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Dinesh / Photos

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An edition of the “Index librorum prohibitorum; (1758) a cornerstone of the Catholic response to the threat of Protestantims. The frontispiece of the book shows a pile of heretical books in flames.
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Dinesh said:

Publication of the first papal index was accompanied by substantial book burning, but mostly in Rome itself. Many secular authorities elsewhere in Italy were hesitant to put the full force on the indeed into effect. In Florence, Duke Cosimo de’Medici forbade the monks of San Marco from burning any books in their library which his predecessors had donated. Future indices relaxed the most sweeping prohibitions and placed more emphasis on the capacity of local inquisitor and bishops to grant exemptions for certain individuals to own dangerous books. . . . . Many copies survive today with large segments of texts crossed through or otherwise defaced. Between 1597 and 1603, the Inquisition carried out a survey of all books in Italian monasteries, to purge them of forbidden books. This systematic investigation of some 9,500 libraries provides a vivid demonstration of how entrenched library culture had become even the smaller, poorer religious houses, as well as the new-found power of the church to shape the development of institutional book collecting. ~ Pae 116

THE LIBRARY
28 hours ago
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