To n. 889. - Appendix XIX. Historical Matters Concerning the Censorship and Prohibition of Books

1. Particular decrees by which books were condemned are already had in the First Council of Nicaea (325), against the book of Arius, Thalia; then against the books of Pelagius, of the Manichaeans, etc.

The first catalogue of prohibited books is in the decree which, under the name of Gelasius (496), was received in the Decree of Gratian, D. 15, c. 3. Sometimes it is celebrated as the first Roman Index.

Besides the works of heretics, the fabricated acts of martyrs and apocryphal penitential books were then condemned; afterward, in the Middle Ages, also treatises of the magical arts.

From the end of the thirteenth century (1299), on account of the abuses of heretics, provision began to be made lest the Sacred Scriptures be read imprudently by the people, especially in the vernacular tongue.

In the sixteenth century it was necessary to proceed more sharply against depraved books. Wherefore several particular Indexes of dioceses or kingdoms appeared.

Paul IV first issued the Roman Index in the year 1559; but in the year 1564 there appeared the Index of Pius IV, called for by the Council of Trent, to which are prefixed the so-called Tridentine rules, or ten general decrees concerning the proscription of books. This Index, as regards its substance, remained down to Leo XIII.

Yet Sixtus V prepared a new edition of the Index, which, with certain books removed, Clement VIII completed in the year 1596. Here occurs the clause Opera omnia, by which a writer who seemed worthy of universal proscription was marked.

In the edition of Alexander VII (1664), the books which previously were distributed into three classes were arranged in alphabetical order.

Benedict XIV gave an excellent edition (1758), after first prescribing the most wise Constitution Sollicita ac Provida, July 9, 1753, concerning the method to be observed in the examination and proscription of books.

In the year 1900, Leo XIII, with the general Tridentine rules also reformed, promulgated a new Index for the whole world. The new general rules are contained in the Code.

II. Even before the law concerning previous censorship existed, there were not lacking holy and learned men who would hand over suspect books to the Supreme Pontiff for examination, or who would seek his judgment and counsels concerning their own books.

A certain previous censorship was imposed by particular law, for example, of the University of Paris (June 5, 1366), upon masters.

After books began to be printed with type, the University of Cologne, praised by Sixtus IV on March 18, 1479, went before by example in exacting censorship.

But the first pontifical Constitution concerning the previous censorship of books has as its author Innocent VIII, November 17, 1487. Alexander VI, in the Constitution Inter multiplices, June 1, 1501, issued a general prohibition, for the four ecclesiastical provinces of Germany, that books should not be printed unless the archbishops or competent Officials had first been consulted. Then in the Fifth Lateran Council (1515), Leo X, on May 4, 1515, prohibited under grave penalties that anyone should presume to publish any writing without the previous recognition of the bishop or, in the City, of the Vicar and the Master of the Sacred Palace. The Council of Trent confirmed this decree, then increased by the rules of Clement VIII concerning the printing of books, until the rigor of the former law was mitigated, by an express law for the Pontifical State, by Pius IX in the year 1848, and elsewhere by the custom of places. Leo XIII sanctioned and defined this benignity more, and now the canonical Code does so.

Meanwhile particular provisions were also made concerning liturgical books and concerning books written on a certain argument in places which are subject to the Sacred Congregation of Propaganda Fide. For more on these matters, cf. our De Prohibitione et Censura librorum, ed. 4, or Hilgers, S.I., Der Index.