Index librorum prohibitorum

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Title copper for the index librorum prohibitorum . The Holy Spirit lights the fire that is used to burn books , engraving from 1711

The Index librorum prohibitorum ("Directory of Forbidden Books", also called Index Romanus , "Roman Index") was a directory of the Roman Inquisition that listed books for every Catholic whose reading was considered a grave sin ; in some of these books excommunication was intended as a church punishment .

The directory appeared for the first time in 1559, its last official edition dates from 1948 with additions to 1962 and last named 6000 books. The index was discontinued after the Second Vatican Council in 1965 and 1966.

history

Beginnings of church bans on books

As a result of the 1st Council of Nicaea , Emperor Constantine I had the writings of Arius burned in 325 and put their property under the penalty of death. The first purely ecclesiastical ban on books dates back to the year 400. Under the chairmanship of Theophilus of Alexandria , it was decreed that no one in Egypt was allowed to “read or possess” the writings of Origen . In 446 Pope Leo the Great had the Manichaeans burned. The first synod that ordered the burning of the texts it condemned was the 3rd Council of Constantinople in 681 .

Book bans until the introduction of the Roman index

In the context of theological disputes and in the fight against heretics and those of different faiths, the popes repeatedly forbade writings in the Middle Ages. These prohibitions were enforced by the Church in cooperation with the secular rulers. It was not the Pope and the Curia who were primarily responsible for the continuous review and, if necessary, the ban on books , but the universities . In addition, there were always independent censorship procedures and bans on books by secular rulers or individual bishops.

Some examples:

Introduction of the Roman index

Title page of a Venetian edition from 1564

At the instigation of Cardinal Carafa, who later became Pope Paul IV , Paul III appointed. In 1542 with the Bull Licet ab initio six cardinals became General-Inquisitors for the whole Church and thus created the Roman Inquisition , more precisely the Congregatio Romanae et universalis inquisitionis , the predecessor of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith . The reason for this centralization was the fact that there had always been different opinions at the various universities as to which books should be banned and which were allowed. The Congregation could also no longer rule out the possibility of Reformation ideas spreading at the universities . And last but not least, the volume of books had increased considerably with the invention of mechanical letterpress printing by Johannes Gutenberg . The task of the Inquisition was first and foremost to fight Protestantism and the heretics in general. Since books and printed works were recognized as effective tools of the Reformation, the Inquisition built up a structured church censorship system. The most important means of this censorship was the papal index librorum prohibitorum , first published in 1559 and continuously updated (around 1564).

Indexing process

The indexing process began with the display of a book, either from within the Curia itself or from outside. Often the location of the first printing was enough for an initial suspicion. First, in the preliminary proceedings, the secretary of the congregation checked with two experts whether censorship proceedings should be initiated against the book at all. Adolph Freiherr von Knigge's treatise on dealing with people is an example of the writings not considered further after the preliminary proceedings.

The main procedure consisted of one, and for Catholic authors two written reports, which were evaluated by a specialist committee, the consultors , and discussed in a meeting. At the end of the meeting there was a proposal for a resolution that was presented to the Inquisition's cardinals. The cardinals, in turn, decided whether the book should be classified as dangerous or harmless, whereupon the Pope made the final decision to include it in the index. At the end of the proceedings there were three possible judgments:

  • Indexing with subsequent publication of the decision
  • Non-indexing without publication that there had been an indexing process
  • Obtaining another expert opinion

The index was divided into three classes:

  • The first class included the names of heretical writers
  • The second grade included heretical works
  • The third class consisted of forbidden writings that appeared without the name of the author

In addition to this index, there was also the index librorum purgandorum , a directory of the writings to be cleaned of objectionable places.

Well-known examples of indexed works are:

  • The book Mare Liberum ("The Free Sea") by the Dutch international lawyer Hugo Grotius . This work, published in 1609, criticized the Bull Romanus Pontifex of 1455, which had granted the Portuguese the monopoly of trade in Asia.
  • Galileo Galilei's writing Dialogo di Galileo Galilei sopra i due Massimi Sistemi del Mondo Tolemaico e Copernicano. ("Dialogue on the two most important world systems, the Ptolemaic and the Copernican.")

Again and again it happened that books were deleted from the index. So in particular in 1752 and 1900 with major index reforms. They were no longer considered forbidden.

Latest edition

The last official edition of the Index librorum prohibitorum appeared in 1948 with additions up to 1962. The index last contained over 6,000 titles that were not compatible with the religious doctrine or moral teaching of the Church. For example, these are the love stories by Honoré de Balzac , the chansons by Pierre-Jean de Béranger , seven works by René Descartes , two works by Denis Diderot (including his Encyclopédie ), the love stories by Alexandre Dumas the Elder and Alexandre Dumas the Younger . Furthermore, four works by Heinrich Heine , the Critique of Pure Reason by Immanuel Kant , The Other Sex by Simone de Beauvoir , the complete works of Maurice Maeterlinck and almost all works by Voltaire are mentioned. Lesser-known books can also be found there, such as The incompatibility of the new papal religious decrees with the Bavarian state constitution by Joseph Berchtold (1833-1894), 1871, The monastic cooperatives in Bavaria and the abandonment of imperial legislation by Heinrich Dürrschmidt , 1875, past and present of Catholic-theological faculties of Sebastian Merkle , 1913, Politics from Faith by Ernst Michel (1889–1964), 1926 and Herrgottswissen von Wegrain and Straße. Stories of weavers, carpenters and village boys by Joseph Wittig , 1922. Jean-Paul Sartre was one of the last to get on the index.

Several books by fascist and national socialist authors were also indexed . So Alfred Rosenberg's Myth of the 20th Century , 1934, but not Hitler's Mein Kampf .

abolition

The index was established in 1965 and 1966 under Pope Paul VI. overridden. On the one hand, a continuously updated continuation was no longer practicable in view of the no longer manageable number of books, writings, films, radio and television formats. On the other hand, in the decree Inter mirifica 1963 , the Second Vatican Council commented on the modern means of communication and pleaded for a constructive discussion of the new media.

The factual abolition took place with the Motu Proprio Integrae servandae of December 7, 1965, which simply no longer mentioned the index in its reform program of the Holy Office at the end of the Second Vatican Council. This was initially little noticed by the public until Cardinal Alfredo Ottaviani declared in a magazine interview on April 9, 1966, “that the index no longer has any legal validity”.

The index was formally abolished by decrees of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith of June 14 and November 15, 1966. The decree of June 14, 1966 suspended the index with effect from March 29, 1967. The decree of November 15, 1966 repealed the penalties incurred due to the book bans.

The Motu Proprio Integrae servandae of 1965 led the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, replacing the Holy Office, to continue to receive advertisements from books and to review the works. However, only “disapprove” and no longer “forbid” was spoken of. The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith only rarely expresses itself today on individual theological textbooks (about 1975 on Hans Küng's Infallible? ).

exploration

Since 1992, under the direction of church historian Hubert Wolf, as part of the long-term project "Roman Inquisition and Index Congregation from 1542 to 1966" of the German Research Foundation and with funding from the Fritz Thyssen Foundation, basic studies on the files from the archive of the Index Congregation and the Roman Inquisition have been published. The basic studies were originally laid out in 24 volumes, eleven of which were available in 2020. There are also numerous monographs on important individual topics . The Historical Archives of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith , which houses the archives of the Index Congregation and the Sanctum Officium (the Roman Inquisition), has been officially open for research since 1998.

See also

literature

Overall representations
  • Franz Heinrich Reusch : The index of the forbidden books. A contribution to the churches and literary history . In 2 volumes (Volume 2 in 2 sections). Bonn 1883-1885; New print Scientia Verlag, Aalen 1967. Online
  • Hubert Wolf (Ed.): Roman Inquisition and Index Congregation . Basic research. 11 volumes. Paderborn: Schöningh 2005–2020.
  • Jyri Hasecker: Sources on papal press control in modern times (1487-1966). Paderborn u. a. 2017. ISBN 978-3-506-78566-4


Individual representations

Web links

Commons : Index librorum prohibitorum  - album with pictures, videos and audio files
Primary texts


Additional information

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Index Librorum Prohibitorum . In: Encyclopedia Britannica , accessed September 2, 2015.
  2. ↑ a b c d The decrees of the CDF can be found in AAS 58 (1966) 1186. According to Heribert Heinemann ( protection of faith and morals. In. Joseph Listl and others (eds): Handbook of the Catholic Church law. Pustet Regensburg 1983, ISBN 3-7917-0860-0 , pp. 567-578): “The church bans on books (c. 1399 CIC / 1917) [were] abolished and the penalties that arose on the basis of these bans (cf. c . 2318 CIC / 1917), repealed. ". Cf. Georg May: The lifting of the church ban on books. In: Karl Siepen [u. a.] (Ed.): Ecclesia et ius: Festgabe für Audomar Scheuermann […] Schöningh, Paderborn et al .: 1968, pp. 547-571.
  3. ^ Hubert Wolf: Index. The Vatican and the Forbidden Books. P. 69ff (see under literature).
  4. ^ Hubert Wolf: Index. The Vatican and the Forbidden Books. P. 258 (see under literature).
  5. ↑ Hubert Wolf: Pope and Devil - The Archives of the Vatican and the Third Reich. P. 282 (see under literature).
  6. ^ German version of the Decree Inter mirifica
  7. ↑ Press release Information Service Science