On 9 June 1523 the Paris printer Simon de Colines was fined for printing Jacques Lefèvre d'Étaples's biblical commentary without approval. The case shows how universities and church authorities tried to control religious interpretation. Printing had made theological debate faster, cheaper and harder to contain.

Such censorship shaped the literary climate of Reformation Europe. Poets, translators and dramatists learned to write under scrutiny, developing indirect satire, coded allusion and fierce defences of vernacular religious language.