Index Librorum Prohibitorum
The
Index Librorum Prohibitorum was a list of publications deemed heretical, anti-clerical or lascivious, and therefore banned by the Catholic Church.[1] A first version was promulgated by Pope Paul IV in 1559, which Paul F. Grendler believed marked "the turning-point for the freedom of enquiry in the Catholic world", and which lasted less than a year, being then replaced by what was called the
Tridentine Index, which relaxed aspects of the
Pauline Index that had been criticized and had prevented its acceptance.[1] The 20th and final edition appeared in 1948, and the
Index was formally abolished on 14 June 1966 by Pope Paul VI.[2][3][4] The aim of the list was to protect the faith and morals of the faithful by preventing the reading of heretical and immoral books. Books thought to contain such errors included works by astronomers such as Johannes Kepler's
Epitome astronomiae Copernicanae, which was on the Index from 1621 to 1835, and by philosophers, like Immanuel Kant's
Critique of Pure Reason.