Don’t mince words

Writing your wrongs…
After King Charles I ruled England with what his constituents called Eleven Years’ Tyranny, he was captured, tried and convicted of high treason, and then, off went his head. If that weren’t bad enough, the former king’s crown was deleted from the engraved title page of the 1692 tome Of the lawes of ecclesiastical politie. That’s sort of like Obama burning books featuring our former executive-power-wielding prez in an effort to give citizens peace of mind. Now that would just be wrong.

Don’t look so cross…
You and your ex appeared so cute and cuddly in those pictures—until you broke up and tore his evil smiling mug off each and every snapshot. Similarly, passion and riotous disagreement was rife in 16th-century Rome. But, with text by great philosophers floating around, Romans had a lot more to lose when defacing printed content. In 1564, Pope Pius IV ordered printed material that angered him crossed out. Here, the pope indicated that specific passages from theologian Erasmus should be purged. Three words Pius: Get over yourself.

Sign your life away…
In elementary school, slapping down your mom’s signature on a permission slip was a punishable offense. But in 1569, Pierre Harmon’s forgery landed him in a place far worse than the principal’s office. The fate of Harmon, arrested on the charge of forging the king’s signature, seemed somewhat ironic, since his office required him to sign documents for the king. More likely, his subsequent execution related to his being a Huguenot. What backstabbers (literally). Copies of Harmon’s copybooks were destroyed, making them scarce—and demolishing books is, as the Newberry points out, a crime that’s extremely hard to prove. Especially compared to that squiggly signature your teacher turned a blind eye to.

HIT THE BOOKS! Newberry Library’s “Pillage, Punishment, and Provenance: Books as Victims of Crime” opens Wed 25. 60 W Walton St (312-943-9090, newberry.org). Mon 8:15am–5pm; Tue–Thu 8:15am–7:30pm; Fri, Sat 8:15am–5pm.

NERD ALERT! Hey, bibliophiles, want to hear more? On April 4, 9am–4pm, the Newberry’s Caxton Club presents free lectures by scholars, rare-book collectors, attorneys and law-enforcement officials who will explore attacks on books. Find out whether the pen really is mightier than the sword.

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