The war against books to set up learning against learning is a Jesuit strategy.

The war against books to set up learning against learning is a Jesuit strategy.

The phrase "learning against learning," comes from Cardinal Thomas Wolsey addressing the pope about the dangers of the printing press to the Church's control. The goal of the Catholic Church became to start a "war against books" as D'Iraeli put it, in the last chapter "War Against Books" in his book Amenities of Literature from 1841.

It is traced to Ignatius Loyola's rules for Jesuits. The grand rule of the Jesuit Order is to make thinking conform with the Catholic Church, elaborated in 18 specific rules. Rule #13: "The thirteenth, and finally, that we may be altogether of the same mind and in conformity with the Church herself, if she shall have defined anything to be black which to our eyes appears to be white, we ought in like manner to pronounce it to be white. [Autograph, The thirteenth: that we may in all things attain the truth (that we may not err in anything), we ought ever to hold it (as a fixed principle), that what I see white, I believe to be black, if the Hierarchical Church so define it (to be);]" The Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius Loyola, 1541.

The dastardly Bertrand Russel explains this strategy was embraced by Johann Fichte, who "laid it down that education should aim at destroying free will," and that "the social psychologists of the future will have a number of classes of school children on whom they will try different methods of producing an unshakable conviction that snow is black."

The blameworthy culprits for setting up learning against learning and waging a war on books are Ignatius Loyola, Thomas Wolsey, Johann Fichte, and Betrand Russell.

Isaac D'Israeli deserves credit for fighting against the Jesuits.

The Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius Loyola, 1541, https://archive.org/details/a588350800loyouoft/page/n229

Isaac D'Israeli, Amenities of Literature, 1841, https://archive.org/details/amenitieslitera08disrgoog/page/n434

Bertrand Russell, The Impact of Science on Society, 1953, https://archive.org/details/TheImpactOfScienceOnSociety-B.Russell/page/n17