The original version of Don Quixote was printed in 1605, which is significant for the book-burning scene of this story. For centuries the Catholic Church had dominated all aspects of education and learning; the only educated citizens of society were the priests, and they would have been educated in the monasteries of Europe from an early age.
Controlling the Flow of Information
This was the primary way in which the religious leaders could control the flow of information, and enforce their own values and beliefs upon society.
Historians such as Diana Wood in the her 2002 book Medieval Economic Thought point out that the entire pace of life was controlled by the church; time was held by means of the church bell-tower, the secular calendar was based almost entirely around the Holy days of the ecclesiastical calendar, and the church maintained an economic hold over the lives of virtually every Christian citizen.
Even the first universities in Europe, which emerged around the 13th century, were tied to the church; the University of Paris was closely tied to the Cathedral of Notre Dame for example. Furthermore, the most important area of study at university was that of Theology.
The Printing Press and other Reformers
Johannes Gutenburg changed society dramatically in the 1440s; he was the man credited with inventing the first printing press using movable type, and revolutionized the flow of knowledge and information in Europe.
Reformers such as Martin Luther in the early 16th century began using the printing press to promote their ideas, and to challenge the authority of the papacy and Catholic doctrine. These reform movements, which spread across Germany into Switzerland and eventually to England and France via smuggled bibles and other material printed by the thousands, posed an enormous threat to the Church.
The Papacy launched its own counter-reformation, and produced a list of books that were outlawed under canon law. The book-burning scene from Don Quixote is important for the study of European society, and the Church’s desire for the control of knowledge and control of the laity.
Control over the Population
Through the control of education and information, the Catholic Church was able to convince the population to believe what they wanted them to believe; to fear God’s wrath, to fear sin, to repent, to do good works for the forgiveness of sins, and most of all to buy forgiveness from the Church in the form of an Indulgence.
An Indulgence was designed to ‘buy’ a person time out of purgatory, which was where the soul spent time before going to Heaven. The time in purgatory depended upon how you lived your life; a good person may only have to spend a few years in purgatory, while a sinful person may spend 100,000 years in purgatory. The size of the Indulgence you bought determined how many years off purgatory you received, in other words the more money you gave to the Catholic Church the more time from purgatory you received.
The Church used the fear of the unknown (death) as a means of becoming enormously rich and powerful by the late medieval period. This power was threatened however by the introduction of the printing press and the mass-production of books, which contributed to the weakening of religious dominance over education; this then led to new intellectual revival and to new ideas about the world.
Fearing the End of Control
This loss of control and the fear felt by the ecclesiastical leaders of Europe is reflected in the book-burning event by the Church in Don Quixote. The Church feared the flow of information and new ideas that did not mesh with their own doctrine, and the Church wanted to limit this flow of information as much as possible.
Sources:
Cervantes, Miguel de. Don Quixote of La Mancha. Translated by Walter Starkie. Penguin, 1957.
Wood, Diana. Medieval Economic Thought. Cambridge University Press, 2002.
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