List of authors and works on the Index Librorum Prohibitorum

This is a selected list of authors and works listed on the Index Librorum Prohibitorum. The Index was discontinued on June 14, 1966 by Pope Paul VI.

A complete list of the authors and writings present in the subsequent editions of the index are listed in J. Martinez de Bujanda, Index Librorum Prohibitorum, 1600–1966, Geneva, 2002.

The Index includes entries for single or multiple works by an author, all works by an author in a given genre or dealing with a given topic. The scope of the prohibition is defined by a Latin phrase in the Index:

• Omnia opera dramatica: all plays
• Omnes fabulae amatoriae: all novels, or romances
• Opera omnia theologica: all theological works
• Opera omnia: all works (see note below)

The Index includes entries banning all works of a particular writer. Most of these were inserted in the Index at a time when the Index itself stated that the prohibition of someone's "opera omnia" (all his works) did not cover works whose contents did not concern religion and were not forbidden by the general rules of the Index, but this explanation was omitted in the 1929 edition, an omission that was officially interpreted in 1940 as meaning that thenceforth "opera omnia" covered all the author's works without exception.

List of authors and works in the final edition, with later additions

This is a selected list of the authors and works appearing in the final published edition of the Index in 1948, with later additions until the Index was discontinued in 1966.

Banned	Name	Works	Ref.
1559	Machiavelli, Niccolo	All works
1600	Bruno, Giordano	All works
1627	Thadeus, John	Conciliatorium Biblicum
1626, 1657, 1658, 1659, 1672	Grotius, Hugo	All works of theology; De Imperio summarum potestatum circa sacra (pub. 1647); Annales et historiae de rebus belgicis (pub. 1657); +6 more
1645	Browne, Thomas	Religio Medici; the religion of a physician
1649	Hobbes, Thomas	All works
1657, 1789	Pascal, Blaise	Lettres provinciales (1657); Pensées (pub. 1670), with notes by Voltaire
1659	Calvin, John	Judicial lexicon of imperial and canon law
1663	Descartes, René	Meditations (1641); Les passions de l'âme (1649); Opera philosophica. Donec corrig.; +4 more
1667	Leti, Gregorio	All works
1668	Bacon, Francis (Baco, Franciscus)	De dignitate et augmentis scientiarum libri IX. Donec corrig.
1676	Montaigne, Michel de	Essays
1679, 1690	Spinoza, Baruch	Tractatus Theologico-Politicus (1677); Posthumous works
1684	Eriugena, Johannes Scotus (Erigena, Ioannes Scotus)	De divisione naturae libri quinque diu desiderati
1689, 1707, 1712	Malebranche, Nicolas	Traité de la nature et de la grace (1680); Traité de morale (1684); +4 more
1694, 1758	Milton, John	Literae pseudo-senatus anglicani, Cromwellii reliquorumque perduellium nomine ac iussu conscriptae (1676); Paradise Lost (1667)
1703	La Fontaine, Jean de	Contes et Nouvelles
1717	Maimonides	'Tractate on Idolatry from the Mishneh Torah with notes by Dionysius Vossius'
1729	Addison, Joseph	Remarks on Several Parts of Italy (1705; revised 1718)
1734, 1737	Locke, John	An Essay Concerning Human Understanding (1689); The Reasonableness of Christianity, as Delivered in the Scriptures (1695)
1738	Swedenborg, Emanuel	Principia (1734)
1742	Berkeley, George	Alciphron, or The Minute Philosopher
1743	Defoe, Daniel	The Political History of the Devil (1726)
1744	Richardson, Samuel	Pamela, or Virtue Rewarded (1740)
1751, 1762	Montesquieu	Lettres Persanes (1721); De l'esprit des lois (1748)
1752, 1753, 1757, 1761, 1762, 1765, 1766, 1768, 1769, 1771, 1773, 1776, 1779	Voltaire	Candide (1759); Traité sur la tolérance (1763); Lettres philosophiques (1733; revised 1778); +38 more
1758, 1804	Diderot, Denis	Encyclopédie, ou dictionnaire raisonné des sciences, des arts et des métiers (1751–72); Jacques le fataliste et son maître (pub. 1796)
1758	d'Alembert, Jean le Rond	Encyclopédie, ou dictionnaire raisonné des sciences, des arts et des métiers (1751–72)
1759, 1774	Helvétius, Claude Adrien	De l'Esprit (1758); De l'homme, de ses facultés intellectuelles et de son éducation
1761	Hume, David	All works
1762, 1766, 1806,	Rousseau, Jean-Jacques	Émile, ou de l'éducation (1762); Du contrat social (1762); Julie, ou la nouvelle Héloïse (1761)
1764	Kollár, Adam František (Kollarius, Adamus Franciscus)	De originibus et usu perpetuo potestatis legislatoriae circa sacra apostolicorum regum Ungariae (1764)
1766	Beccaria, Cesare	Dei Delitti e delle pene (1764)
1783	Gibbon, Edward	Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (1776–1788)
1815, 1840, 1859, 1863, 1866, 1896	Michelet, Jules	6 titles
1817	Darwin, Erasmus	Zoonomia; or The Laws of Organic Life (1794)
1819	Sterne, Laurence	A Sentimental Journey Through France and Italy (1768)
1827	Condorcet, Nicholas de	Sketch for a Historical Picture of the Progress of the Human Mind (1794)
1827	Kant, Immanuel	Critique of Pure Reason (1781; revised 1787)
1828	Stendhal	All love stories
1834, 1837, 1838, 1841, 1843, 1846,	Lamennais, Hugues Felicité Robert de	7 works
1834	Casanova, Giacomo	Mémoires
1835	Bentham, Jeremy	Deontology, or The science of morality (1834); +3 more
1836	Heine, Heinrich	Reisebilder; De l'Allemagne; De la France
1840	Sand, George	All love stories
1841	Balzac, Honoré de	All love stories
1849	Gioberti, Vincenzo	All works
1852	Proudhon, Pierre-Joseph	All works
1856	Mill, John Stuart	Principles of Political Economy (1848)
1859, 1860, 1863, 1866, 1869, 1877, 1881, 1882, 1884, 1891, 1892,	Renan, Ernest	19 titles
1863, 1880	Dumas, Alexandre (fils)	All love stories; La question du divorce
1863	Dumas, Alexandre (père)	All love stories
1864	Comte, Auguste	Cours de philosophie positive
1864	Flaubert, Gustave	Madame Bovary (1856); Salammbô (1862)
1873	Larousse, Pierre	Grand dictionnaire universel du XIXe siècle (1866–76)
1876	Draper, John William	History of the Conflict between Religion and Science (1874)
1894	Zola, Émile	All works
1911, 1928, 1935, 1939	D'Annunzio, Gabriele	All plays; All love stories; +3 more
1913	Various contributors	Annales de philosophie chrétienne
1914	Bergson, Henri	Essai sur les données immédiates de la conscience; Matière et mémoire; essai sur la relation du corps à l'esprit; L'évolution créatrice
1914	Maeterlinck, Maurice	All works
1922	France, Anatole	All works
1931	van de Velde, Theodoor Hendrik	Het volkomen huwelijk (1926)
1948	Sartre, Jean-Paul	All works
1952	Gide, André	All works
1952	Moravia, Alberto	All works
1953	Kazantzakis, Nikos	The Last Temptation of Christ (1955)
1956	de Beauvoir, Simone	The Second Sex (1949); The Mandarins (1954)

Reversals and non-inclusions

There have been cases of reversal with respect to works that were on the Index, such as those of Nicolaus Copernicus and Galileo Galilei. The Inquisition's ban on reprinting Galileo's works was lifted in 1718 when permission was granted to publish an edition of his works (excluding the condemned Dialogue) in Florence. In 1741 Pope Benedict XIV authorised the publication of an edition of Galileo's complete scientific works which included a mildly censored version of the Dialogue. In 1758 the general prohibition against works advocating heliocentrism was removed from the Index of prohibited books, although the specific ban on uncensored versions of the Dialogue and Copernicus's De Revolutionibus remained. All traces of official opposition to heliocentrism by the church disappeared in 1835 when these works were finally dropped from the Index.

Not on the Index were Aristophanes, Juvenal, John Cleland, James Joyce and D. H. Lawrence. According to Wallace et al., this was because the primary criterion for banning the work was anticlericalism, blasphemy and heresy.

Some authors whose views are generally unacceptable to the Church (e.g. Karl Marx) were never put on the Index; nor was Charles Darwin (see Evolution and the Roman Catholic Church).

Works that were included in the Index, and later removed, include:

Banned	Name	Works	Ref.
1585 to 1881	Dante Alighieri	De Monarchia (1312–13)?
1616 to 1835	Nicolaus Copernicus	De revolutionibus orbium coelestium (1543)
to 1835	Johannes Kepler	Astronomia nova (1609); Harmonices Mundi (1619); Epitome Astronomiae Copernicanae (1617–21)
	Sade	Justine (1791); Juliette (1797–1801)
	Madame de Staël	Corinne ou l'Italie (1807)
until 1959	Victor Hugo	Notre Dame de Paris (1831); Les Misérables (1862)

• Libri Carolini, supposedly by Charlemagne
• Rabelais
• Allan Kardec (The Spirits Book)

References

• Coyne, George V. (2005). The Church's Most Recent Attempt to Dispel the Galileo Myth. In McMullin. pp. 340–359.
• Heilbron, John L. (2005). Censorship of Astronomy in Italy after Galileo. In McMullin. pp. 279–322.
• McMullin, Ernan, ed. (2005). The Church and Galileo. Notre Dame, In: University of Notre Dame Press. ISBN 0-268-03483-4.

External links

• Searchable database of Index Librorum Prohibitorum at Beacon for Freedom of Expression
• List of famous authors in the index
• Facsimile of the 1559 index at the Wayback Machine (archived 2009-02-21)
• The complete list of banned books in 1948 at the Wayback Machine (archived 2007-02-03)