Why Did the Inquisition Ban Certain Books?: A Case Study From Portugal

By Miguel Carvalho Abrantes

You may have heard about the fact the Inquisition banned many books, but why?
Taking advantage of the Portuguese example of the Catálogo de Livros que se Proíbem Nestes Reinos, published in this country in the year of 1581, and which is essentially a local edition of the famous Index Librorum Prohibitorum, this book explores the reasons why the Inquisition forbade the reading of certain books. It provides succinct information on each of the books presented in this particular catalogue, along with the probable reasons why they were forbidden to Christian audiences.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Miguel Carvalho Abrantes
• Release date: Aug 28, 2018
• ISBN: 9788829541454

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Conclusion

Miguel Carvalho Abrantes

Copyright © 2019 Miguel Carvalho Abrantes

All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher.

While attempting to find more information on some of the works banned by the Inquisition I ended up accidentally noticing there were no major books on the subject. Some cases, like those of Copernicus or Galileo, are particularly famous, and one can easily find many lists online which report that an author had some of his works banned in a particular year, but what I couldn’t find were the reasons for many of those works being forbidden by the Church. The topic intrigued me so much that I soon found myself researching it through a book currently available in the Portuguese National Library, the Catálogo de Livros que se Proíbem Nestes Reinos[1], published back in 1581 AD. Originally printed in Lisboa by one António Ribeiro, it can be divided into four different sections:

An introduction, in which are established 10 rules according to which books were judged and potentially banned – apparently, the same ones which were used in the more famous Index Librorum Prohibitorum.

A first catalogue, including only the books written in Latin.

A second catalogue, including the books written in linguagem, i.e. language of the people, which here typically means French, German, Italian, Portuguese or Spanish.

A third catalogue, containing a reference to the books in which only very specific passages were condemned.

This organization may seem simple enough, but as you browse through the catalogues you will soon find yourself facing a problem – the first two usually only feature some basic identification of the works, namely the name of the author, the name of the book, or both; while the third one sometimes also provides limited information on why those passages couldn’t be accepted by the Church. So, essentially, for the first two sections you get entries just like Zodiacus vitae or Discorsi de principii de la nobilta per M. Marco de la Frata e Monte albano, and you’re frequently left wondering about their author, content, and the reasons why such works ended up being placed in the listing. As for the third catalogue, you do frequently get the author’s name and which passages were to be censored, but hardly any information about their original content[2].

In a sense, that lack of information about the original content was perfectly understandable – these books were supposed to be banned precisely in order to stop people from knowing about what they contained, and so the catalogues feature exclusively the information needed to accomplish that goal. But, at the same time, their goal was not my own – what I was wondering about were the reasons why those works were banned from public access. While scrolling across the catalogues, I found myself repeatedly wondering the exact same things:

Who wrote this book?

What was its content?

Why was it placed here?

So, in order to approach the problem at hand, I started by reading the rules according to which these books were banned[3]. Then, as I advanced through the entries, I tried to work around the very limited pieces of information the original authors provided us, and I repeatedly attempted to answer the questions placed above, resorting to multiple online and offline researches on the subject. This was not an easy task, at all; since I was working around a listing of banned books, many of them have truly disappeared, and their original content can no longer be found. However, for each of these entries I did an extensive research, and I still attempted to provide as much information as I could find – which, regrettably, in many cases doesn’t mean much, as I was often still left with what were unsatisfactory pieces of data. Even with the help of J. M. Bujanda’s Index de Livres Interdits, which helped me track down the correct names for many works and their assumed authors, the information available today isn’t always as big or detailed as most readers would like, which often turns into a frustrating experience.

The results of my research on these banned books can be seen in the next few chapters. I hope you enjoy reading a bit about