Index of Forbidden Books

As a reaction to the spread of Protestant doctrines, the Catholic Church armed itself, during the sixteenth century, with a number of instruments of repression and control. Among them, the Index of Forbidden Books occupied a prominent place. The first was published by Pope Paul IV (1476-1559) in 1559, and consisted of a list of printed works that not only had to be excluded from the spreading in the centres of learning, but whose very possession was firmly forbidden to the faithful and were a signal of heretical tendencies. The works of non-Catholic writers, translations of the Bible into vernacular languages, the entire output of some printers, the complete works of individual authors such as Lucian of Samosata, William of Ockham and Niccolò Machiavelli, and certain texts such as Dante Alighieri’s De Monarchia or Boccaccio’s Decameron were thus banned. After the release of 1559, the Index was regularly updated over the years, starting from the second edition of 1564. To keep it up to date, not easy given the growing number of publications, the Congregation of the Index was later created in 1572.

Read more:

• M. Infelise, I libri proibiti. Da Gutenberg all’Encyclopedie, Roma 1999.
• P. Burke, A social history of knowledge. From Gutenberg to Diderot, Cambridge 2000.
• La Congregazione dell’Indice e la cultura italiana in età moderna, a cura di V. Frajese, Roma 2012.