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KingHenryVIII
KingHenryVIII
Thomas More
Jul 9 2011, 11:08 AM EDT | Post edited: Jul 9 2011, 11:08 AM EDT
Yesterday I had an interesting discussion with a few religious author's in a church nearby, at one point one of them quoted a famous german writer, Heinrich Heine, in saying "Where they burn books, so too will they in the end burn human beings."

Immediately after hearing that quote it had me thinking of Thomas More. Of him burning religious books in the beginning and ending up burning human beings. This might be completely random but I couldn't stop debating over it. If those two things really are connected to one another and if one thing leads to the other in some ways. 0  out of 1 found this valuable. Do you?    
MsSquirrly
MsSquirrly
1. RE: Thomas More
Jul 9 2011, 2:29 PM EDT | Post edited: Jul 9 2011, 2:29 PM EDT
When Heine wrote that in 1821, it was about burning the Quran by Christians and many people have applied it to the Nazis, who famously burned books they felt were a threat to the German nation and later burned the Jews and other so-called degenerates. However, I think it applies even more so to what happened in the 16th century. Printed books were in their infancy and the passing around of these reformer books and their ideas were very much a threat to the old religion. Burning the books stopped the spread of their ideas...however, it was even more efficient to burn the people who wrote the books and spread their evangelical ideas.

Although today burning books has become more of a symbol much like burning a flag or an effigy of a person, it doesn't stop the spread of ideas because we live in an age of information technology....but back then, it could possibly be an effective way to slow down or stop the threats to the status quo which More desperately wanted to keep. Do you find this valuable?    

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