The Index of Prohibited Books

This history of the Catholic Church's modern attempt to control literary culture is not quite the secularist polemic that one might expect. This is partly because the author emphasizes the messy complexity of this history, and the impossibility of the task of censorship, once print culture took off. All cultures engage in censorship, and [Vose] points to cancel culture as the latest evidence. This is an interesting corrective to liberal assumptions. This is more of an academic tome than a book for the general reader--but maybe in saying that I am trying to do some censoring of my own. -- Catholic Herald Vose's fascinating history of the Index of Prohibited Books is a meticulously researched scholarly work, accessible to amateur and expert alike. His light touch keeps the story moving across four hundred years, without sacrificing detail. And what a story it is--a tale of the Catholic Church as an institution moving from traditional to bureaucratic authority with all the constant challenges of maintaining relevance and legitimacy. This history of censorship could not be more relevant to today's politics, where censorship and surveillance are ever-greater threats to democracy. Vose has made an important and timely contribution to our understanding of how institutional censorship remains a thoroughly modern tool of control and suppression. --Penelope Stewart, Professor Emerita, York University, Toronto Of all the institutional efforts to police, censor, and control books, the most comprehensive and enduring was the Roman Catholic Church's Index of Prohibited Books. As Vose argues in his richly detailed and informative new study of the same name, the Index was also astonishingly ambitious: its objective was 'absolute control over the spiritual and ideological content of written and other forms of communication that audiences of the faithful might be exposed to throughout their lives.' . . . But the unignorable lesson provided by the Index was its own failure. Our children will read what they want to read: this is truer today than it ever was. Those interested in the future of book censorship will find it inscribed in our collective past, in the often brutal and ultimately futile history of the Index of Prohibited Books. -- Toronto Star Although Banned Books Week is a relatively recent invention, the issue of censorship spans a far longer timeline and a far wider geographical scope. A newly released book, The Index of Prohibited Books: Four Centuries of Struggle over Word and Image for the Greater Glory of God, gives us a glimpse into some of this history and the importance it holds for debates about censorship today. -- Church & State Vose does a superb job of explaining the nuances, complexities and missing pieces of this narrative, which transforms this book from simply a static recounting of a piece of Catholic doctrine to a dynamic analysis of a cultural and historical phenomenon. -- Americans United The Index of Prohibited Books strikes a perfect balance between the scholar's attempt genuinely to understand the motivations of those who sought to correct and control what was put before the eyes of the faithful and a modern observer's distress at what was lost in the process. Vose introduces the reader to a fascinating cast of characters, from well-intentioned and devoted intellectuals to persons who sought to roguishly use the Roman Index or other national or local Indexes to settle scores in personal, political, and theological disputes. What emerges is a picture of a chaotic, all-too human set of institutions, in which contingency, accident, context, and personality led to a series of ever evolving and highly inconsistent decisions. Much as we may think this story is long behind us, The Index of Prohibited Books has profound implications for us all in the here and now. --Laura Ackerman Smoller, Professor of History, University of Rochester, New York Vose's clear, concise book is a valuable account of a force that invisibly shaped the modern world. It's also a mature look at the messy realities of censorship and control--tendencies that can't always be avoided, but should perhaps be subject to suspicion, examination, and discontent. The Index can no longer forbid, but it can still warn. -- Spectator