The Index of Prohibited Books

“A broad and reflective history of the Index of Prohibited Books (Index Librorum Prohibitorum), which dates back the Council of Trent… . This well-written book includes a comprehensive further reading section… . Highly recommended.”– “Choice”“Vose’s Index of Prohibited Books explores the history of Christian intellectual intolerance. It’s a solid read with extensive footnotes and suggested further reading.”– “Fortean Times”“In The Index of Prohibited Books: Four Centuries of Struggle over Word and Image for the Glory of God, a judicious and well-written history, Vose offers a 400-year survey of the Index of Prohibited Books that raises critical questions about the legitimation and production of knowledge… . Does the tolerance of diversity and plurality necessarily entail allowing all ideas, even bad ones, to flourish? With this well-crafted and highly entertaining book, Vose makes us aware that we have more in common with the Indexers than we would like to admit.”– “Reading Religion”“Vose’s The Index of Prohibited Books is not the first history of Catholic censorship, but it’s the first in English to present the often arcane workings of theologians and scholars in a straightforward narrative for a nonspecialist readership. Vose is evenhanded, lamenting the consequences of censorship while carefully distinguishing its early modern form from the more familiar authoritarian types of censorship that came later. For Vose, totalitarian censorship–the generalized destruction and suppression of Orwell’s nightmares–was a different thing altogether from the episodic, incoherent, contradictory practice of Catholic censorship, for all the universalizing ambitions of the popes.”– “New York Review of Books”“Of all the institutional efforts to police, censor, and control books, the most comprehensive and enduring was the Roman Catholic Church’s Index of Prohibited Books. As Vose argues in his richly detailed and informative new study of the same name, the Index was also astonishingly ambitious: its objective was ‘absolute control over the spiritual and ideological content of written and other forms of communication that audiences of the faithful might be exposed to throughout their lives.’ … But the unignorable lesson provided by the Index was its own failure. Our children will read what they want to read: this is truer today than it ever was. Those interested in the future of book censorship will find it inscribed in our collective past, in the often brutal and ultimately futile history of the Index of Prohibited Books.”– “Toronto Star”“Although Banned Books Week is a relatively recent invention, the issue of censorship spans a far longer timeline and a far wider geographical scope. A newly released book, The Index of Prohibited Books: Four Centuries of Struggle over Word and Image for the Greater Glory of God, gives us a glimpse into some of this history and the importance it holds for debates about censorship today.”– “Church & State”“Vose does a superb job of explaining the nuances, complexities and missing pieces of this narrative, which transforms this book from simply a static recounting of a piece of Catholic doctrine to a dynamic analysis of a cultural and historical phenomenon.”– “Americans United”“The Index of Prohibited Books strikes a perfect balance between the scholar’s attempt genuinely to understand the motivations of those who sought to correct and control what was put before the eyes of the faithful and a modern observer’s distress at what was lost in the process. Vose introduces the reader to a fascinating cast of characters, from well-intentioned and devoted intellectuals to persons who sought to roguishly use the Roman Index or other national or local Indexes to settle scores in personal, political, and theological disputes. What emerges is a picture of a chaotic, all-too human set of institutions, in which contingency, accident, context, and personality led to a series of ever evolving and highly inconsistent decisions. Much as we may think this story is long behind us, The Index of Prohibited Books has profound implications for us all in the here and now.”–Laura Ackerman Smoller, Professor of History, University of Rochester, New York“Vose’s clear, concise book is a valuable account of a force that invisibly shaped the modern world. It’s also a mature look at the messy realities of censorship and control–tendencies that can’t always be avoided, but should perhaps be subject to suspicion, examination, and discontent. The Index can no longer forbid, but it can still warn.”– “Spectator”

Robin Vose is professor of history at St. Thomas University in Fredericton, New Brunswick, Canada. He is the author of Dominicans, Muslims and Jews in the Medieval Crown of Aragon and has served as a National Geographic expert on expeditions to Spain and Morocco.