This is a selected list of authors and works listed on the Index Librorum Prohibitorum . The Index was discontinued on June 14, 1966 by Pope Paul VI. [1] [2]
A complete list of the authors and writings present in the subsequent editions of the index are listed in J. Martinez de Bujanda, Index Librorum Prohibitorum, 1600–1966, Geneva, 2002.
The Index includes entries for single or multiple works by an author, all works by an author in a given genre or dealing with a given topic. The scope of the prohibition is defined by a Latin phrase in the Index:
The Index includes entries banning all works of a particular writer. Most of these were inserted in the Index at a time when the Index itself stated that the prohibition of someone's "opera omnia" (all his works) did not cover works whose contents did not concern religion and were not forbidden by the general rules of the Index, but this explanation was omitted in the 1929 edition, an omission that was officially interpreted in 1940 as meaning that thenceforth "opera omnia" covered all the author's works without exception. [3]
This is a selected list of the authors and works appearing in the final published edition of the Index in 1948, with later additions until the Index was discontinued in 1966.
Banned | Name | Works | Ref. |
---|---|---|---|
1559 | Machiavelli, Niccolo | All works | [lower-alpha 1] |
1600 | Bruno, Giordano | All works | [lower-alpha 2] |
1627 | Thadeus, John | Conciliatorium Biblicum | |
1626, 1657, 1658, 1659, 1672 | Grotius, Hugo | All works of theology; De Imperio summarum potestatum circa sacra (pub. 1647); Annales et historiae de rebus belgicis (pub. 1657); +6 more | [lower-alpha 3] |
1645 | Browne, Thomas | Religio Medici; the religion of a physician | [lower-alpha 4] |
1649 | Hobbes, Thomas | All works | [lower-alpha 5] |
1657, 1789 | Pascal, Blaise | Lettres provinciales (1657); Pensées (pub. 1670), with notes by Voltaire | [lower-alpha 6] |
1659 | Calvin, John | Judicial lexicon of imperial and canon law | [lower-alpha 7] |
1663 | Descartes, René | Meditations (1641); Les passions de l'âme (1649); Opera philosophica. Donec corrig.; +4 more | [lower-alpha 8] |
1667 | Leti, Gregorio | All works | [lower-alpha 9] |
1668 | Bacon, Francis (Baco, Franciscus) | De dignitate et augmentis scientiarum libri IX. Donec corrig. | [lower-alpha 10] |
1676 | Montaigne, Michel de | Essays | [lower-alpha 11] |
1679, 1690 | Spinoza, Baruch | Tractatus Theologico-Politicus (1677); Posthumous works | [lower-alpha 12] |
1684 | Eriugena, Johannes Scotus (Erigena, Ioannes Scotus) | De divisione naturae libri quinque diu desiderati | [lower-alpha 13] |
1689, 1707, 1712 | Malebranche, Nicolas | Traité de la nature et de la grace (1680); Traité de morale (1684); +4 more | [lower-alpha 14] |
1694, 1758 | Milton, John | Literae pseudo-senatus anglicani, Cromwellii reliquorumque perduellium nomine ac iussu conscriptae (1676); Paradise Lost (1667) | [lower-alpha 15] |
1703 | La Fontaine, Jean de | Contes et Nouvelles | [lower-alpha 16] |
1717 | Maimonides | 'Tractate on Idolatry from the Mishneh Torah with notes by Dionysius Vossius' | [lower-alpha 17] |
1729 | Addison, Joseph | Remarks on Several Parts of Italy (1705; revised 1718) | [lower-alpha 18] |
1734, 1737 | Locke, John | An Essay Concerning Human Understanding (1689); The Reasonableness of Christianity, as Delivered in the Scriptures (1695) | [lower-alpha 19] |
1738 | Swedenborg, Emanuel | Principia (1734) | [lower-alpha 20] |
1742 | Berkeley, George | Alciphron, or The Minute Philosopher | [lower-alpha 21] |
1743 | Defoe, Daniel | The Political History of the Devil (1726) | [lower-alpha 22] |
1744 | Richardson, Samuel | Pamela, or Virtue Rewarded (1740) | [lower-alpha 23] |
1751, 1762 | Montesquieu | Lettres Persanes (1721); De l'esprit des lois (1748) | [lower-alpha 24] |
1752, 1753, 1757, 1761, 1762, 1765, 1766, 1768, 1769, 1771, 1773, 1776, 1779 | Voltaire | Candide (1759); Traité sur la tolérance (1763); Lettres philosophiques (1733; revised 1778); +38 more | [lower-alpha 25] |
1758, 1804 | Diderot, Denis | Encyclopédie, ou dictionnaire raisonné des sciences, des arts et des métiers (1751–72); Jacques le fataliste et son maître (pub. 1796) | [lower-alpha 26] |
1758 | d'Alembert, Jean le Rond | Encyclopédie, ou dictionnaire raisonné des sciences, des arts et des métiers (1751–72) | [lower-alpha 27] |
1759, 1774 | Helvétius, Claude Adrien | De l'Esprit (1758); De l'homme, de ses facultés intellectuelles et de son éducation | [lower-alpha 28] |
1761 | Hume, David | All works | [lower-alpha 29] |
1762, 1766, 1806, | Rousseau, Jean-Jacques | Émile, ou de l'éducation (1762); Du contrat social (1762); Julie, ou la nouvelle Héloïse (1761) | [lower-alpha 30] |
1764 | Kollár, Adam František (Kollarius, Adamus Franciscus) | De originibus et usu perpetuo potestatis legislatoriae circa sacra apostolicorum regum Ungariae (1764) | [lower-alpha 31] |
1766 | Beccaria, Cesare | Dei Delitti e delle pene (1764) | [4] |
1783 | Gibbon, Edward | Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (1776–1788) | [lower-alpha 32] |
1815, 1840, 1859, 1863, 1866, 1896 | Michelet, Jules | 6 titles | [lower-alpha 33] |
1817 | Darwin, Erasmus | Zoonomia; or The Laws of Organic Life (1794) | [lower-alpha 34] |
1819 | Sterne, Laurence | A Sentimental Journey Through France and Italy (1768) | [lower-alpha 35] |
1827 | Condorcet, Nicholas de | Sketch for a Historical Picture of the Progress of the Human Mind (1794) | [lower-alpha 36] |
1827 | Kant, Immanuel | Critique of Pure Reason (1781; revised 1787) | [lower-alpha 37] |
1828 | Stendhal | All love stories | [lower-alpha 38] |
1834, 1837, 1838, 1841, 1843, 1846, | Lamennais, Hugues Felicité Robert de | 7 works | [lower-alpha 39] |
1834 | Casanova, Giacomo | Mémoires | [lower-alpha 40] |
1835 | Bentham, Jeremy | Deontology, or The science of morality (1834); +3 more | [lower-alpha 41] |
1836 | Heine, Heinrich | Reisebilder; De l'Allemagne; De la France | [lower-alpha 42] |
1840 | Sand, George | All love stories | [lower-alpha 43] |
1841 | Balzac, Honoré de | All love stories | [lower-alpha 44] |
1849 | Gioberti, Vincenzo | All works | [lower-alpha 45] |
1852 | Proudhon, Pierre-Joseph | All works | [lower-alpha 46] |
1856 | Mill, John Stuart | Principles of Political Economy (1848) | [lower-alpha 47] |
1859, 1860, 1863, 1866, 1869, 1877, 1881, 1882, 1884, 1891, 1892, | Renan, Ernest | 19 titles | [lower-alpha 48] |
1863, 1880 | Dumas, Alexandre (fils) | All love stories; La question du divorce | [lower-alpha 49] |
1863 | Dumas, Alexandre (père) | All love stories | [lower-alpha 50] |
1864 | Comte, Auguste | Cours de philosophie positive | [lower-alpha 51] |
1864 | Flaubert, Gustave | Madame Bovary (1856); Salammbô (1862) | [lower-alpha 52] |
1873 | Larousse, Pierre | Grand dictionnaire universel du XIXe siècle (1866–76) | [lower-alpha 53] |
1876 | Draper, John William | History of the Conflict between Religion and Science (1874) | [lower-alpha 54] |
1894 | Zola, Émile | All works | [lower-alpha 55] |
1911, 1928, 1935, 1939 | D'Annunzio, Gabriele | All plays; All love stories; +3 more | [lower-alpha 56] |
1913 | Various contributors | Annales de philosophie chrétienne | [5] [lower-alpha 57] |
1914 | Bergson, Henri | Essai sur les données immédiates de la conscience; Matière et mémoire; essai sur la relation du corps à l'esprit; L'évolution créatrice | [lower-alpha 58] |
1914 | Maeterlinck, Maurice | All works | [lower-alpha 59] |
1922 | France, Anatole | All works | [lower-alpha 60] |
1931 | van de Velde, Theodoor Hendrik | Het volkomen huwelijk (1926) | [lower-alpha 61] |
1948 | Sartre, Jean-Paul | All works | [6] |
1952 | Gide, André | All works | [7] |
1952 | Moravia, Alberto | All works | [8] |
1953 | Kazantzakis, Nikos | The Last Temptation of Christ (1955) | [9] |
1956 | de Beauvoir, Simone | The Second Sex (1949); The Mandarins (1954) | [10] |
There have been cases of reversal with respect to works that were on the Index, such as those of Nicolaus Copernicus and Galileo Galilei. The Inquisition's ban on reprinting Galileo's works was lifted in 1718 when permission was granted to publish an edition of his works (excluding the condemned Dialogue) in Florence. [11] In 1741 Pope Benedict XIV authorised the publication of an edition of Galileo's complete scientific works [12] which included a mildly censored version of the Dialogue. [13] In 1758 the general prohibition against works advocating heliocentrism was removed from the Index of prohibited books, although the specific ban on uncensored versions of the Dialogue and Copernicus's De Revolutionibus remained. [14] All traces of official opposition to heliocentrism by the church disappeared in 1835 when these works were finally dropped from the Index. [15]
Not on the Index were Aristophanes, Juvenal, John Cleland, James Joyce and D. H. Lawrence. According to Wallace et al., this was because the primary criterion for banning the work was anticlericalism, blasphemy and heresy.
Some authors whose views are generally unacceptable to the Church (e.g. Karl Marx) were never put on the Index; nor was Charles Darwin (see Evolution and the Roman Catholic Church). [16] [17]
Works that were included in the Index, and later removed, include:
Banned | Name | Works | Ref. |
---|---|---|---|
1585 to 1881 | Dante Alighieri | De Monarchia (1312–13)? | |
1616 to 1835 | Nicolaus Copernicus | De revolutionibus orbium coelestium (1543) | |
to 1835 | Johannes Kepler | Astronomia nova (1609); Harmonices Mundi (1619); Epitome Astronomiae Copernicanae (1617–21) | |
Sade | Justine (1791); Juliette (1797–1801) | ||
Madame de Staël | Corinne ou l'Italie (1807) | ||
until 1959 | Victor Hugo | Notre Dame de Paris (1831); Les Misérables (1862) | |
Anatole France was a French poet, journalist, and novelist with several best-sellers. Ironic and skeptical, he was considered in his day the ideal French man of letters. He was a member of the Académie Française, and won the 1921 Nobel Prize in Literature "in recognition of his brilliant literary achievements, characterized as they are by a nobility of style, a profound human sympathy, grace, and a true Gallic temperament".
The Roman Inquisition, formally Suprema Congregatio Sanctae Romanae et Universalis Inquisitionis, was a system of partisan tribunals developed by the Holy See of the Catholic Church, during the second half of the 16th century, responsible for prosecuting individuals accused of a wide array of crimes according to Catholic law and doctrine, relating to Catholic religious life or alternative religious or secular beliefs. It was established in 1542 by the leader of the Catholic Church, Pope Paul III. In the period after the Medieval Inquisition, it was one of three different manifestations of the wider Catholic Inquisition, the other two being the Spanish Inquisition and Portuguese Inquisition.
The Pensées (Thoughts) is a collection of fragments written by the French 17th-century philosopher and mathematician Blaise Pascal. Pascal's religious conversion led him into a life of asceticism, and the Pensées was in many ways his life's work. It represented Pascal's defense of the Christian religion, and the concept of "Pascal's wager" stems from a portion of this work. However as conflicting with the orthodoxy of the Catholic Church it has been forbidden to print or read by the Index Librorum Prohibitorum.
The Index Librorum Prohibitorum was a changing list of publications deemed heretical or contrary to morality by the Sacred Congregation of the Index ; Catholics were forbidden to print or read them, subject to the local bishop. Catholic states could enact laws to adapt or adopt the list and enforce it.
Heliocentrism is a superseded astronomical model in which the Earth and planets revolve around the Sun at the center of the universe. Historically, heliocentrism was opposed to geocentrism, which placed the Earth at the center. The notion that the Earth revolves around the Sun had been proposed as early as the third century BC by Aristarchus of Samos, who had been influenced by a concept presented by Philolaus of Croton. In the 5th century BC the Greek Philosophers Philolaus and Hicetas had the thought on different occasions that the Earth was spherical and revolving around a "mystical" central fire, and that this fire regulated the universe. In medieval Europe, however, Aristarchus' heliocentrism attracted little attention—possibly because of the loss of scientific works of the Hellenistic period.
Giovanni Battista Riccioli, SJ was an Italian astronomer and a Catholic priest in the Jesuit order. He is known, among other things, for his experiments with pendulums and with falling bodies, for his discussion of 126 arguments concerning the motion of the Earth, and for introducing the current scheme of lunar nomenclature. He is also widely known for discovering the first double star. He argued that the rotation of the Earth should reveal itself because on a rotating Earth, the ground moves at different speeds at different times.
Charles Dumoulin (1500–1566) was a French jurist. He was surnamed by some of his contemporaries the "French Papinian".
Jane Frances de Chantal, VHM was a French Catholic noble widow and nun who was beatified in 1751 and canonized in 1767. She founded the Order of the Visitation of Holy Mary. The religious order accepted women who were rejected by other orders because of poor health or age.
The Social Contract, originally published as On the Social Contract; or, Principles of Political Right, is a 1762 French-language book by the Genevan philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau. The book theorizes about how to establish legitimate authority in a political community, that is, one compatible with individual freedom, in the face of the problems of commercial society, which Rousseau had already identified in his Discourse on Inequality (1755).
George Vincent Coyne, S.J. was an American Jesuit priest and astronomer who directed the Vatican Observatory and headed its research group at the University of Arizona from 1978 to 2020.
Henri Brémond was a French literary scholar and philosopher, Catholic priest, and sometime Jesuit. He was one of the theological modernists.
The Diocese of Vigevano is a Latin diocese of the Catholic Church which lies almost entirely in the Province of Pavia, Lombardy. It has existed since 1530. The diocese is suffragan of the Archdiocese of Milan, having been suffragan of the Archdiocese of Vercelli until 9 April 1578.
The Gnomon of Saint-Sulpice is an astronomical measurement device located in the Church of Saint-Sulpice in Paris, France. It is a gnomon, a device designed to cast a shadow on the ground in order to determine the position of the sun in the sky. In early modern times, other gnomons were also built in several Italian and French churches in order to better calculate astronomical events. Those churches are Santa Maria del Fiore in Florence, San Petronio in Bologna, and the Church of the Certosa in Rome. These gnomons ultimately fell into disuse with the advent of powerful telescopes.
The relationship between science and the Catholic Church is a widely debated subject. Historically, the Catholic Church has been a patron of sciences. It has been prolific in the foundation and funding of schools, universities, and hospitals, and many clergy have been active in the sciences. Some historians of science such as Pierre Duhem credit medieval Catholic mathematicians and philosophers such as John Buridan, Nicole Oresme, and Roger Bacon as the founders of modern science. Duhem found "the mechanics and physics, of which modern times are justifiably proud, to proceed by an uninterrupted series of scarcely perceptible improvements from doctrines professed in the heart of the medieval schools." Historian John Heilbron says that "The Roman Catholic Church gave more financial and social support to the study of astronomy for over six centuries, from the recovery of ancient learning during the late Middle Ages into the Enlightenment, than any other, and probably all, other Institutions." The conflict thesis and other critiques emphasize the historical or contemporary conflict between the Catholic Church and science, citing, in particular, the trial of Galileo as evidence. For its part, the Catholic Church teaches that science and the Christian faith are complementary, as can be seen from the Catechism of the Catholic Church which states in regards to faith and science:
Though faith is above reason, there can never be any real discrepancy between faith and reason. Since the same God who reveals mysteries and infuses faith has bestowed the light of reason on the human mind, God cannot deny himself, nor can truth ever contradict truth. ... Consequently, methodical research in all branches of knowledge, provided it is carried out in a truly scientific manner and does not override moral laws, can never conflict with the faith, because the things of the world and the things of faith derive from the same God. The humble and persevering investigator of the secrets of nature is being led, as it were, by the hand of God despite himself, for it is God, the conserver of all things, who made them what they are.
Henning Arnisaeus (Arniseus) (1570–1636) was a German physician and moral philosopher. He is now known for his writings on political theory.
Galileo di Vincenzo Bonaiuti de' Galilei, commonly referred to as Galileo Galilei, was a Florentine astronomer, physicist and engineer, sometimes described as a polymath. He was born in the city of Pisa, then part of the Duchy of Florence. Galileo has been called the father of observational astronomy, modern-era classical physics, the scientific method, and modern science.
Religious censorship is a form of censorship where freedom of expression is controlled or limited using religious authority or on the basis of the teachings of the religion. This form of censorship has a long history and is practiced in many societies and by many religions. Examples include the Edict of Compiègne, the Index Librorum Prohibitorum and the condemnation of Salman Rushdie's novel The Satanic Verses by Iranian leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini.
Johann Zanger was a German jurist, professor of law at Wittenberg University.
Magdalena Heymair was a teacher and Lutheran evangelical poet who wrote in the Middle Bavarian dialect. Born a Roman Catholic, she converted to evangelical Lutheranism. In her educational songs for children, she often emphasized the role of women in the Bible. Magdalena Heymair is the first and only woman prior to the 18th century to publish pedagogical writings for elementary teaching. She is also the first woman to have her works listed as heretical in the Index Librorum Prohibitorum (1569).
Annales de philosophie chrétienne was a monthly Catholic journal that existed from 1830 to 1913. It was founded by Augustin Bonnetty.