Index Librorum Prohibitorum

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The Index Librorum Prohibitorum (English: Index of Forbidden Books) was a changing list of publications deemed heretical or contrary to morality by the Sacred Congregation of the Index (a former Dicastery of the Roman Curia); Catholics were forbidden to print or read them, subject to the local bishop.^[1] Catholic states could enact laws to adapt or adopt the list and enforce it.

The Index was active from 1560 to 1966.^{[2][3][4][page needed]} It banned thousands of book titles and blacklisted publications, including the works of Europe's intellectual elites.^[5][6][7]

The Index condemned religious and secular texts alike, grading works by the degree to which they were deemed to be repugnant or dangerous to the church at the time.^[8] The aim of the list was to protect church members from reading theologically, culturally, or politically disruptive books. At times such books included works by saints, such as theologian Robert Bellarmine^[9] and philosopher Antonio Rosmini-Serbati,^[10] astronomers, such as Johannes Kepler's Epitome astronomiae Copernicanae (published in three volumes from 1618 to 1621), which was on the Index from 1621 to 1835; works by philosophers, such as Immanuel Kant's Critique of Pure Reason (1781); and editions and translations of the Bible that had not been approved. Editions of the Index also contained the rules of the Church relating to the reading, selling, and preemptive censorship of books.^[11]