INDEX LIBRORUM PROHIBITORUM

HISTORICAL NOTES ON A COLLECTION

It was a pleasure to burn

(R. Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451)

Studio Bibliografico Rambaldi

Catalog edited by
Paolo Rambaldi
Dante Pattini

The collection we present in this catalog originated from a specific interest in Index
Librorum Prohibitorum which expanded over the years to include other examples of
censorship in Italy, a vast and complex phenomenon. Here there are over a hundred
specimens of manuscripts, printed books and leaflets. These include not only indices of
forbidden books, which is the majority however with a time span ranging from 1564, the
year of the first Tridentine Index, to 1948, but also writings on heresy, papal bulls and
manuals for inquisitors, materials that constituted the 'sacred arsenal' of the Church in
the multi-century struggle against detractors of the Catholic faith. At the end of the
catalog, there is a section dedicated to censored books, confirming the extent to which
the Church was established at the theoretical and doctrinal level. The books include a
copy of Il Cortegiano' (The Courtier) by Castiglione with words crossed out and
rewritten by hand according to the censored edition by Antonio Ciccarelli (1584),
'Historie' (Florentine Histories) by Machiavelli with the title page disguised and
banned books belonging to the inquisitors (with their ex-libris on the title page).
The different sections of the catalog are preceded by extensive and detailed introductions
that aim to reconstruct the historical and cultural context in which the items of the
collection must be set, so that the collector as well as the scholar and the simple
enthusiast is able to find useful tools in them in order to deepen their knowledge and
understanding.
Happy reading to all of them and to all others who are interested.
Studio Bibliografico Paolo Rambaldi

INDEX

CENSORSHIP AND THE INDICES OF PROHIBITED BOOKS

Introduction
Censorship and control of the printing press in Italy
The institutions of control: the Inquisition and the Congregation of the Index
History and structure of the indices of prohibited books
Decline of the index
Bibliography

CATALOG
Indices of prohibited books
The Inquisition, the literature and the law
Censored books
Addenda
Index of names
Index of printing locations and printers

1. INTRODUCTION
The birth of the printed book shortly after mid 15th century represented a critical turning
point in European culture based on Humanism1. After some initial distrust due to
rejection by the aristocracy or still superficial knowledge on the subject, movable type
printing soon became of great interest to both the literati and thinkers, who were able to
deduce that an extraordinary number of people could be reached with their works and
ideas. It was also of interest to secular and religious statesmen who initially supported
this new typographic art with the aim of using it as a tool for propaganda and control. For
a while, the Humanistic dream of a wide ranging societas litteratorum actually seemed to
come true, that is a society where the book represented a new common ground for
thoughts and ideas. But the plan for controlling and containing the revolutionary force of
the so-called ars scribendi artificialiter proved itself to be weak when faced with new
political, philosophical and religious theories which were to undermine the very basis of
power.
The symbol of this impotence was the fight against the doctrinal-theological ideas of
Martin Luther. His 95 theses, presented in Wittenberg in 1517, paved the way for a
historical process which, a few years later, would break the religious unity of the
Christian world2. In spite of the excommunications3 and the repression which
immediately dampened Protestant heresy, the Church of Rome could do nothing against
the quick penetration of Lutheran ideas, the main vehicle of which was the printed book
itself4. On February 14, 1519, the publisher and bookseller Giovanni Froben informed
Luther that his writings were spreading all over Europe and that in Italy the bookseller
Francesco Calvi from Pavia was active in this effort. Froben said to Luther, a very
learned man and devoted to the Muses, has taken [] a good number of your little books
to distribute them in all the cities. He is not doing this to make money but to offer support
to the rebirth of piety, helping as much as he is able to5. What made this printing process

1For

an overview on the first decades of movable type printing, see the still up-to-date classic L. Febvre,
H.J. Martin, The coming of the book : the impact of printing 1450-1800 (London : NLB, 1976).
2E. Bonora, La Controriforma (Rome-Bari : Laterza, 20032 ), 5.
3The Church reacted promptly in 1520 with the issue of Exsurge Domine, the bull of excommunication by
Pope Leo X.
4 As also in Bonora, La Controriforma, 9: From the 20s, religious dissent in Italy had found privileged
channels of transmission through the circulation of "poisonous books, full of thousands of heresies written
in vernacular language".

5P. Tacchi Venturi, Storia della Compagnia di Ges in Italia, I, i, Rome 1950, 433, n1.

difficult to stop was thus not so much the economic aspect (although a strong factor) as
firm agreement on those issues which were made universal by the books including
accusation of the Church of materialism and corruption, already commonplace in Italy.
This state of crisis was worsened by the presence of spiritualistic trends inside the Church
which preached a return to evangelic teachings that had become contaminated by the
opulence and sensuality introduced by the Renaissance culture, even in ecclesiastical
settings. These two important factors, Protestant heresy and moral decay, could no longer
be ignored after the year 1527, the annus horribilis when the city of Rome was attacked
by the Landsknecht army. The sacking and devastation caused by the Protestant soldiers
right in the heart of Christianity were interpreted as punishment by God for the
debauchery which characterized the Church at the time. Both men of culture as well as
those religious gradually began to devise plans for reforms which would address the need
for renewal and finally get into the heart of the matter by seriously dealing with the
doctrinal issues raised by Protestant writings. In 1534, Alessandro Farnese was elected as
Pope Paul III. Two years later, a committee led by the Venetian Gasparo Contarini and
featuring high profile names of the Papal court such as Gian Pietro Carafa (who would
later become the Secretary of the Congregation of the Holy Office and eventually Pope
Paul IV), Reginald Pole and Jacopo Sadoleto took charge of drawing up the first
document for the universal reform of the Church. This document, presented to Paul III in
1538 with the title Consilium de emendanda ecclesia, included the primary issue of the
control of books. Two contrasting visions emerged when the Consilium was being drafted
which fueled disagreements inside the Church and later influenced the progress of the
Council of Trent itself (1542-1564) and the positions of the Holy See for decades to
come. On one hand, there was an irenic and conciliatory attitude empowered by the
unifying figure of Emperor Charles V. On the other hand, there was an uncompromising
and anti-heretical attitude rejecting any mediation with the Protestant world, which saw
one of its most fervent supporters in Carafa.
This was the backdrop for the choices which led to the decision to establish the indices of
prohibited books. Control of the main medium for the circulation of ideas, that is the
printed book, had to be included among the principal prerogatives of the power of the
Church of Rome. This was done not only to limit the dissemination of Protestant writings
but also to bring back moral standards to a culture where even Humanistic knowledge
had lost its right to exist as it was regarded as an accomplice in the decay of society in the
first half of the century. There were however many issues to resolve.Who would be
appointed to this task? Who would decide which books to ban? Who would establish a
system of sanctions to apply to those who broke the rules? In the strategy for regulation
of the production and circulation of books, a very important role was played by the
entities which connected the central power of Rome represented by the Theologian of the

Papal Household and obviously by the Pope and the College of Cardinals, to the local
authorities including those in territories which were not under the jurisdiction of the Papal
States. Specifically, these entities were the Holy Office (or the Inquisition founded in
1542, see ultra) and the Sacred Congregation of the Index (instituted in 1572). Through
their representatives and their courts, these two entities propagated and put into practice
the decisions taken in Rome, often in strict collaboration with secular powers (political
leaders and civil Courts), but sometimes in open disagreement with them concerning their
respective fields of competence.
One of the main means of repression was undoubtedly the Index librorum prohibitorum
(List of Prohibited Books). Many court cases for heresy prepared in the 16th century
would see the simple possession of books from this black list as the first criminal
charge. This not only included Protestant books but also those about superstition, magic,
alchemy, astrology and necromancy. The publication of the Index, however, was only the
final act in a long series of steps. Before being printed, these lists of prohibited books
which were established mostly by the Theologian of the Papal Household, at least starting
from the end of the 16th century, circulated in informal ways and were updated according
to changes in sensibilities or political needs, being discussed and rewritten after lively
debates. This phase of incubation of the Index, as well as its circulation and
enforcement by local courts and inquisitors, is well documented in a great number of
valuable official and personal documents, such as minutes of meetings, letters and trial
records. All of this has now become essential material for an accurate reconstruction of
the intricate events of ecclesiastical censorship.
It would be difficult to write a story today about the indices of prohibited books without
the documents preserved in the archives of the two Congregations. Scholars were not able
to draw on this asset for years because the Vatican walls zeolously protected them and
banned the scientific community from being able to access them. As a matter of fact, the
archives of the Holy Office (partly lost6) and that of the Congregation of the Index
(almost intact) have been open to the public only since 19987, when the Prefect of the
Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (todays Inquisition) was the then Cardinal
Joseph Ratzinger, now Pope Benedict XVI. This access revived an interest that had never
disappeared but on the contrary had grown stronger due to the restriction on these
documents. It also led to the revival of studies on ecclesiastic censorship and the lists of
prohibited books, culminating in a series of very high profile meetings and publications

Between 1815 and 1817, when the documents were being recovered by Napoleon and taken to Paris, Mgr.
Marino Marini decided to destroy most of the documents of the Holy Office; this destruction has
undoubtedly been the biggest loss to the archive over the centuries.
7
See : Lapertura degli archivi del SantUffizio Romano, Roma, 22 gennaio 1998 (Rome : Accademia
Nazionale dei Lincei, 1998); LInquisizione e gli storici: un cantiere aperto (Rome : Accademia Nazionale
dei Lincei, 2000).

which confirmed the hypotheses presented more than 50 years ago by illustrious scholars
such as Luigi Firpo, Antonio Rotond, Paul F. Grendler and more recently, by Gigliola
Fragnito, Mario Infelise, Ugo Rozzo and Jesus Martinez de Bujanda. Martinez de
Bujanda must also be given credit for the supervision of a huge project of transcription of
and commentary on the 16th century indices which were published as printed books in
Europe8. In just a span of three years between 2006 and 2008, four books were published.
These books, still from different perspectives (historical, philosophical and
bibliographical), deal with the issue of the influence of censorship and of the Index
librorum prohibitorum on the culture, mentality and life of Italians and Europeans9.
Thanks to these studies, this process of censorship and control in which the printed list
was just the last step, can be reconstructed in its entirety for the benefit of not only the
experts, but also of anyone interested in retracing the history of national politics and
cultural trends and rediscovering the roots of a collective identity which shaped itself
partly through ban and prohibition.

J.M. De Bujanda ed., Index des livres interdits (Sherbrook Quebec : Centre detudes de la Renaissance,
1984-1996).
9
V. Frajese, Nascita dellIndice. La censura ecclesiastica dal Rinascimento alla Controriforma (Brescia :
Morcelliana, 2006); G. Verucci, Idealisti allindice: Croce, Gentile e la condanna del SantUffizio (RomeBari : Laterza, 2006); H. Wolf, Storia dellIndice. Il Vaticano e i libri proibiti (Rome : Donzelli, 2006); E.
Rebellato, La fabbrica dei divieti. Gli Indici dei libri proibiti da Clemente VIII a Benedetto XIV (Milan :
Sylvestre Bonnard, 2008).

2. CENSORSHIP AND CONTROL OF THE PRESS IN ITALY

It has been said that starting from the 16th century, along with the invention of movable
type print and the propagation of Lutheranism, the problem of control and censorship of
potentially dangerous or immoral books had become the biggest concern of religious
leaders and, to some extent, of civil leaders. The staggering increase in book production
in the 16th century was the main reason for the creation of legal institutions aimed at
keeping this phenomenon under control. It is also true that repression through the
prohibition of books had been a common practice, at least as far as the Church was
concerned, from the dawn of Christianity. For example, in the Council of Nicaea in 325
AD, a ban on the writings of Arius was decreed while Pope Anastasius I condemned the
works of Origen in 400 AD and Leo I publicly burned the writings of the Manichaeists in
443 AD. At times, authors were excommunicated and burned at the stake along with their
books, as was the case with Jan Hus, a forerunner of the Protestant movement, who was
burned to death together with his works at the Council of Constance in 1415. However, in
many cases, such episodes took place back then more for their symbolic value than for
their practical necessity since the danger arising from the circulation of handwritten
books was obviously very limited. The restrictions applied to the production of books
between the end of the 15th century and the beginning of the 16th century however were
of a different nature and measures taken for the destruction of forbidden books became
much more forceful from mid 16th century.
Starting from different premises, the Church and the State quickly realized that the
different interests focused on the new typographic art could be regulated by the timeliness
with which they could apply commonly shared laws and rules. Already in the 1480s, that
is much before the Lutheran threat spread, principles of press regulation had started to be
formulated in Italy and in the rest of Europe in an effort to discipline a field of enormous
potential and to protect the high capital investments needed for such an activity.
With the Inter multiplices bull in 1487, Innocence VIII established the imprimatur ("let it
be printed) which is the permission to print that could only be granted by bishops or by
the Theologian of the Papal Household after careful examination of the book. In 1515
Leo X ratified this regulation with another bull, Inter sollicitudines, slightly modifying
the previous one by officially involving the Inquisition and formally extending the
obligation of pre-emptive censorship to all of Christianity. With these acts, the Church
laid the foundation for lasting legislation regarding the control of books, establishing
once and for all those guidelines which would influence decisions in centuries to come.
Among Italian states, the first to deal with this issue was the Republic of Venice, destined
to become one of the major publishing centers in Europe within a few years, thanks to its
extremely open attitude towards the press. In 1469 the Venetian Senate granted the
German book printer John de Spira a ten-year pro introducenda arte privilege (the first
ever), a kind of exclusive right to practise the art of printing in the Venetian territory.

The first imprimatur licenses were issued in Venice around 1507-1508, although specific
legislation on the subject was introduced by the Council of Ten only in 1527, when the
ten-year privilege was made dependent on the granting of the licenses. It is interesting to
note that initially this privilege was used much more than the imprimatur: this meant that
protecting the economic aspect was generally more important than controlling or
repressing. The Papal States and the Republic of Venice typically represented the
following views respectively: the Roman approach towards the press became a form of
political control in connection with the moral demands upheld by the Church, while in
Venice priority was given to the commercial aspect and procedures that were liberal, to
use a modern word.
It is therefore no surprise that Venice and Rome found themselves in very difficult
situations between 1530-1540 when the repressive action of the Church intensified. The
activity of the local inquisitors was openly opposed to by booksellers and publishers, who
had no intention of seeing their businesses suffer because of ecclesiastical prohibitions.
Tension with the local judiciary was also evident10 as it was not always in favor of a
compromise with the representatives of Rome. Fiercely attached to its multi-century
freedom and not inclined to tolerating abuse in its own territory (the first foreign army to
enter the city since it was founded was that of Napoleon in 1797!), Venice was a difficult
case to deal with for the Church. In 1596 the index of Clement VIII was released and
included 1,143 more condemnations than in the Tridentine Index of 1564 (see chapter 5).
This was followed by prompt reaction from the Venetian publishers and booksellers.
Doge Lorenzo Priuli himself was called to intervene and he reached an agreement with
the Pope that allowed for the mitigation of Roman regulations for the Venetian territory
only. Certain specimens11 of the Clementine index printed in Venice (see the one by
Niccol Moretti in cat.16) contained a bifolia written in Italian which said Dechiarationi
delle regole dellindice di libri proibiti novamente pubblicato per Ordine della Santit di
N.S. Clemente Ottavo, da osservarsi nel Stato della Serenissima Signoria di Venetia,
consisting of the text of the agreement which provided for partial application of the rules
in the Venetian territory. These Dechiarationi, which were also circulated as leaflets,
reiterated certain points (nine in total) such as the possibility for Ventian printers to
publish prohibited texts and censor them at the premises without being checked by the
Roman authorities first or their exemption from taking oath before the bishop and the

10 In

1547, in order to manage this difficult situation, the Venetian government created a special court
called Savi alleresia (the Sage in charge of heresy) whose members joined the inquisitors in controlling
the press and publications. Previously in 1543, the Council of Ten had entrusted another court called
Esecutori contro la bestemmia (Executors against Blasphemy) with the task of overseeing the publishing
sector, giving them the faculty of fining those who printed without permission.
11As stated by Paolo Sarpi and Carlo Lodoli in their writings on the history of censorship in Venice, the
specimens to which this bifolio was added only amounted to 150. For events related to the publication of
the Clementine index after the agreement, please refer to cat.16, and to Rebellato, La fabbrica dei divieti,
28 ff.

inquisitor12. Thus the determination of the Venetians was rewarded by an agreement on

this occasion. However, in 1606, with the new Pope Paul V, a staunch advocate of more
rigid policy, tensions erupted leading to open confrontation. The casus belli was related
to a matter of jurisdiction: the Venetian government had arrested two priests convicted of
common crimes, a decision that had resulted in an interdict against the Venetian Republic
and initiated a fierce dispute over the prerogatives of civil and religious power. The
position of the Venetian State was supported, as known, by the friar Paolo Sarpi who died
for the cause, killed by papal gunmen in 1626. He was a supporter of clear separation
between secular and religious power, as demonstrated by some of his highly controversial
writings. Even at the end of the 17th century, his theories were subject to strong criticism,
as in the case of Discorso dellorigine, forma, leggi ed uso dellUfficio dellInquisitione
nella citt e dominio di Venetia, published posthumously in 1639. It was refuted more
than 50 years after his death by Francesco Albizzi, a former councillor of the Holy
Office, in a work published in 1678 under the title Risposta allHistoria della Sacra
Inquisitione composta gi dal R.P. Paolo Servita (cat. No. 98).

12 First,

it will still be possible to sell books under suspicion in the new Index yet to be expurgated, to
those who have permission from the Ordinary - that is from the Inquisitor - to keep them. Secondly, if the
printers want to reprint these suspicious books and request their editing, these books will be edited quickly
in Venice and in other cities of the Republic of Venice without sending them to Rome, as the Bishop (of
Venice) has the same powers regarding the new Index as the Inquisitors. After correcting and reprinting
them, the books will be sold freely to all. (Index librorum prohibitorum [...], Venetiis, apud Nicolaum
Morettum, 1596, 1).

3. THE INSTITUTIONS OF CONTROL: THE

CONGREGATION OF THE INDEX

INQUISITION AND THE

In a climate of growing emergency, the need to place restrictions (which became

increasingly prohibitive even reaching the point of persecution) was perceived to be of
great importance. This created a trend of multiplication of institutions responsible for
control and supervision. The Roman Church tried to fulfill this need with the
establishment of the Holy Office and of the Congregation of the Index, each of which
were equipped with specific powers and duties. Nevertheless, there were often conflicts
between them because of the frequent randomness of their areas of competence. To fully
understand the origin of these conflicts and these inconsistencies in the management of
power by the Inquisition and the Index (perhaps the main reason for the slowdown in the
process of repression13), it is better to take a step back and briefly retrace the history of
the two congregations.
The Inquisition was born in the Middle Ages with the aim of suppressing heresy
spreading in Europe at the time (Cathars, Albigensians, etc.14). Those who carried out the
mission and the functions of the Inquisition were firstly the Mendicant and Dominican
Orders, particularly the Dominicans15 who were linked to the figure of the first Master of
the Sacred Palace, St. Dominic de Guzman. Their itinerant nature allowed these orders to
have widespread control of the territory. They were also very well introduced in the
university environment where they could counteract heresy at the highest cultural levels
and, so to speak, at the roots of the diffusion of heterodox views. There was also the
Spanish Inquisition16 (which lasted from 1478 to 1834) created to support reconquista,
that is the liberation of the Iberian continent from Moorish domination and from the
presence of Jews. Authorized by the Pope, the Spanish Inquisition was actually a statal

13This

is also demonstrated by the fact that places where the limits of the various powers were established
early, such as Spain, the effectiveness of censorship was considerably higher, with almost a complete
absence of the printing of Protestant works. In Italy, on the other hand, hesitation had blocked the review of
the Tridentine Index for a long time. Before 1596 there had been at least two other indices established by
Sixtus V, but they were prevented from being published because of incompatibility in the positions held by
the bishops, inquisitors and other clergy representatives.
14As defined by Moroni, the Inquisition was an ecclesiastical court with wide jurisdiction, established by
the supreme Pontiffs to investigate and punish those who establish dogma against the Christian faith and
generally against religion (In G. Moroni, Dizionario di erudizione storico ecclesiastica (Venice : Tip.
Emiliana, 1840-1861, 6 vols., sv. Inquisition).
15The Dominican Order was officially approved by Honorius III in 1216 (5 years before the death of St.
Dominic) and the use of torture to obtain confessions and abjurations was legitimized by Innocent IV
(1243-1254).
16 In 1483 the Catholic monarchs Isabella of Castile and Ferdinand of Aragon II appointed Tomas de
Torquemada as the General Inquisitor, famous for his methods of persecution against Jews and Muslims.

institution and remained so, partly independent from Rome17 and often controlled by
jurists. The last in chronological order was the Roman Inquisition. It was established as a
reaction to the Lutheran Reformation and officially instituted in 1542 with the Licet ab
initio bull of Paul III. In 1588, by the order of Sixtus V, it became the first of the 15
Roman Congregations and was named Holy Congregation of the Roman and Universal
Inquisition, or Holy Office. It was a highly centralized institution (this being the big
difference compared to the Medieval Inquisition) with its own representatives in every
diocese, whose job was to fight heresy and religious crimes, control printing, enact rules
for canonization and institute trials within their own courts. Moreover, it was often
delegated to deal with secular justice, for example in cases of bigamy, homosexuality,
falsification of documents, etc. The Inquisition was equipped with highly developed case
law displaying modern features such as the figure of a defense lawyer, the use of jail ad
poenam and not ad custodiam and the prohibition of the accusation of complicity18. There
were also more reactionary and violent features like the use of torture (see infra), which
helped to render it a dark and mythicized image. Nevertheless, the Inquisition lasted for a
long time. In 1917 Benedict XV merged the Congregation of the Index into that of the
Holy Office, which consequently assumed all the responsibilities previously assigned to
the Index. However, the Inquisition was officially abolished only after the Second
Vatican Council, with a historic decision by Paul VI in 1966, becoming what today goes
by the name of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.
The Congregation of the Index was born in 1571 when Pope Pius V established a
committee to review the Tridentine Index of 1564 and prepare a new catalog of
prohibited books that could replace it definitively. There had never really been full
agreement on the purpose of the Index of Trent, even though it was replaced only in 1596
(see chapter 4). The following year, the new congregation was formalized by Gregory
XIII who appointed the first four members, two of whom were from the Inquisition. The
Congregation was composed of a group of cardinals (from 5 to 7) and several councillors
and had two main tasks. The first was to evaluate printed publications, inserting the titles
of suspicious books into the index of banned books and monitoring the application of the
prohibitions ordered by bishops and diocesan ordinaries. The second was to expurgate
books which were allowed only limited reading by preemptively censoring those
passages which were deemed inappropriate and dangerous. Over the course of its
existence, the Congregation of the Index had issued more than 40 editions of Index
librorum prohibitorum until March 25 1917 when Benedict XV, with the 'Motu proprio'
Alloquentes, abolished it, indicating the transfer of powers to the Congregation of the
Holy Office.

17Indices

of prohibited books published by the Spanish Inquisition frequently included books that were not
included in the Roman Inquisition and vice versa.
18This ban did not allow women suspected of witchcraft to accuse other people.

At this point, it would be opportune to elaborate more on the expurgation of banned

books, a practice which was introduced with the Index of 1559. Here, a list of books
appeared for the first time that should not have circulated without the prior elimination
(nisi corrigeatur) of passages, phrases or even single words deemed inappropriate for
their immorality or because they cast a negative light on the Church and ecclesiastical
customs. This is the case of Decameron by Giovanni Boccaccio in connection to which
an expurgatory directive issued by the Inquisition ordered that in no way shall one speak
badly or scandalously about priests, friars, abbots, abbesses [...] but names shall be
changed or other measures shall be taken appropriately. In compliance with this
directive, Vincenzo Borghini was later to publish his famous expurgated version of
Decameron in 1573. An intellectual class shortly formed in Italy and the rest of Catholic
Europe, intent on zealously applying the guidelines issued by the ecclesiastical
authorities. Its members censored the targeted books significantly resulting in sections of
text crossed out by ink, defacement or removal of pages, as witnessed from the many
specimens still present in our libraries. A concrete example is cat. 108 which is an edition
of the work by Plutarch released in Basel in 1530 by the publisher Andreas Cratander. All
the passages in the specimen containing the names of commentators who sided with the
Reformation (such as Melanchthon or the German humanist Willibald Pirckheymer) were
systematically censored. The parts of the text which refer to Erasmus were completely
covered with white lead. The paper marked a2 was removed because it contained a
prefatory letter in which Cratander proclaimed Erasmus as a model for the education and
training of young people. Examples like these were however cases of total, mechanical
and pre-emptive censorship. In more complex cases, where it was not enough to
"surgically" remove certain portions of the text which were easily identifiable, a massive
re-write was required, usually assigned to "professional expurgators". The outcome of
these reworkings was almost always devastating because the writings were completely
distorted while the reader remained unaware of it as the expurgation was not declared or
was concealed behind ambiguous wording like "carefully corrected edition". This is how,
for example, Pulcis Morgante and Dantes Vita Nuova (The New Life) came out,
published by Bartolomeo Sermartelli in 1574 and 1576 respectively. A secondary effect
of such expurgated versions was that, when they came out in print, they could be used
as a model for the censorship (with the traditional methods of erasing, scraping, etc.) of
previously published versions. The specimen of Cortegiano (The Courtier) by Baldassare
Castiglione presented in cat. 109 (Venice, 1544) falls under this category. In fact, the
owner penned in all the corrections that are present in the expurgated edition by Antonio
Ciccarelli published in Venice in 1584 by Bernardo Basa. The story of this edition was
very troubled. The initiative was initially taken by Baldassare's son Camillo Castiglione
who entrusted the revision of this work to the scholar Bernardino Marliani in 1576, in
order to save his father's work from being included in the index. But the Holy Office took

over the project and delegated the task to Antonio Ciccarelli who worked on a copy
containing notes by the Master of the Sacred Palace who recommended in particular that
the darning not be visible to anyone. Different types of interventions are found in this
book. The "secularization" of ecclesiastical figures is prevalent: the bishop of Potenza
becomes the Podest (f. 82r), the monks are changed into Jews (f. 98v and passim) and so
on. Facetious episodes related to religious personalities are instead completely
eliminated. The same is true for the section on the history of the popes Alexander VI and
Nicholas V (ff. 77r-v) where the phrase Papa nihil valet is visibly and forcefully crossed
out by ink, for the story of the monk who impregnated 5 nuns (ff. 83v-84r) and for the
reference to St. Paul where the phrase guardate quel becco, pare un San Paulo! (look at
that beak, looks like a St. Paul!) becomes ... pare un Dante! (looks like a Dante!). You
can perhaps infer a reference here to the iconography in the famous edition of the socalled Dante nasone (Dante with the big nose) published a few years earlier. There are
also modifications in style with which Cicarelli tried to hide signs of expurgation or
ideological changes connected to the sensibilities and idiosyncrasies typical of CounterReformation. Terms such as fate, luck, stars etc. also appear to warrant censorship.
Providing pretexts to Protestant detractors is also avoided, as in the censored incident (f.
84r-v) in which the historical character of Tommaso Fedra Inghirami says oremus pro
haereticis et scismaticis.
Going back to the Congregations of the Inquisition and the Index, it can be seen from the
brief overview of their history that despite the Medieval roots of the former, both were
created right after the event which founded the Counter Reformation, namely the Council
of Trent19, in which the two (see supra) became the instruments and mouthpieces for two
different positions. The first was one which asserted political centralization and decisions
from the top. The second supported greater attention to local authorities as a sign of
episcopal collegiality which was closer to the real spirit of the Council of Trent. The
conflict revolved around the popes and other influential characters who were more
inclined towards one position or the other. For example, Paul IV (whose name is
associated with the first official index of 1559) and Sixtus V (1585-1590) were in favor
of the centralization of powers and consequently more inclined to support the Inquisition.
Supporters of a more moderate attitude and closer to the philosophy of the bishops
included Pius IV (under whom the Council of Trent came to an end in 1564 with the issue
of the so-called Tridentine index) and certain cardinals and proprieters of diocese of great
importance such as Gabriele Paleotti in Bologna and Charles Borromeo in Milan20.
Opposing ecumenical visions definitely led to differences but it was not just a matter of

19The

Council of Trent (which met intermittently from 1545 to 1563) was the XIX general Council of the
Catholic Church and was organized as a reaction to the doctrines of Calvinism and Lutheranism and for the
reform of the Church.
20M.Infelise, I libri proibiti (Rome-Bari : Laterza, 2003), 39 ff.

principle. The problem lay in the daily administration of justice consisting of the
selection of books to be prohibited, the drafting of the lists to be placed in circulation and
possibly printed, the responsibility for condemnations and the application of punishment.
Very often, this complicated affair was completely handled by the Master of the Sacred
Palace who had to intermediate by playing the part of an arbiter for both congregations. It
was not possible to find a unique interpretation even for the Ten Rules of Trent which
were fixed rules on censorship set at the conclusion of the Council (see chapter 5), since
clear indications were not always provided regarding the specific responsibilities of the
bishops and inquisitors21.
The problem of administering justice which involved aspects of canon law had asserted
itself since the Middle Ages and, apart from specific applications, had posed theoretical
issues that persisted for several centuries. Tractatus de haereticis, attributed to Giovanni
Calderini22, is a handbook for inquisitors which was created at the beginning of the 14th
century and printed for the first time at the end of the 16th century (cat. 88). It includes a
chapter titled De processibus inquisitorum an possint Episcopi seu eorum vicarii se
intromittere23 which deals with the complex occurrence of crimes that could either be
pursued jointly by the bishop and the inquisitor or were the exclusive domain of the
latter. It should also be taken into account that while the courts of the Inquisition
conducted trials on religious matters and enacted sentencing, the sanctions had to be
implemented through the civil court, the real "secular arm" of the clergy. Therefore, there
was a need for more defined coordination and distribution of tasks with this entity. For
example, De haeresi et modo cohercendi haereticos, by the clergyman from Antwerp,
Jean Capet (cat.89) should be interpreted keeping this in mind. It established the
boundaries of the ecclesiastical and secular courts made all the more complex and
uncertain by the the Spanish Inquisition (independent of the Roman one) being in force in
the Netherlands at the time. The reality of these problems during Counter Reformation
was such that starting from the second half of the 16th century, a particular kind of
inquisitorial literature developed including guides to the history of heresy and
methodical works on theology, law and ethics to which secular jurists, Dominican and
Franciscan monks, Jesuits and members of the ordinary clergy contributed24. These were
often editiones principes of Medieval writings, as was the case of the aforementioned

21For

example, while Rule VII says that the owners of lascivious and obscene books severe ab Episcopi
puniantur and Rule VIII says that books containing parts to be censored Inquisitionis generalis
authoritate expurgati concedi possunt, Rule VI on books in the vernacular affirms that si eorum authores
Catholici sunt, postquam emendati fuerint, permitti ab Episcopo et Inquisitore possunt.
22It was actually Super materia haereticorum or De haereticis by Zanchino Ugolini (for further details, see
the catalog entry).
23Tractatus novus aureus et solemnis de haereticis [...] (Venice : Zenaro Damiano, 1571), f.93, ff.
24A. Prosperi, Larsenale degli inquisitori, in A.A. Cavarra ed., Inquisizione e Indice nei secoli XVI-XVIII.
Controversie teologiche dalle raccolte casanatensi (Vigevano : Diakronia, 1998), 6-12 (9).

Tractatus by Calderini. This affirmed true continuity with that tradition of books (of
which Practica by the famous inquisitor Bernard Guy was a model and an archetype)
aimed at educating and guiding the inquisitors in their daily practice. At other times,
these were ex novo works with a more modern quality, heirs to the Medieval ones. The
most popular and famous of these works was probably Sacro Arsenale by the monk
Eliseo Masini, published for the first time in 1621 and then reprinted throughout the 18th
century (see cat. 93 and 99). The Baroque metaphor in the title here alludes to the
instruments offered to an ever growing inquisitorial bureaucracy (almost equivalent in
size with that of the clergy of parishes and monasteries) which was not always at ease
with books written in Latin25. The only one of its kind written in Italian (something
which obviously favored its success), this manual by Masini provided general guidelines
and principles such as the definition of heresy and heretic, types of accusations, forms to
complete for the issue of licenses (see cat. 95) and description of the various methods of
torture and their use. Directorium inquisitorum by the Catalan Dominican monk Nicolas
Eymerich is worthy of mention in relation to the use of torture as a method for obtaining
a confession from the guilty26. Printed at the beginning of the 16th century, it was
published from 1607 with fundamental commentary by Francisco Pea (cat. 91). In
Quaestio LXI27 which deals with the crux of the use of tormenta, the Inquisitor describes
which indications could justify the use of torture28.
According to certain provisions derived from Roman law, no trial could in fact begin with
torture. There had to be some evidence of guilt which Eymerich identified in varietas as
inconsistent arguments by the accused and in vacillatio as reluctance in providing
answers. Directorium, commented on by Pea, with its explanatory glosses aimed at
clarifying the obscure and ambiguous passages for the benefit of the Inquisition, was
another step forward in resolving that conflict regarding jurisdiction with the
Congregation of the Index. At the beginning of the 17th century, the Inquisition was
definitively on the winning side of this conflict.
These are just some of the most important books from an abundance of publications.
Only a rough overview of these has been provided here, without getting too specific. It is
also very interesting to note the quick proliferation, between the 16th and the 17th
centuries, of instruments of everyday use in the fight against heresy. These were tools
used for repressive activity which would accompany and complete the main weapon of
censorship, that is the Index librorum prohibitorum.

25Prosperi,

8.
use of torture had been very much in practice since the 14th century: Innocence IV legitimized its
use as an instrument against heresy (Ad extirpanda bull of May 15, 1252).
27N.Eymerich, Directorium inquisitorum ... cum commentariis Francisci Pegne ... (Venice, 1607), 591 ff.
28 And Pea makes the following comment on this passage: Laudo equidem consuetudinem torquendi
reos (Eymerich, 594).
26The

4. HISTORY AND STRUCTURE OF THE INDICES OF PROHIBITED BOOKS

The need to sort the huge amount of writings, fueled and multiplied by the new media of
printing, did not only raise concerns and anxiety about control. There were also those
who were interested in cataloging, who felt the need to identify the new books in order to
use and not prohibit them (ironically, the lists of forbidden books could, if necessary, be
transformed into lists of books to be read, see par. 5), who ultimately had the interests of
the scientific community in mind and felt themselves to be part of that societas
litteratorum mentioned in the beginning. This was the spirit that sustained Conrad Gesner
while compiling his Bibliotheca universalis, published in 1545 and enhanced with an
Appendix in 1555. It is a vast repertoire containing about 12 thousand titles of books
written in Latin, Greek and Hebrew, created in order to facilitate the work of scholars and
to protect the knowledge produced by man in the past and present, also becoming a
foundation for modern bibliographic science.
However, at the same time, the process of censorship had been set in motion. The year
following its establishment in 1543, the Holy Office introduced its first decree which
required all booksellers to draw up a list of books on sale (named index) to be presented
for judgement by the inquisitors. The measure passed almost unnoticed, more because of
the lack of coordination between inquisitors and bishops than because of the predictable
refusal by booksellers and printers. During those same years, lists of suspicious books
were drawn up in France and elsewhere in Europ. Between 1544 and 1558, six indices
were completed at the Theological Faculty of the Sorbonne in Paris (with a total of 588
titles) and three at the University of Louvain at the request of Charles V himself and at
that of his successor, Philip II. Getting back to Italy, it is no surprise that the first two
catalogs were compiled in Rome and in Venice in the same period. Applying the above
decree, Valgrisi printed Catalogo di diverse opere, compositioni et libri, li quali come
eretici, sospetti, impii et scandalosi si dichiarano dannati et prohibiti in questa inclita
citt di Vinegia in Venice, created by Monsignor Giovanni della Casa (who would be
included in the index of 1559). This catalog which included 149 titles by alphabetical
order without any internal hierarchy, was however soon withdrawn because of lively
protests by Venetian booksellers who believed, not wrongly, that they had been treated
more severely than their colleagues working in Rome. The complaints of the Venetian
publishers were followed by two incidents of book-burning in Piazza San Marco. The
first, in 1553, was organized by Carafa (who became Pope Paul IV two years later) with
the consent of the Council of Ten and dozens of copies of the Talmud were burned in it.
The second, in 1559, was ordered by the Venetian inquisitor Felice Peretti (who would
also ascend to the papal throne in 1585 under the name Sixtus V) and caused the
destruction of 12 thousand books. Moreover, even catalogs printed in 1554 in Venice (by
Giolito), Rome and Milan were withdrawn from the market. The real turning point

coincided with the election of Pope Paul IV with the enactment of the strictest index ever
in 1559, the only one to be decided entirely by the Inquisition in Rome.
The first official index was the Pauline one, while the last was printed in 1948 (cat. 84
and 85). Between these two, several editions appeared, many of which just repeated and
updated the previous ones, remaining simple "transitional" works for many different
reasons (they were never promulgated or they were incomplete, etc.). Other editions, on
the other hand, could be considered as breakthroughs. These are lists whose circulation
had led to genuine progress in the history of censorship or were anyway connected to
events of great cultural and political relevance. The indices of the latter type were not
very many, but occur at a fairly homogeneous rate between the two symbolic dates of
1559 and 1948. The most significant stages of a rise and fall which lasted four centuries
can be retraced as follows.
The first Index librorum prohibitorum was, as we said, that of Paul IV. Published in 1559
by Paul Manutius, it included a thousand titles divided into three classes and was ordered
alphabetically. All editions of the index until the mid 18th century were structured in this
way. The first class included authors whose works had all been condemned, including
those with secular topics. The second class included single books of an author or
particular categories of works (magic, astrology, alchemy, etc.). The third comprised of
anonymous writings or those without typographical notes29. Moreover, an additional list
of 45 prohibited versions of the Bible and the New Testament was provided, along with a
list of 61 banned printers (mostly German with the exception of the Brucioli from
Venice). Most of the blacklisted authors were linked to the Reformation, starting with
Luther and Calvin. But literary works which were deemed licentious30 (like those of
Aretino, Boccaccio, Pulci and Rabelais) were also on the radar, as were those contrary to
the power of Church like De Monarchia by Dante, Istorie fiorentine (Florentine
Histories) by Machiavelli (see cat. 111)31 and sonnets by Petrarch against the Avignon
Papacy. The severe list of prohibitions sparked protests and concern not only among
booksellers but also in the academic environment32 (the majority of the most updated
scientific texts came from North European countries) and even among the clergy. The
most difficult case was linked to the name of Erasmus (included in first class), whose

29

At the time, it was common practice to falsify the title pages of forbidden books to make their
identification more difficult.
30U.Rozzo, La letteratura italiana negli Indici del Cinquecento (Udine : Forum, 2005), 30 ff.
31Machiavellis name appeared among those in the first class mostly because of this work (commissioned
to him in 1520 by Cardinal Julius De Medici himself) in which he openly criticised the activity of certain
prelates, going as far as accusing Sixtus IV of nepotism.
32 Due to the practice of expurgation, there was a level of tolerance which allowed but limited the
circulation of scientific books coming from abroad, such as works by the physician Leonard Fuchs (see cat.
22).

books were commonly used in Jesuit schools and were a constant in the cultural
landscape and not just in Italy. The prohibition of the Pauline index, although minimized
in subsequent indices, represented an important precedent which effected precautionary
and preventive censorship by editors and readers who were intimidated by the ambiguity
of the treatment towards Erasmus33. For these and other reasons, soon after Paul IVs
death, which occurred in the same year, the desire to make the index milder voiced itself.
This resulted in the publication of the index of 1564, ordered by Pius IV at the closing of
the Council of Trent and therefore also called "Tridentine". The index of 1564, preceded
in 1561 by Moderatio indicis librorum prohibitorum by Ghislieri, was created not by the
Inquisition but by a council delegation (from which the Congregation of the Index was
born a few years later) and was a little more lenient compared to the previous Pauline
index. For example, Erasmus was placed sub dubio in the first two classes, making it
clear without admitting it explicitly, that some of his works could be read. The numbers
and titles remained basically unchanged and, except for some shifting of titles from one
class to another, the real novelty was the spirit in which it was written. It was inclined to
give back to the bishops the authority that had been taken away with the Pauline index,
for example, on such topics as censorship and the granting of licenses for reading books.
The Tridentine Index was a real counterattack against the world of Reformation: it is
interesting to note that shortly after the end of the Council of Trent, indices of forbidden
books were obliged to be printed even in countries with a big Protestant population such
as Germany (cat. 2) and Poland (cat. 20). Although it remained formally in force until the
next edition and was reprinted many times, its substance was actually discussed again
with the successor of Pius IV, Pope Pius V (formerly commissioner of the Congregation
of the Holy Office and commissioned by Pope Paul IV to prepare the index of 1559) who
supported a return to the rigorous centralism that had characterized the Pauline index.
The conflict of power between the Congregation of the Index and the Congregation of the
Holy Office meant that at the end of the century, no proposal for the revision of the
Tridentine index would find enough consensus to prevail. Therefore, the lists which were
drawn up by Sixtus V in 1590 and 1593 never went to publication and it was not until
1596, the year of release of the index of Clement VIII (cat. 16), that the 1564 index was
revised. The Clementine index retained the three classes, added a few titles (mostly
already present in other European indices) and renewed the ban on reading the Bible in
the vernacular, thus remaining more or less on the same track as the Tridentine Index.
With the release of the Clementine index, the sixteenth century came to a close as the

33S.Seidel

Menchi, Erasmo in Italia, 1520-1580 (Turin : Bollati Boringhieri, 1987).

busiest era for censorship by far in the history of the Church. The historical events that
had started the process of Counter Reformation were still highly relevant at the end of the
sixteenth century, as well as the debates within the Roman Curia on the methods, aims
and strategies to adopt. However, a slow process of decline started at the start of the
seventeenth century which resulted in a weakening of the importance of the index. It can
be said that, straddling the two centuries, repression peaked with Giordano Bruno and
Galileo Galilei after which the process of censorship loosened its grip. The enforcement
of the prohibitions was becoming more complex and control of the books also proved
really difficult because of an ever-growing production. In Rome, the committees of the
Index had to read piles of books - the title pages of these books often bear an ex libris and
notes of ownership by religious and lay staff of the Inquisition (cat. 107, 110, 112), most
of which came from outside Italy and were often written in languages difficult to
understand. Even the Master of the Sacred Palace Giovanni Maria Guanzelli (also known
as Brisighella) desisted from compiling an expurgatory index. The first volume of Index
librorum expurgandorum (cat. 22), the only one ever published in Italy and containing
passages to be erased or rewritten from about fifty works, was published in Rome at the
Tipografia Camerale in 1607 and was not succeeded by other volumes.
A new index, that of Alexander VII (see cat. 32), was printed only in 1664. It was slightly
different from the previous ones in terms of structure, with works not divided into classes
but listed in alphabetical order. It was updated to include the most recent publications, but
was fundamentally similar in tone to the Clementine index, of which several editions
continued to be published in Italy and abroad. This fact highlights the flexible nature of
the censorship system forced to follow the same, increasingly archaic patterns and
showed large areas of arbitrariness brought on by an increasingly unwieldy and difficult
tool to use. Even the following indices, those of Innocent XI released in 1681 (cat. 38)
and of Clement XI (cat. 43), which brought the number of prohibitions from about 2,000
in 1596 to over 11,000 in 1704, did not provide a remedy for a situation which was
aggravated by a new and massive wave of philosophical, literary and scientific works
linked to the Enlightenment.
The author of a major revision was Pope Benedict XIV. He was a man of great intellect
and culture who gave great impetus to the Vatican Library with the purchase of 3,300
manuscripts, reformed the University and supported literary magazines. In 1758, he
published an index (cat. 50) which, for the first time since the times of the Council of
Trent, introduced profound changes and did not merely add more titles to an ever
growing and anachronistic list. The result of a radical review34, this index reflected a
project of modernization at multiple levels. A new alphabetical order was introduced with

34Infelise,

I libri proibiti, 102.

reference to the decree of prohibition35, mistakes which had accumulated over the years
were corrected and titles that no longer presented a threat were eliminated, thus making
for simpler and easier consultation. Benedict XIV also reinstated the reading of the Bible
in the vernacular, which had been forbidden since 1564 by the famous Regula IV (see
ultra), eliminated the works of Copernicus from the index and finally took on the reform
of the Congregation of the Index (with the bull of 1753 reported in the 1758 editions of
the index). His work was summarized by Giovanni Domenico Mansi in 1763 in a book
called Epitome doctrinae moralis, et canonicae (cat. 53) featuring the views expressed by
Pope Benedict XIV in his writings, including those on very odd topics such as tobacco
sniffing or eunuchs.
The importance of the revision by Benedict XIV was such that there were no particularly
significant changes or events in the history of the index until the end of the nineteenth
century, with the exception of recurring updates of the lists that occurred with the
publication of the decrees of prohibition and with the appendices which were inserted at
the end of the reprints of the indices themselves36. Thereafter, the most important index
was that of Pope Leo XIII (cat. 72 et seq.) which changed the Tridentine rules after more
than 350 years, trying to revitalize the values and ideals advocated by the Council of
Trent. In 1897, with the Apostolic Constitution Officiorum ac munerum, Leo XIII
reorganized the law regarding censorship. Desiring to follow in the footsteps of his
predecessors (Clement VIII, Alexander VII, Benedict XIV), all of whom were cited in a
sort of small compendium of the history of censorship, he rewrote the rules promoted by
Pius IV back in 1564, this time organizing them into 49 items grouped into 15 chapters,
in which the role of the Roman Church as the guardian of morality and natural ethics was
reaffirmed through the censorship of books.
The reform initiated in 1753 by Benedict XIV was not over yet. It had represented a
move towards a final stage in which the gradual restructuring of the Congregation of the
Index finally ended in its abolition in 1917 thanks to Pope Benedict XV. As can also be
seen from the choice of the name Benedict (which brings to mind the work of Benedict
XIV), he wanted to reestablish a certain tradition of reform inside the Church. The index
which was promulgated under his papacy was therefore more important for including the
text of the 'Motu proprio' for the abolition of the Congregation of the Index named
Alloquentes proxime, than for including new prohibited titles or structural modifications

35Prohibited

works could be found under the name of the author or of the work. The reference to the decree
of prohibition referred to the year in which the work was banned and consequently to the index in which
this ban was published for the first time.
36At times, changes to the lists of prohibited books were made so quickly that it was possible to find copies
of the same edition with some differences. This is proof that updates were sometimes inserted during the
same press run. (see cat. 65 and 66).

(cat. 79). Over the last three decades of its history, the index thus became the exclusive
responsibility of the Holy Office, as it had been originally. But after the pauses of the two
world wars, in a world where the traditional dynamics of power were in definite crisis
and the influence of the Church had been reconsidered, even the Inquisition started to
lose its importance gradually. In 1948 Pope Pius XII published the last index in history
(cat. 84 and 85) followed by only a few decrees published in the pages of LOsservatore
Romano, the newspaper of the Holy See. At the Second Vatican Council promoted by
Pope Paul VI, even the Inquisition was abolished and in 1966 the new Congregation for
the Doctrine of the Faith declared that the index did not hold any value in terms of
ecclesiastical law.
If considered only from the publishing point of view, Index Librorum Prohibitorum was a
good opportunity for many printers who placed their own printers at the service of the
Counter Reformation. For example, it is known that the Giolitos shifted the main focus of
their production from literature in the vernacular to religion37 (including the Index itself),
in keeping with the stricter tone adopted by the Church in the 1550s. Paul Manutius
himself, the son of Aldo who was a friend of Erasmus and at the beginning of the century
epitomized the ideal humanist publisher, printed the strict index of Paul IV in 1559. At
the end of the next century, the Remondinis of Bassano were at the forefront of printers
specializing in religious publishing. They contributed to the typographic history of the
index with great attention to layout, graphics and illustration that was typical of them and
had made them famous well beyond the borders of Europe (see cat. 41, 44, 45). Starting
from the seventeenth century however, the first few editions (editiones principes) of the
indices were entrusted to the Vatican printers called Stamperia Camerale Apostolica.
They standardized a format during the eighteenth century which was replicated up until
the index of 1948 (see later in the paragraphs devoted to iconography).

It is worth specifying that when speaking of the Index as an editorial product, in the vast
majority of cases a much more elaborate and full-bodied text is referred to, rather than
just a list of forbidden books. Publishing just the list of prohibitions would have limited
its circulation only to those in the know. There was the need for something else which
would attract a larger number of readers, literally a pre-text, truly able to make the Index
a book to read and not just a work to reference. The most important part consisted of
accessory texts, whose variety and combination was often the most distinctive part of
each edition, the part that could make it more or less attractive and marketable. The
following describes the different components of Indices librorum prohibitorum.

37A.Nuovo,

I Giolito e la stampa nellItalia del XVI secolo (Geneve : Librairie Droz, 2005).

Chronicle of the Council of Trent

The transcript of the minutes of the sessions of the Council of Trent is a constant in all
editions of the indices of prohibited books. During the 25 Sessiones, which took place
between December 1545 (the first one was under Paul III) and December 1563 (the last
one under Pius IV), the committee of bishops discussed the key topics of Counter
Reformation and passed a decree on each of these, thus laying down the canons of the
modern Church. The structural change of the Church involved many issues including the
fight against Protestant heresy, the reorganization of the peripheral structure consisting of
ordinary diocesans and bishops, the reform of confession and marriage and the control of
books. This last subject was something that particularly occupied session XVIII which
was also the first, after the inaugural one, to be held by the newly elected Pope Pius IV,
the Pope of the Tridentine Index (see supra). The Tridentine sessions were almost always
preceded by the Bulla indictionis Sacri oecumenici et generalis Concilii Tridentini,
namely the bull with which Paul III convened the Council in 1542 and by the Bulla
apertionis Sacri oecumenici et generalis Concilii Tridentini, the papal document that
declared the official start of the work of the council. Many editions also include the text
of the prayer recited by Bishop Girolamo Ragazzoni at the closing of the Council
(Oratio... Hieronymi Raggazzoni veneti episcopi).
Regulae, instructiones, observationes
In the final days of the Council, the 10 basic rules that were supposed to regulate the
activities of publishers and censors were established. These rules remained unchanged
and accompanied all the editions of the Index from 1564 until the twentieth century when
they were rewritten by Leo XIII, as mentioned before. Preceded by the Dominici Gregis
papal bull of 1564 and followed by Praefatio in Indicem librorum prohibitoum, the rules
established that books affected by the ban before the Council was formed were to be
treated the same way as the new ones. They also established limits related to the reading
of the Bible in the vernacular (Rule IV) and prohibitions on spreading or reading
comments which were not officially authorized by the Church, especially those by
Protestant authors. Additionally, they prohibited the circulation of generally immoral,
obscene or superstitious works (magic, astrology, divination etc.). Finally, they enforced
pre-emptive censorship (Rule X) but at the same time introduced the possibility of
expurgation (Rule VIII). Subsequently, certain margin notes were added which
introduced secondary rules for the application of the Tridentine decrees, while leaving the
text of the rules unchanged. These consisted of Observationes by Clement VIII
introduced for the first time in the Index of 1596. Observatio circa quartam regulam
stressed the irrefutability of the prohibition of reading the Bible in the vernacular, while
Observatio circa nonam regulam clarified the authority of the inquisitors and bishops in
banning books of magic. Moreover, starting with the Clementine Index, the Index was

prefaced by an Instructio divided into three parts (De prohibitione librorum, De

correctione librorum, De impressione librorum), which drew the attention of printers and
censors to the rules to be followed as far as the production of books. In 1665 Alexander
VII also added his Observatio ad regulam decimam, easening views on the Talmud and
other Jewish books while strongly condemning the writings of Jean Bodin (see cat. 32).
Index librorum prohibitorum
This always appears at the end of the book. The part containing the list of banned books
is somewhat individual: it often has its own title page, with pages numbered from one
and, in some cases, with the register of the signatures starting from the beginning also.
This shows that the Index could also be designed for independent circulation which
occurred very rarely, and that the lists which were printed for previous editions could be
safely reused for any edition that followed (whereas the paratexts would change, see
below). For example, in the 1586 edition by the publisher Giovanni Bazachi from
Piacenza (cat.12), the register of the signatures, usually placed at the end of a book,
marks the break between the first part of the volume and the Index38.
Paratexts
This comprises a number of complementary books which were used to make reading and
consultation easier, to provide additional insight and news about censorship, heresy or the
history of the Council or to update the reprints of the index. A classic example of a
paratext is the history of the city of Trent which at the time was a mix between Italian and
German culture (because of which it was preferred to others as the site of the Council).
The Tridenti descriptio would normally precede the text of the chronicle of the Council
and the Index and appeared both in the Italian and other European editions (the city was
obviously described from the point of view of the place where it was printed: see cat. 2
and 7). With the succession of various popes after Pius IV, the number of papal bulls
promulgated on the subject of censorship multiplied. To give the reader a chance to
understand and learn about the evolution of the thinking of the Church on the prohibition
of books, appendices were added containing the texts of major papal bulls. There were
also editions with advanced analytical indices in which the topics referred to the sessions
in which they were discussed or included small anthologies featuring the "best of the
Council" (named Margarita or Hyacintus, see for example cat. 23 and 29). Since the
paratexts were excluded from what we now call copyright, the most updated editions
were often stolen and copied shamelessly, even without reference to the authors of
comments, glosses or other complementary texts. Such was the case of the extremely
successful margin notes by Orazio Luzi which appeared for the first time in 1566 (in the

38See

p.57 of the cited edition.

Venetian edition by Giordano Ziletti, see cat. 7) and were reprinted up to the mid 18th
century, in many cases without any indication of the writer (as in cat. 8). Another very
important paratext was the Decreta, that is updates of the index including the latest papal
decisions and prohibitions. These were printed either on large sheets which were hung in
Rome inside the Colonnade of the Vatican (cat. 94 and 101) or in smaller sized sheets, fit
to be bound in quarto or in octavo.
Iconography
There were not many editions of the index accompanied by artwork in the beginning.
Only since the end of the sixteenth century and more so from the following, the use of
woodcuts became frequent (see cat. 9, 13, 40, for those by Remondini see cat. 41)
portraying prominent figures of the Council or depicting religious themes such as
Nativity, the descent of the Holy Spirit or the Resurrection of Christ (a clear allusion to
the resurrection of the Church during Counter Reformation) or reproducing the papal
insignia and the coat of arms of the family of origin of the pope. But the real
iconographic theme of the index was represented by the burning of banned books. If the
spreading of heresy was likened to a disease or a plague, then the image of the purifying
fire was a direct reference to the symbolic aspect as well as to the real experience of book
burning in the squares. An ancient metaphor, the image of book burning is rooted in the
Gospels. The biblical reference is the passage contained in the Acts of the Apostles XIX,
19, where the miracles worked by St. Paul at Ephesus are described which persuaded
Jews to get rid of superstitious books by throwing them in the fire39. The passage was
often mentioned and appeared conspicuously on the title page of the index of Alexander
VII published in 1667 (cat. 32). In the 18th century, the engraving depicting the burning
of books at Ephesus became a symbol of recognition of the Stamperia Camerale Vaticana
(the Vatican Printing House, see cat. 43), which never stopped the practice of inserting
the engraved frontispiece depicting the Gospel story. As late as 1930, the secretary of the
Congregation of the Holy Office, Cardinal Merry del Val, in the preface to the Index by
Pope Pius XI, quoted this story of St. Paul in defense of censorship (cat. 81).

39In

the meantime, God was working rare miracles through Paul, to the point that tissues or aprons that
had been in contact with him were placed on sick people so that they would heal and evil spirits would
disappear. Some itinerant Jewish exorcists also tried to invoke the name of the Lord Jesus for those who
had evil spirits saying, "I beseech you in the name of that Jesus who Paul preaches." This was done by the
seven sons of a certain Sceva, a Jewish high priest. But the evil spirit answered them, "I know Jesus and I
know who Paul is, but who are you?". And the man who had the evil spirit jumped on them, grabbed them
and treated them with such violence that they fled from that house naked and covered with wounds. This
became known to all Jews and Greeks living in Ephesus who were filled with awe and praised the name of
the Lord Jesus. Many of those who had embraced the faith came to publicly confess their practice of magic
and quite a few of them brought their books and burned them before others. The total value of the books
was calculated and found to be fifty thousand silver coins. Thus the word of the Lord grew and
strengthened. See also Frajese, Nascita dellindice, 224 ff.

5. DECLINE OF THE INDEX

Careful reading of the indices and documents makes it possible today to reconstruct the
attitude of the Church towards the prevailing currents of thought at the time and
important historical facts. Secondly, it allows for the determination of how much the
choices of the ecclesiastical hierarchy counted in the formation of a cultural and social
identity at both the collective and individual level. Finally, it allows for the evaluation of
the influence of papal policy in the territory and over time. Being excommunicated or
convicted for expressing ideas against the Church could mean exile or even death in the
16th century. However this attitude had already become more flexible in Rome in the
following century, much more attentive to maintaining a severe appearance than to really
pursue printers, booksellers and readers who could be accused of crime. Reflecting on the
whole story of religious censorship from the 16th to the 20th century, a gradual
weakening in the real effects of the bans can be observed. This took place in spite of the
incredible tenacity to the original rules, as witnessed from the references to Inter
sollicitudines by Leo X at the end of the 19th century40 and from the duration of the 10
Tridentine rules modified by Leo XIII only in 1897. Nevertheless, the lists of
prohibitions remain an effective litmus test for us. They record with great sensitivity,
apart from certain exceptions that should be explained based on political considerations,
the most advanced points in cultural progress in Europe. Ironically, the lists also
transformed into catalogs of books to read, at least in order to get acquainted with the
changes in the horizon after the end of Catholic unity at the time of the Holy Roman
Empire. This dangerous reversibility of the lists of banned books was not lost on the
Jesuit Jacob Gretser. At the beginning of the 17th century in his De jure et more
prohibendi, expurgandi, et abolendi libros haereticos et noxios (cat. 89), he pointed out
that expurgatory indices such as that of Franciscus Junius published by the Plantin
printing house in 1571, were used in Protestant countries as 'anthologies' of important
passages. This saved the enemies of the Church from having to read all the parts which
were allowed by Rome and were therefore of no interest to them.
At the turn of the 16th century, the vision of the world as it was started to disintegrate.
The unity of the Empire of Charles V was followed by fragmentation that would lead to
the emergence of national states with the consequent development of new theories of
statal and political organization. In the field of science, the secular Aristotelian
geocentrism on which the Church had based part of its authority had been overturned by
the writings of Copernicus and Galileo which wound up in the Index, in 1620 for De

40

For example, the bishop Giovanni Negri in Tortona in 1854, referring to the principles of 1515,
condemned the local newspaper, LOsservatore Tortonese. This episode is recalled in U.Rozzo, La
letteratura italiana negli Indici del Cinquecento (Udine : Forum, 2005), 71: see also Rozzo, Le origini del
giornalismo tortonese e la stampa locale dal 1849 al 1861, in Cento anni di giornali a Tortona (18491949), Tortona : Biblioteca civica, 1985, 13.

revolutionibus and in 1634 for Dialogo sopra i massimi sistemi (Dialogue Concerning
the Two Chief World Systems) respectively. It was inevitable that the range of influence
of the Church would diminish quickly. The idea that the struggle against the books could
be a losing battle or almost impossible to win, began to take shape.
In the eighteenth century, the Roman Inquisition faced many difficulties in tackling
philosophical and scientific developments which were a threat to orthodoxy. This was
particularly due to weakness in the local network of control, reflected by the growing
awareness of the Church of the diminished effectiveness of its traditional repressive
means41. It still felt itself burdened by the legacy of the Galilei case, something that the
most enlightened part of Italian Catholicism had been struggling to eliminate in favor of a
more balanced relationship with the demands of modern culture. A supporter of this trend
was Celestino Galiani, the Chaplain of the Kingdom in Naples (where he founded the
Academy of Sciences) from 1732. Galiani faced heresy charges for his philosophical
views which were similar to the enlightened thinking of Locke (whose Essay Concerning
Human Understanding would be included in the Index in 1734). During the second half of
the century, the crisis of the Church was even worsened by the variety of positions held
within orthodoxy and the situation became manifestly irreversible. Even freemasonry,
which was one of the main targets of Catholic repression (together with scientific and
Enlightened ideas), eventually established itself in spite of prohibitions by the Roman
clergy. Nevertheless or perhaps in a last desperate attempt to still keep control of the
situation, the Church issued its most sensational rulings between the 40s and the 50s. This
took place under the papacy of Benedict XIV who was however reputed to be an
enlightened Pope and took charge of reforming the Congregation of the Index in
175342. According to these rulings, the works of French Enlightenment thinkers such as
Montesquieu and Voltaire (see cat. 49, 52) were banned as well as those by Italian
thinkers, the most striking example of which was Cesare Beccaria and his Dei delitti e
delle pene (On Crimes and Punishments, see cat. 56), condemned by Pope Clement XIII
in 1766.
The traditional opposition between innovative thinkers and the Catholic world underwent
further evolution after the French Revolution which spread liberal, secular and republican
ideas all across Europe. Moreover, Catholics began to pay increasing attention to these
principles of equality and freedom. Vincenzo Gioberti, Antonio Rosmini, Gioacchino
Ventura were at the forefront of denouncing the secular power of the Roman Church and
were thus condemned by the Congregation of the Index (Decree of May 30, 1849, see cat.

41G.Romeo,

LInquisizione nellItalia moderna (Rome-Bari : Laterza, 2002), 105 ff.

reform of the Congregation was proclaimed by Pope Benedict XIV in 1753 with the Sollicita ac
provida bull, whose text is reproduced in full in the 1758 edition of the Index librorum prohibitorum (cat.
50).
42 The

65)43. Towards the end of the century, after the unification of Italy was proclaimed
(1861), a number of writings related to Church-State relations became the target of the
Congregation. After the breach of Porta Pia in 1870, the so-called Roman Question was
born, namely the conflict between the papacy and the Italian state for the expropriation of
land by the latter which established the new borders of the Papal State inside the Vatican
walls. In this climate, while Pope Pius IX continued to call himself a prisoner of the
Italian State, the attention of the censors was more focused on writings of a political
nature. In the years immediately preceding the birth of the Italian State, works of authors
who took a stand against the territorial and temporal domain of the Church were
condemned such as Roma e il mondo (see cat. 68) by Niccol Tommaseo, whereas other
works such as On The Origin of Species by Charles Darwin published in 1859, were not.
The next century started with the crisis of liberal policies which came about in the second
half of the 19th century. The emergence of socialist labor movements on one hand and
the development of industrial capitalism on the other, forced the Church to take clear
positions on the new issues that were developing. Leo XIIIs Rerum novarum encyclic
was certainly a strong signal of the renewal of the Churchs desire to be an active part of
society. It no longer wished to be a prisoner in the new state, but wanted to be a guide and
a point of reference for the training of the new ruling classes. In 1923, the reform of the
Italian school system planned by Giovanni Gentile was welcomed warmly by the
ecclesiastical circles because of the official catholicization of school education and
reaffirmation of the central role played by the Vatican in Italian culture. The reform was
ratified just a few years later in 1929 with the drafting of the Lateran Pacts. This was
however followed by the exponents of this process falling out of favor, in complicity with
the Fascist regime. Between 1932 and 1934, the complete works of the two philosophers
Benedetto Croce and Giovanni Gentile got included in the Index. Their idealistic and
secular way of thinking was in fact contrary to the Neo-Scholasticism supported by the
Church in those years, first of all by the Jesuits (with their magazine La Civilt Cattolica)
and then by Universit Cattolica of Milan with Father Agostino Gemelli as its rector and
by its magazines such as Vita e pensiero and Rivista di filosofia neoscolastica 44. The
reaction of the two philosophers however, was very different from that of others before
them in the early centuries of censorship. There was a mixture of indifference and irony
in their words, even of pride for having been banned and having joined the company of
illustrious names such as Dante, Machiavelli and Leopardi. Even as early as 1874, when

43Only

Gioberti did not submit to the provision of censorship, vehemently condemning its political nature.
Idealisti allIndice.

44Verucci,

the historian Ferdinand Gregorovius had learned of the ban on his writings, he said: My
work is complete and spreading all over the world: now the pope is advertising it45.
The official relationship with Fascism would open a very sensitive chapter in the
relationship between the Church and totalitarianism in the first half of the 20th century.
The official position of the pope towards Fascism and Nazism was not always clear and
the tacit consent of the Church to regimes that led to World War II is now at the center of
a great debate among historians. It is a matter of fact that the writings of Hitler and
Mussolini were never included in the Index and that Catholic theologians in Germany
stood by and openly supported the birth of the Nazi regime. It is enough to compare the
two editions of Index Romanus published in Germany in 1906 and 1920 (cat. 76 and 80)
and edited by Albert Sleumer, to reach this conclusion. In the second edition of these
annotated reductions in the lists of banned books, the only difference is a few pages on
contemporary Germany with particular reference to the publishing market and cinema.
Here is what the German theologian said: When will the German people be able to rise
up, to make it clear to the dirty foreigners (Russian-Polish-Galician) and their rogues in
Germany that being German means being honest and loyal?! Undoubtedly, any sagacious
person would judge those who produce films of this kind as vulgar corruptors (and even
the most obtuse knows that 95 percent of movie producers are Jewish! [Juden sind!]),
individuals for whom only the wallet is sacred!46. This tightening in censorship, growing
increasingly stronger with the progressive affirmation of Nazism, culminated, as known,
in a huge book-burning event organized in Berlin on the night of May 10th, 1933. In a
scene from La caduta degli dei (The Damned) by Luchino Visconti, students from the
University of Berlin attend the reading of a list of "immoral" books, the same ones which
they would later burn. These included the works of many intellectuals who were
considered leftists or Jews such as Thomas Mann, Emile Zola, Arnold Zweig, Marcel
Proust, Andre Gide and even Albert Einstein. The book-burning in Berlin however was
not organized by the government (which did not fail to express its satisfaction however)
but by the students themselves stirred by Nazi propaganda. Over the years this
propaganda was also fueled by the contributions of men of culture such as Albert
Sleumer and their writings.
The Congregation of the Index having disappeared along the way, the last chapter in the
secular story of Index librorum prohibitorum was the Second Vatican Council convened
by Pope John XXIII in 1959 and concluded under Pope Paul VI in 1966. The Second
Ecumenical Vatican Council was one of the most important in history. It brought the

45

H.Wolf, Storia dellIndice. Il Vaticano e i libri proibiti (Rome : Donzelli, 2006). The diaries of
Gregorovius have recently been published in Germany under the title Rmische Tagebcher 1852-1889, ed.
by H.-W. Kruft and M. Vlkel (Munich : C.H. Beck, 1991).
46The translated passage is on p.14 of Sleumers work.

Church into modern times, redesigned its archaic institutions starting from its foundation
and forced it to face the necessity for radical adaptation to the new era. In this context, the
decision to abolish the Congregation of the Holy Office and put an end to the publication
of the Index was part of a plan that relied on other instruments for the worldwide
dissemination and defense of the Catholic doctrine. The Church has returned only
recently to speaking out about books that have caused a sensation all over the world
(Harry Potter and The Da Vinci Code), condemning their superstitious and unfounded
historical element. It is significant that this condemnation came from Cardinal Ratzinger,
now Pope Benedict XVI, formerly the Secretary of the Congregation for the Doctrine of
the Faith, that is of the Congregation which has taken the place of the Inquisition since
1966.