Volume 1

The censorship of the church of Rome and its influence upon the production and distribution of literature : a study of the history of the prohibitory and expurgatory indexes, together with some consideration of the effects of Protestant censorship and of censorship by the state / by George Haven Putnam.

  • Putnam, George Haven, 1844-1930.
Date:
1906-1907
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The censorship of the church of Rome and its influence upon the production and distribution of literature : a study of the history of the prohibitory and expurgatory indexes, together with some consideration of the effects of Protestant censorship and of censorship by the state / by George Haven Putnam. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    CENSORSHIP CHAPTER I INTRODUCTORY: THE INDEX AND CENSORSHIP IN any investigation of the development of literary production and of the relations of the producers of books with the reading public, it is necessary to give consideration to the influence exerted upon literary activities, and upon the actual effectiveness of literature, by the censorship and the restrictive measures in¬ stituted by the Church. Church censorship may be said to have begun as early as 150, with an edict issued by the Council of Ephesus, in which the Acta Pauli (an unauthenticated history of the life of St. Paul) was condemned and prohibited. During the centuries following, a number of similiar edicts or mandates were published by councils, by individual ecclesiastics, and by civil offi¬ cials acting at the instance of the authorities of the Church, under which edicts the faithful were cautioned against the pernicious influence of various works classed as heretical, and the heretics who had been concerned in the production and circulation of such writings were threatened with penalties ranging from