The Censorship of the Church of Rome

This edition has been fully restored with modern typesetting, custom cover design. This sweeping history of Church censorship follows the struggle over books from the early Church to the modern era, with special attention to the rise of the Roman Index and the institutions that enforced it. Drawing on a vast range of Catholic and Protestant sources, it traces how papal decrees, councils, inquisitorial machinery, and national censorship systems shaped reading, publishing, and intellectual life across Europe. Landmark controversies involving Erasmus, Luther, Galileo, the Jansenists, and even Boccaccio's Decameron reveal censorship as both a doctrinal weapon and a political one. The study focuses on the formation of the Index under Pope Paul IV, the work of the Roman Inquisition and the Congregation of the Index, and the practical methods used to police authors, printers, and presses from Basel to Venice, Wittenberg, and Paris. Putnam presents the book as a readable English guide to the history and effects of prohibited-book lists, building on Heinrich Reusch while adding new research, facsimiles, and later Indexes. He also compares Church censorship with state systems, arguing that Roman methods were often less severe than Protestant ones.