ABSTRACT
The extreme symbolism of fire, applied to books, applied to human beings; and here, too, the symbolic dimension was more important than the physical cruelty inseparable from it. This is shown by the fact that when a heretic was not available to burn, because he had escaped or died, the authorities went to the expense of making a dummy, or, if the victim had died, of keeping his corpse in quicklime so that the heretic could be symbolically burned. To destroy a book otherwise than by burning was held to be a privilege. It was a milder punishment. Certain litmus tests have demonstrated that burning was not really meant actually, primarily, to destroy a book, but rather to show that its destruction was what it deserved. Book-burning increased in very broad harmony with the multiplication of books.
