The Censorship of the Church of Rome and its Influence Upon the Production and Distribution of Literature (Complete)
By George Haven Putnam
- Release Date: 2025-10-06
- Genre: History
Description
In these volumes, I have undertaken to present a record of the Indexes which have been issued under the authority of the Church of Rome, or which, having been compiled by ecclesiastics, were published under the authority of the State, between the year 1546 (the date of the first list of prohibited books which may properly be described as an Index) and 1900, in which year was issued the second Index of Leo XIII, the latest in the papal series.
To this record I have added a selection of the more noteworthy examples of censorship during the earlier centuries of the Church (a list which begins with a curious prohibition in 150, probably the earliest instance of censorship by a Church council); a schedule of the more important of the decrees, edicts, pastoral briefs, etc., issued under ecclesiastical authority, which had to do with the matter of censorship; and a specification of certain censorship regulations which, before the publication of the first Index, came into force in the several States of Europe. Such a schedule of decrees and regulations can, of course, lay no claim to completeness. I have attempted simply to present examples of prohibitions and condemnations, from decade to decade, which were typical or characteristic, and from which some impression could be gathered as to the nature and the extent of the censorship experiments throughout the centuries in the several communities concerned.
A brief account has been added of the organisation and of the operations of the Roman Inquisition and of the Congregation of the Index, as it was from these bodies that emanated the series of papal Indexes, and with them rested, from the middle of the sixteenth century, the responsibility for the shaping of the general policy of the Church in regard to censorship. The plan of the treatise does not render it practicable to attempt any general survey of political censorship or the censorship of the State, but I have presented a brief selection of examples of State action in censorship, in order to make the necessary comparison between the methods followed by the State and those of the Church, and to make clear that the censorship of the Roman Church was (at least outside of Spain) not so autocratic in its principles, nor so exacting and burdensome in its methods, as was the censorship which was from time to time attempted by State governments acting for the most part under Protestant influence.
I have attempted to base upon these schedules and records some conclusions as to the actual influence of the general system of censorship, as connected more particularly with the enforcement of the penalties prescribed by the Indexes, upon the production and distribution of literature in the several communities which recognised to a greater or less extent the authority of the Church. An interesting indication of the extent of this influence is given through the records of the business of the printer-publishers and booksellers of the period, in such States as Italy, Spain, France, Germany, the Netherlands, and England.
Finally, I have attempted, in the closing chapters, to make a study of the literary policy of the modern Church as indicated in the latest of the papal Indexes and in certain utterances by representative Catholics concerning the censorship policy of the Church, which have come into print during the past quarter of a century.
In collecting the material for the several schedules of Indexes, decrees, etc., I am chiefly indebted to the treatise of Heinrich Reusch, Der Index der Verbotenen Bücher, published in Bonn in 1885. Dr. Reusch’s work may be described as monumental in the thoroughness and authoritativeness of its scholarship. The information presented in regard to the series of Indexes and decrees is most comprehensive and precise. The compass of Reusch’s three volumes (which comprise twenty-four hundred closely printed octavo pages) renders them, however, unavailable for the use of the general reader. I have knowledge of no work in English which presents, with any measure of completeness, the record of the Indexes, and of no book in any language which attempts a general survey of the purpose and results of the censorship of the Church. It has seemed to me, therefore, that I might render some service to the study of the conditions affecting literary production and distribution, by utilising certain portions of the material collected by Reusch in a work prepared for English-speaking readers, which should present the schedule of the Indexes and a summary of the more noteworthy of the decrees, edicts, briefs, etc., having to do with censorship, and by connecting with this a study of the results secured through this censorship policy of the Church and of the range of its influence.
I have been able to include in the catalogue of Indexes certain titles which were not listed by Reusch, and I have added the record of the Indexes which have been published since the date of Reusch’s treatise. I have not been dependent upon Reusch’s schedules for the contents of the Indexes themselves, as I have been able to make a personal examination of all of the more important Indexes in the series from examples in my own library, and in the comprehensive collection of my valued friend Mr. Archer M. Huntington. Mr. Huntington has, I may mention, rendered a most important service to students of the Index through his reprints, produced in facsimile, of five of the earlier issues as follows: Louvain, 1546; Louvain, 1550; Cordova, 1550; Cordova, 1554; Valladolid, 1559.
