and, more specifically, to the Castle of Frederiksborg. Pontoppidan became professor extraordinarius in 1738, and he maintained this position even after 1748, when he became Bishop of Bergen. He returned to Copenhagen in 1754 and later became pro-chancellor of the university. The protocol on censorship of minor works informs us that between 1738 and 1764, Pontoppidan censored seventy-seven manuscripts. In some instances, he employs a rather uncompromising tone: he rejects one manuscript by abruptly stating that ‘this foolish accumulation of words must be suppressed’.⁵⁰ Despite such harsh rejections, Pontoppidan also argued for a more lenient regulation of the book market, and this standpoint was clearly motivated by contemporary economic theories. Indeed, Pontoppidan relied heavily upon trends in European mercantilism and, more specifically, German cameralism.⁵¹ Thus, a substantial part of Pontoppidan’s Oeconomisk Balance is dedicated to the negative effects of imports, which the author describes as draining the gutters of the treasury.⁵² Even so, the professor of theology remarked how the import of books from Germany, France and the Netherlands was inevitable.⁵³ Until domestic book production met the standards of foreign printers, this influx would be impossible to avoid; the failure of Danish printers to match international production standards posed a financial problem, and also raised the danger that controversial literature would steadily flow into the kingdom.⁵⁴ Accordingly, Pontoppidan suggested that the best way to control the importation of books was to ease restrictions on domestic printers and publishers.⁵⁵

Did such opinions influence the practice of censorship? The protocol on minor works does not provide us with sufficient information to answer to this question. However, a series of legal memoranda corroborate that the faculty was attempting to strike a difficult balance between religious orthodoxy on the one hand and the market conditions of printers situated outside Copenhagen on the other. These memoranda were drafted in response to the petitions of printers who applied for special rights or complete exemption from censorship. In 1757 the Jewish printer Coppel Samson Bloch (d. 1772) and his brother applied for permission to establish a Jewish print shop in Copenhagen. The Faculty of Theology was asked for a response; while not enthusiastic about the endeavour, the professors’ memorandum includes an important financial consideration: the print shop could potentially be a source of income, and the brothers could thereby be able to ‘make a living, and conserve some money in the nation, as well as attract money from elsewhere’.⁵⁶ In their response, the theologians seem sensitive to a mercantilist and cameralist line of reasoning. They take state finances into consideration, and despite theologically motivated suspicions against Jews, the professors allow for the establishment of the print shop. As part of the increasing rationalization of society, economics – in theory and practice – influenced the practice of censorship. Indeed, Pontoppidan was both a censor and an active proponent of such theories and practices.⁵⁷

In the first half of the eighteenth century, local censorship administration was introduced for provincial printing houses in both Denmark and Norway. Jakob Maliks has argued that the de-monopolization of the university’s censorship administration was an attempt by the Royal Chancellery in Copenhagen to reclaim control of all material that left the printing presses within the kingdom, as ‘the provincial printers seem to have managed to avoid sending non-controversial print material to the capital for censoring’.⁵⁸ We will argue that the practice of establishing local censorship administration was, on the contrary, perceived by the university as a weakening of control over printed materials. However, during the 1760s the university still approved the further establishing of local censorship administration; in this process, the university clearly prioritized business conditions for the provincial printing houses over the maintenance of religious orthodoxy. In 1765 the aforementioned Hans Mossin argued that his print shop, situated in Bergen, was suffering from unnecessary expenditure because manuscripts had to be forwarded to the Faculty of Theology in Copenhagen. He asked permission for the local bishop, Frederik Arentz (1699–1779), to assess and approve manuscripts prior to printing. The Faculty of Theology was asked to formulate an official response to Mossin’s request, and this memorandum recognizes the validity of his complaint; the professors even welcome the prospect of having less work on their plates. However, they also maintain that a less centralized system of censorship would allow texts to be published which should have been suppressed. Furthermore, the professors remark:

Finally, in 1767 the printer Emanuel Balling (1733–1795), who had established his shop in the town of Elsinore, handed in a request like Mossin’s. Located fifty kilometres north of Copenhagen, his shop was just four kilometres from the Swedish coast. Balling therefore argued that he hoped to attract customers from across the Øresund, but this venture ‘would vanish completely’ if Swedish authors were to be committed to letting themselves be censored in Copenhagen, and could not be censored in the same location where the printing was done.⁶⁰ In their response, the professors again recognize the need to ease restrictions and rationalize conditions, but they also reiterate the potential risk of ‘private concern or private affiliation between censor and author’.⁶¹ This challenge is specific to the relatively small social milieu of a provincial town like Elsinore. It was unclear to the professors at the university how impartiality could be secured outside of the capital.

Conclusion

Before freedom of print was introduced in Denmark on 14 September 1770, an increase in societal complexity caused debates and conflicts. We might perceive such debates and conflicts as precursors of the historical moment when Enlightenment became not the answer to a question, but rather the question that societies had (and still have) to pose to themselves. Since the 2010s, scholars of the eighteenth century have nuanced our understanding of these emerging spaces of public debate. During this century, the Danish monarchy underwent a reorganization that opened its public sphere to an unprecedented level of debate about, for example, economics. Furthermore, pre-publication censorship had slowly but surely been undermined. Struensee’s introduction of an unrestricted freedom of print was the crest of wave that had long been rising. The professors of theology took an active part in this process as well. The introduction of competing frameworks for religious authority became an important factor driving societal changes that would later be recognized as secular. Less rigid practices of censorship constitute one example of changes that were not imposed upon the religious system but rather developed inside it.