List of authors and works on the Index Librorum Prohibitorum

The complete works of Gregorio Leti ("Critique historique" pictured) were listed, including his treatise on cardinal-nephews and his biographies of Olimpia Maidalchini and Pope Sixtus V.

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

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 authorized 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 or Adolf Hitler) 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	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)

External links

• Searchable database of Index Librorum Prohibitorum at Beacon for Freedom of Expression
• Facsimile of the 1559 index
• The complete list of banned books in 1948
• List of famous authors in the index