Introduction

This exhibit will look at the Index Librorum Prohibitorum or the Index of Prohibited Books and the way it has changed over time. It is a published list of books created by the Roman Catholic church that were not allowed to be read by Catholics. The Index was based on hundreds of years of church censorship. Previous lists such as the Decretum Gelasianum existed before the Index. It was the rise of the printing press and the Protestant Reformation that influenced the church to have a defined list that was would be more enforced. Information was spreading much faster than it had ever before, and the church wanted to make sure that no ideas against the Christian faith and the church’s political authority would become popular. It was at the Council of Trent that a defined set of church regulations was created. Specifically, religious books had to meet these regulations in order to get authority from the church to publish the titles. If the books went against these regulations or their authors were controversial to the church, those titles and in some situations, all the past and future works of said authors would be put in the Index.