The Index of Forbidden Books: The First Papal Index

About this book

At the beginning of 1559, under Pope Paul IV, the Roman Inquisition published a list that bound the whole Catholic Church. Anyone who kept, sold, lent or gave away a book named in it was excommunicated automatically, without a trial. The list was ordered by first name and compiled in haste, so Luther appears twice and Erasmus twice. Because whole printing houses were banned, Vesalius' anatomy and Copernicus' book on the heavens became forbidden too, though neither is named.

Rendered into modern English by BlusaBooks with the help of AI tools, working from images of the pages of the 1559 edition. Every entry, not a selection or a summary. Names are kept in the Latin form in which the inquisitors printed them; book titles are translated with the original Latin, Italian or German title in italics.

What is inside

• the title page and the decree of the Holy Office, with its threats of excommunication and "perpetual infamy"
• the full list from A to Z in its three classes: authors all of whose works are banned, books of certain authors, books of unknown authors
• the general rules: everything anonymous from the last 40 years, every book of chiromancy, geomancy, necromancy and other divination
• the forbidden Bibles and New Testaments and the ban on the Bible in the vernacular
• the 61 printers whose every book, past and future, was banned
• 365 short footnotes on the same page: who each well-known author was and why the Church feared him
• 5 original pages from the 1559 edition and colour illustrations: the decree on the church doors, a printing workshop, a hidden book, smoke over Rome (illustrations created with AI tools)
• a foreword on printing, the Reformation and the Roman Inquisition; commentary at the end: in plain words, why these books, what we know today

Who it is for

Readers of Renaissance and Reformation history, book lovers, collectors of banned and forbidden books, anyone curious about censorship and the Inquisition. A thoughtful gift for a lover of old books.

A historical source: the decree's language of "heretics" and "pestilent doctrines" is kept as in the original. The notes and commentary explain what we know today.