The necessity of watching over the mental food of the faithful became more urgent [9] ]when, in the fifteenth century, was invented printing, which popes and bishops hailed as a “divine art” and eulogised as the greatest blessing of God’s providence in the natural order. It spread rapidly. Before the year 1500, the city of Rome alone had one hundred and ninety printing establishments. The oldest of them, in the first seven years of its existence, produced not less than twenty-eight works in forty-seven editions, the total number of pages being one hundred and twenty-four millions.
As to the moral quality of the books printed at that period, a German, Wimpheling, writes with pardonable pride in 1507: “We Germans practically control the whole intellectual market of civilized Europe; the books, however, which we bring to this market are for the most part high-class works, tending to the honor of God, the salvation of souls, and the civilisation of the people.” How soon, alas, was this to change! Even while these words were written, the evil was already striking root, and steps had been taken by the civil as well as by the ecclesiastical power, to [10] ]prevent the printing and spreading of noxious books.
But it was not until the beginning of the so-called Reformation that the boundless increase of heretical and other pernicious literature called for radical and extensive measures. They began in 1520 with the solemn condemnation of Luther’s doctrine and the prohibition of his writings. About that time the first indexes or catalogues of forbidden books appeared. They were not issued by the popes, but emanated mostly from bishops, provincial councils, or universities. The civil power was expected to enforce them. In some cases the princes themselves or the magistrates of cities and republics issued their own indexes, in full harmony and after consultation with the clergy.
As the object of these measures was to safeguard the faithful against imminent danger, we can easily understand that catalogues of forbidden books were most numerous in those countries that were most exposed to heresy, namely, Germany, Belgium, France, and Northern Italy.
[11]
]It is remarkable that Henry VIII of England, who afterwards fell away from the Church, was among the first to legislate against heretical books, his index of forbidden books appearing as early as 1526. After his apostasy he continued with increased severity the policy of prohibiting books which he deemed objectionable.
4. The Roman Index.
More than thirty years after the first index of Henry VIII had appeared, the first Roman Index of Forbidden Books was compiled and issued by order of Paul IV. It remained in force only a few years, till 1564, when the so-called Tridentine Index was published under Pius IV. It was called “Tridentine,” because it had been drawn up by a commission appointed for this purpose by the Council of Trent. It was milder than the Index of Paul IV, and contained divers “Index rules,” the forerunners of the general decrees embodied in the Constitution “Officiorum ac munerum.”
The Tridentine Index remained the Roman Index for more than three hundred [12] ]years. Its “rules” were occasionally modified, new regulations were added or old ones abrogated, other books were inserted in the catalogue; but the essential features remained the same.
In 1897, Leo XIII took the matter up again. The index of forbidden books was thoroughly revised. About a thousand were dropped. The “rules,” too, were overhauled, “to make them milder, without altering their nature, so that it cannot be difficult or irksome for any person of good will to obey them.”
This, then, represents the whole book legislation of the Church. There are no other documents, except the decrees by which, as occasion demanded, individual books were forbidden. The encyclical of Pius X on Modernism merely enjoins on the bishops special vigilance in regard to publications infected with modernistic views.