I. On the Prohibition of Books

Books prohibited in the first age of the Church

2. 1. Relying on the example of St. Paul himself, under whose eyes at Ephesus books of superstitions were burned by fire,¹ the Holy Fathers strove with every effort to deter the faithful from keeping or reading the writings of heretics. And in the very first ecumenical Council, that of Nicaea, in the year 325, a decree was issued against the book Thalia of Arius, which Constantine the Great completed by severe enforcement. Several later decrees concerning the books of Pelagius, of the Manichaeans, and so forth, imitated that example.

Gelasian decree

Moreover, the first catalogue of prohibited books is found in the decree which, under the name of Gelasius (496), was received into the Gratian collection of law.² It is sometimes celebrated as the first Roman Index.

Besides the works of heretics, the forged Acts of the Martyrs and apocryphal penitential books were then condemned.

¹ Acts of the Apostles, 19:19.

² Canon Sancta Romana, 3, D. 15.

Prohibited books in the Middle Ages

3. 2. In the Middle Ages also severity was used against the works of heretics and treatises on the magical arts.

Precautions concerning the Sacred Bibles, thirteenth century

4. 3. From the end of the thirteenth century (1299), on account of the abuses of heretics, precautions began to be taken lest the Sacred Bibles be read imprudently by the people, especially in the vernacular tongue.¹

¹ Hilgers, Der Index, p. 5.

After the spread of the typographical art

5. In the sixteenth century, after the typographical art had spread, there was need to take sharper measures against evil books. Therefore several particular Indexes of dioceses¹ or kingdoms appeared.

Index of Paul IV

Paul IV first published a Roman Index in the year 1559, to the moderation of which that Holy Pontiff himself already applied his labor.²

Of Pius IV

But in the year 1564 there appeared the Index of Pius IV, called the Tridentine Index, because that sacred synod had committed to the Supreme Pontiff the care of publishing an Index and of arranging that subject. The so-called Tridentine rules, or ten general decrees concerning the proscription of books, are placed before the catalogue itself. The catalogue, however, borrowed from Paul IV the division of books into three classes: 1. of heretical authors; 2. of Catholic works; 3. of anonymous works. Moreover, all the works of authors of the first class were prohibited. This Index, as far as substance is concerned, remained up to Leo XIII.

Of Sixtus V and Clement VIII

Nevertheless, Sixtus V prepared a new edition of the Index, which, with certain books removed, especially the Controversies of Cardinal Bellarmine and the Relectiones of Francis de Vitoria, Clement VIII completed in the year 1596. The first class scarcely appears there to have been increased by any name; but in place of insertion into the first class there succeeded the clause Opera omnia, by which a writer was marked who seemed worthy of universal proscription.

Of Alexander VII

Then, in the edition of Alexander VII (1664), the division into three classes was formally suppressed, since the books were arranged in alphabetical order.

Of Benedict XIV

Benedict XIV deservedly 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.

Of Leo XIII

And thus one comes to the Index which, under the auspices of Leo XIII, was promulgated to the whole world in the year 1900.

¹ It would be wholly alien from the mind of the Holy See to publish particular Indexes of this kind today. Thus, on August 17 of the year 1892, to the Archbishop of Valladolid, who had asked the Holy See certain things concerning the Spanish Index, the response was: One must stand solely by the Roman Index and its rules, and new editions of the Spanish Index are to be prohibited.

² Cf. Hilgers, Der Index, p. 7.

Origin of the Sacred Congregation of the Index

6. Concerning the Sacred Congregation of the Index itself, it will be useful to recall that it is contained seminally in the Motu Proprio of St. Pius V, November 19, 1570, by which he gave to the Master of the Sacred Palace a most full faculty of correcting books. Then, as the Congregation for Reforming the Index and Correcting Books, it was brought to light in the month of March 1571; which institution the Bull of Gregory XIII, September 13, 1572, solemnly promulgated, so that Sixtus V, by the Constitution Immensa aeterni Patris, January 22, 1588, by which he instituted or confirmed fifteen Congregations, had only to ratify the already existing Congregation.