Ongoing History Daily: Censorship Through the Ages

Lest you think that musical censorship is a recent thing, think again.  Certain authority figures have been trying to keep the masses from enjoying music for centuries. It’s probably good that they’re not around today.

• In the 4th century, St. Augustine complained that the sensuous melodies of the music he heard in church caused him to “become a problem unto myself.” 
• In the 12th century, John of Salisbury noted that the church music he heard in Paris could “more easily occasion titillation between the legs than a sense of devotion in the brain.”  These are hymns, people. 
• A few centuries later, the head of the Orthodox Church in Moscow ordered that all musical instruments be burned because they invited paganism.