Index Librorum Prohibitorum
The Index Librorum Prohibitorum (English: List of Prohibited Books) was a list of publications deemed heretical, anti-clerical, or lascivious, and therefore banned by the Catholic Church. The Church has earlier examples of forming a formal prohibition of works including the Muratorian Canon around AD 170, which set to establish what was acceptable to have in the New Testament and what was heretical. The 9th century also witnessed the creation of what is considered to be the first index called the Decretem Glasianum but was never officially authorized. Much later, a first version (the Pauline Index) was promulgated by Pope Paul IV in 1559, which Paul F. Grendler believed marked "the turning-point for the freedom of inquiry in the Catholic world", and which lasted less than a year, being then replaced by what was called the Tridentine Index (because it was authorized at the Council of Trent), which relaxed aspects of the Pauline Index that had been criticized and had prevented its acceptance.
The 20th and final edition appeared in 1948, and the Index was formally abolished on 14 June 1966 by Pope Paul VI.
The aim of the list was to protect the faith and morals of the faithful by preventing the reading of heretical and immoral books. Books thought to contain such errors included works by astronomers such as Johannes Kepler's Epitome astronomiae Copernicanae, which was on the Index from 1621 to 1835, and by philosophers, like Immanuel Kant's Critique of Pure Reason. The various editions of the Index also contained the rules of the Church relating to the reading, selling, and pre-emptive censorship of books-editions and translations of the Bible that had not been approved by the Church could be banned.
Catholic canon law still recommends that works concerning sacred Scripture, theology, canon law, church history, and any writings which specifically concern religion or morals, be submitted to the judgment of the local ordinary. The local ordinary consults someone whom he considers competent to give a judgment and, if that person gives the nihil obstat ("nothing forbids") the local ordinary grants the imprimatur ("let it be printed"). Members of religious institutes require the imprimi potest (it can be printed) of their major superior to publish books on matters of religion or morals.
Some of the scientific theories in works that were on early editions of the Index have long been routinely taught at Catholic universities worldwide; for example, the general prohibition of books advocating heliocentrism (that the Sun is the center of the Universe and not Earth) was only removed from the Index in 1758, but already in 1742 two Franciscan mathematicians had published an edition of Isaac Newton's Principia Mathematica (1687) with commentaries and a preface stating that the work assumed heliocentrism and could not be explained without it. The burning at the stake of Giordano Bruno, whose entire works were placed on the Index in 1603, was because of teaching the heresy of pantheism, not for heliocentrism or other scientific views. Antonio Rosmini-Serbati, one of whose works were on the Index, was beatified in 2007. In 2002, a retired Roman Catholic bishop gave his personal approval to the writings of Maria Valtorta, which had been placed on the Index in 1960 (though never in a printed edition, since the last such edition was published in 1948) and which have still not been given official Church approval. The developments since the abolition of the Index signify "the loss of relevance of the Index in the 21st century."
A complete list of the authors and writings present in the successive editions of the Index is given in J. Martinez de Bujanda, Index Librorum Prohibitorum, 1600–1966. A list of the books that were on the Index can be found on the World Wide Web.
- More information is available at [ Wikipedia:Index_Librorum_Prohibitorum ]
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