landmarks

This page highlights landmarks in the prosecution of blasphemy and changing attitudes to free speech.

It covers -

• before the printing press
• the Reformation era (1546)
• public order in early modern Europe (1650)
• blasphemy in the age of revolution? (1792)
• secularisation (1855)
• The Miracle and beyond (1952)
• contemporary fatwas and mariolatry? (1986)

Context is provided by the more detailed media & communications timeline and Australian censorship history elsewhere on this site.

     before the printing press

533 Justinian blames blasphemy and homosexuality for earthquakes (Byzantine penal code identifies castration as suitable punishment)

1343 Norwegian nun burnt for blasphemy

1537 establishment of Esecutori contro la Bestemmia (Council Against Blasphemy) in Venice

     the Reformation

1546 French printer Etienne Dolet burnt at stake for blasphemy and sedition

1553 anti-trinitarian Michael Servetus burnt at stake as blasphemer

1600 Giordano Bruno burnt at stake for blasphemy

1646 Massachusetts establishes death penalty for blasphemy

     public order in early modern Europe

1650 Blasphemy Act in England

1650 Quaker George Fox arrested for blasphemy

1656 James Nayler arrested for "horrid blasphemy" after entering Bristol in imitation of Christ's entry into Jerusalem

1670 Spinoza's Theologico-Political Treatise

1676 UK radical Lodowick Muggleton fined £500 and imprisoned for blasphemy

1681 trial of William King in Salem for blasphemy

1689 John Locke's Letter Concerning Religious Toleration

1694 imprisonment of Ericus Walten in The Hague

1697 Blasphemy Act in England

1697 Edinburgh student Thomas Aitkenhead hanged after denying god and claiming theology was "a rhapsody of feigned and ill invented nonsense"

1697 John Toland's Christianity not mysterious burned by public hangman

1701 Thomasius' De Crimine Magiae

1703 Dublin Unitarian clergyman convicted of blasphemy for questioning the Trinity, sentenced to one year's imprisonment and fined £1,000

1725 trial of Rev Thomas Woolston in UK for questioning the Resurrection and the Virgin Birth in A Moderator between an Infidel and an Apostate

1729 Woolston imprisoned for four years for Discourses on the Miracles of our Saviour

1745 Profane Oaths Act in UK prohibits profane cursing and swearing

1750 trial of UK Baptist Richard Phillips

1753 Peter Annet imprisoned for year for blasphemous libel

     the age of revolution?

1757 Hume's Natural History of Religion

1768 trial of MP John Wilkes for blasphemous Essay On Woman

1770 Voltaire quips "If God did not exist, it would be necessary to invent him"

1776 Gibbon's Decline & Fall of the Roman Empire

1790 Burke's Reflections on the Revolution in France

1792 Fox's Libel Act in UK

1792 Priestley's An appeal to the serious and candid professors of Christianity

1793 Paine's The Age of Reason

1802 Paley's Natural Theology

1817 political satirist William Hone tried three times in UK for blasphemous parodies

1819 'Six Acts' in England (inc Blasphemous & Seditious Libel Act)

1820 radical James Tucker sentenced for blasphemous libel

1820 trial of Rev Robert Wedderburn in London, imprisoned for two years

1827 NSW enactment against "publication of Blasphemous and Seditious Libels"

1829 Catholic Emancipation Act in England

1838 Unitarian Abner Kneeland imprisoned in Boston for 60 days for blasphemy

1840 Strauss' Christian Theology

1841 UK secularist Charles Southwell imprisoned for year over blasphemous newspaper article, later moves to New Zealand

1841 UK secularist George Holyoake (1817-1906) imprisoned for six months over speech

1841 Edward Moxon found guilty of publication of blasphemous libel - Shelley's Queen Mab

1842 trial of Henry Hetherington in London

1843 trial of Thomas Finlay in Edinburgh

1843 Henry v Robinson is last Scots blasphemy case?

1844 Feuerbach's The Essence of Religion

1844 Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation

     secularisation

1855 Franciscan friar John Bridgman prosecuted for blasphemy over public burning of Protestant bible in Mayo

1857 prosecution of Thomas Pooley in UK

1859 Darwin's The Origin of Species

1862 excommunication of Bishop Colenso

1863 Renan's Vie de Jesus

1867 English court of exchequer holds in Cowan v Milbourn that contract to deliver blasphemous lecture is void

1871 German national criminal code identifies blasphemy as crime with three year prison sentence

1883 George William Foote sentenced to year in UK prison for cartoons in Freethinker

1884 August Strindberg acquitted after prosecution in Stockholm for blasphemy

1886 Charles Reynolds arrested in New Jersey for blasphemy

1888 Swedish socialist Hjalmar Branting imprisoned for blasphemy

1895 Franz Herzfeld (father of artists Wieland Herzfeld and John Heartfield) sentenced to jail in Germany for blasphemy

1895 Oscar Panizza imprisoned in Bavaria for a year over play Das Liebeskonzil

1909 Shaw's The Shewing up of Blanco Posnet banned by UK Lord Chancellor for blasphemy

1917 Bowman v The Secular Society in UK

1922 defendant in R v Gott sentenced to nine months with hard labour for selling blasphemous pamphlets in UK

1922 unsuccessful prosecution in New Zealand of Maoriland Worker for Siegfried Sassoon's 'blasphemous' poem Stand-To: Good Friday Morning

1928 Georg Grosz and Wieland Herzfeld convicted in Germany for Ecce Homo, fine 20,000 Reichsmarks

1932 acquitted on appeal

1933 Norwegian poet Arnulf Øverland acquitted in prosecution over lecture on 'Christianity - the tenth plague'

1933 D'Avoine prosecuted in Bombay in Reason Case

1936 Erkki Hara convicted in Finland for publishing extracts from Hasek's Good Soldier Svejk

1937 Connecticut man fined US$10 for blasphemy after swearing at traffic cop

1938 last blasphemy conviction in Denmark?

     The Miracle and beyond

1952 Joseph Burstyn, Inc v Wilson (The Miracle case) in US Supreme Court

1957 Michigan man convicted of blasphemy for cursing at police

1966 Hannu Salama convicted in Finland for 1964 Juhannustanssit

1967 acquittal in Netherlands of Gerard van het Reve

1969 prosecution of Finnish artist Harro Koskinen for 'Pig Messiah' painting

1969 prosecution of German historian Karlheinz Deschner for disturbing peace through lecture

1972 Bertolucci's Last Tango in Paris banned in Italy, director receives suspended prison sentence for blasphemy and loses right to vote for five years

1977 prosecution of Denis Lemon and Gay News in UK

1979 Monty Python's Life of Brian banned in Norway

1982 UK media furore over Channel 4 broadcast of Derek Jarman's Sebastiane

1983 Syrian Haidar Haidar's A Banquet of Seaweed banned in Egypt for blasphemy

1984 Jean-Luc Godard's Hail Mary

1985 UK Law Commission Report on Offences Against Religion & Public Worship

     contemporary fatwas and mariolatry?

1986 Austrian court bans production of film based on Panizza's Das Liebeskonzil

1986 Ogle and O'Neill seek ban on Je Vous Salue Maria film in Australia

1987 acquittal of Berlin Tageszeitung after prosecution by Roman Catholic bishop of Berlin for satirical article

1988 Scorsese's film of Kazantzakis's The Last Temptation of Christ

1989 UK ban on Wingrove's Vision of Ecstasy video

1990 Ayatollah Khomeini issues fatwa against Rushdie for The Satanic Verses

1990 New Zealand Bill of Rights Act 1990

1990 Federal Shariat Court in Pakistan rules that "the penalty for contempt of the Holy Prophet … is death and nothing else"

1990 Monitor case in Indonesia, editor Arswendo Atmowiloto imprisoned for five years

1990 Regina v Chief Metropolitan Stipendiary Magistrate; ex parte Choudhury - UK court dismisses attempted private prosecution of Rushdie

1991 Rushdie translator Hitoshi Igarashi stabbed to death in Tokyo

1992 Lahore court imposes death sentence on two christians for blaspheming Muhammad

1993 Rushdie's Norwegian publisher William Nygaard shot in Oslo

1994 acquittal in prosecution of satirical poster launched by Cardinal Meissner of Cologne

1995 trial of Permadi Satrio Wiwoho in Indonesia

1996 European Court of Human Rights hears Wingrove v United Kingdom appeal over ban on Visions of Ecstasy video

1997 'Piss Christ' case (Pell v Trustees of NGV) by the Archbishop of Melbourne

1998 unsuccessful private prosecution in New Zealand after Te Papa museum displays Virgin in a Condom

2000 Kuwait academic Alia Shuaib convicted of blasphemy for Spiders Bemoan a Wound

2000 prosecution in Italy over film Totò che visse due volte

2002 Italian police hack sacreligious porn sites hosted in US

2004 prosecution in Greece of Gerhard Haderer for The Life of Christ

2004 UK police reject calls for prosecution re Terrence McNally's Corpus Christi

2005 prosecution in Greece of curator Christos Ioakimidis for 2003 exhibition of de Cordier's Dry Sin

2006 Libya and Syria close embassies in Copenhagen over satirical cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed in Jyllands-Posten newspaper; Danish, Swedish and Norwegian embassies in Damascus burnt

2006 Danish court dismisses libel case against Jyllands-Posten

2008 UK abolishes common law blasphemy offences




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