June 14: The Church Abolishes Its Banned Books List

The Vatican abolished the Index Librorum Prohibitorum (Index of Banned Books) on this date in 1966. The Index, established in 1557, included the Talmud and “books of the Jews” containing anything that might be interpreted as anti-Catholic. In 1595, a preliminary index of 420 Hebrew books that could not be read without revisions or deletions was also established. (Many textual errors in the standard editions of Hebrew texts owe their origin to Church censorship.) The last edition of the Index Librorum Prohibitorum, issued in 1948, included Jewish or Hebrew-language works by Josephus, Jacob ibn Habib, Leon Modena, Maimonides, Baruch Spinoza, Manasseh Ben Israel, and Edmund Fleg, among others. The list was the brainchild of Giovanni Pietro Carafa, who became Pope Paul IV in 1555 and was known as the Father of the Roman Inquisition. He also issued a canon that established the Jewish Ghetto in Rome and forced Jews to wear identifying clothes.

“Moreover, so that Jews should be distinguishable everywhere: men must wear a hat, women, indeed, some other evident sign, yellow in color, that must not be concealed or covered by any means, and must be tightly affixed; and furthermore, they can not be absolved or excused from the obligation to wear the hat or other emblem of this type to any extent whatever and under any pretext whatsoever . . .” —Pope Paul IV