Mystical systems
Index Librorum Prohibitorum
Direct answer
Index Librorum Prohibitorum: The Index Librorum Prohibitorum, the Index of Prohibited Books, was the Roman Catholic Church's official list of works its members were forbidden to read, kept from 1559 to 1966.
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At a glance
- Also called
- index of forbidden books, index of prohibited books, catholic list of banned books, vatican banned books
- Found in
- Mystical Systems
- Related
- Grimoire, Tree of Knowledge, Forbidden Fruit, Hubris
The Index Librorum Prohibitorum, the Index of Prohibited Books, was the Roman Catholic Church's official list of works its members were forbidden to read, kept from 1559 to 1966.
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What was the Index Librorum Prohibitorum?
The Index was a printed catalogue, reissued in twenty editions over four centuries. A Catholic was not to read, keep, sell or print a listed book without permission, on pain of church penalties. Works were listed for heresy, for immorality, or for teaching judged dangerous to faith; some were banned outright and others only until corrected. Scholars could apply for leave to read them.
Index Librorum Prohibitorum’s range was wide. It held Protestant theology and vernacular Bibles, but also philosophy and science: works by Galileo, Descartes, Spinoza, Locke, Voltaire and Kant, and in its last decades by Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir. Its omissions were as striking, for Darwin's Origin of Species was never listed. In practice enforcement was uneven, strong in Italy and Spain and slight elsewhere, and a place on the Index could advertise a book. It stands as the clearest historical case of knowledge forbidden by rule and list.
On the tree of the hidden arts: Forbidden knowledge.
What sets Index Librorum Prohibitorum apart
Three working features distinguish the Index from censorship by a state. It bound conscience and carried spiritual penalties; outside the Papal States it had force in law only where a ruler chose to lend it. It allowed degrees, with a standing formula for books forbidden until corrected and a companion list of passages to be struck out. And it granted exemptions, so that the same office which banned a book licensed chosen readers to study it, a pattern of forbidding the many while informing the few.
- Years in force: 1559 to 1966, in twenty editions
- First Roman Index: issued under Pope Paul IV, 1559
- Managing body: Congregation of the Index, 1571 to 1917, then the Holy Office
- Last edition: 1948, with about four thousand titles
- Copernicus and Galileo: listed from 1616 and the 1630s; both gone by 1835
- Never listed: Darwin's On the Origin of Species
Often mistaken for something else: A grimoire is a single book feared for what it teaches; the Index was a catalogue of thousands of ordinary books, banned by decision of an office.
The story behind Index Librorum Prohibitorum
Local lists came first, from the theologians of Paris in 1544 and of Louvain in 1546. Pope Paul IV issued the first Roman Index in 1559, and a revised one followed the Council of Trent in 1564. A Congregation of the Index was set up in 1571 to maintain it and was merged into the Holy Office in 1917. Copernicus's On the Revolutions was suspended until corrected in 1616 and Galileo's Dialogue banned after his trial in 1633; both left the list in the edition of 1835. The last edition appeared in 1948, and in June 1966 the Index was declared no longer to have the force of church law.
Why Index Librorum Prohibitorum matters
Index Librorum Prohibitorum shows forbidden knowledge as an institution with rules, clerks and appeals, a real practice to set beside the myths.
How to read Index Librorum Prohibitorum
Historians study it to trace censorship and the spread of ideas; the phrase on the Index is still heard loosely for anything officially frowned on.
Index Librorum Prohibitorum in practice: an example
A student who learns that Kant's Critique of Pure Reason was once forbidden reading for Catholics has come across the Index.
Where readings of Index Librorum Prohibitorum go wrong
A listing shows what Rome judged dangerous in a given year, not that a book was unread; enforcement varied widely by country.
Sources and editorial method
This entry summarizes the tradition in the Almanac's own words; where no source is listed, it is an editorial summary rather than a primary text, and symbolic readings are named as the tradition's, not as fact.
- Source
- The Great Almanac Dictionary
- Category
- Mystical Systems
- Aliases
- index of forbidden books, index of prohibited books, catholic list of banned books, index librorum prohibitorum meaning, vatican banned books
- Last updated
- 2026-09-26
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Common questions
What was the Index Librorum Prohibitorum?
It was the Catholic Church's official list of books that the faithful were forbidden to read or own without permission. It was first issued from Rome in 1559 and went through twenty editions, the last in 1948.
When was the Index of Prohibited Books abolished?
In June 1966, under Pope Paul VI, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith announced that the Index no longer had the force of church law. It added that Catholics remained morally bound to avoid writings harmful to faith.
Which famous books were on the Index?
Among many others: Galileo's Dialogue, Descartes' Meditations, Spinoza's works, Locke's Essay Concerning Human Understanding, Kant's Critique of Pure Reason, novels by Hugo and Flaubert, and the works of Sartre.
