Section — Vermeersch, On Forbidden Books
II. On the Previous Censorship of Books
Censorship from the first centuries of Christ down to the modern age
7. 1. For a long time, before any law concerning previous censorship existed, there were holy and learned men who either handed suspect works over to the Supreme Pontiff to be judged, or sought his judgment and counsels concerning their own writings. Thus in the fifth century a certain Gennadius sent his work On Ecclesiastical Writers to Pope Gelasius, just as in the year 1198 Godfrey of Viterbo offered to Urban III his book whose title is Pantheon, to be approved and corrected.1
A certain previous censorship was imposed by particular law, for example, by the University of Paris (June 5, 1366), for masters.
After books began to be printed with type, the University of Cologne went before others by example in requiring previous censorship; Sixtus IV praised its zeal and approved its service, March 18, 1479.2
1 Hilgers, Der Index, p. 403.
2 Ibid., p. 407.
In the modern age
8. 2. But the first pontifical Constitution concerning the previous censorship of books has as its author Innocent VIII, November 17, 1487. Although it has universal force, it was sent to the Archbishop of Cologne. Alexander VI, by the Constitution Inter multiplices, June 1, 1501, issued for the four ecclesiastical provinces of Germany a general prohibition that books should not be printed unless the Archbishops or competent Officials had first been consulted.
Then, in the Lateran Council (1515), Leo X, by the Constitution Inter sollicitudines, May 4, 1515, enacted a general law by which, under grave penalties and even excommunication itself, he prohibited anyone from presuming to publish any writing whatever without the previous review of the Bishop, or, in the City, of the Vicar and the Master of the Sacred Palace.
At the present age
That decree was confirmed in the Tridentine Index; afterwards it was 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 of Pius IX in the year 1848 for the Pontifical State, and elsewhere also by the custom of places. Leo XIII sanctioned and more fully defined that benignity.
Particular laws
Meanwhile, particular provisions were also made concerning liturgical books, and concerning books written on a certain subject matter in places which are governed by the spiritual jurisdiction of the Sacred Congregation of Propaganda Fide. Cf. Collectanea, n. 1866 ff.
Censorships and proscriptions among non-Catholics and political men
9. At the end of this very brief exposition, these things must not be passed over: the pseudo-reformers of the modern age were most severe censors and proscribers of books; and political men, in order to attain their own ends, framed similar laws, which not even today have been entirely suppressed. One must by all means compare the things which are learnedly set forth concerning the censorship and prohibition of books in England, Holland, Scandinavia, Switzerland, Germany, and concerning royal and imperial censorship in France, in the work of Father Hilgers, S.J., Der Index.