[CATHOLIC INDEX OF PROHIBITED BOOKS]

£12,500 · Offered by Sokol Books

Very rare pocket edition of the list of books prohibited since the Tridentine Index of Pope Clement VIII (1592-1605), which had added some eleven hundred volumes to earlier lists of censored works compiled by the Catholic Church, this new edict issued under the auspices of the cardinals in charge of the index. Included is Nicholas Copernicus’s De revolutionibus orbium coelestium, published 1543 but newly banned in 1616, pending corrections; Copernicus ‘non correctus’ duly appears here. There is also a separate entry banning ‘all books that teach the mobility of the earth, and the immobility of the sun’ (libri omnes docents mobilitatem terrae, immobilitatem Solis). It is perhaps surprising that such an important entry appears, alphabetically, only under the innocuous title of ‘Libri’, and there are no separate references to direct readers to the injunction. It is unclear who wrote this general prohibition, which was more decisive than the text of the March 1616 meeting on which this edict was based; the original wording had suspended Copernicus’s work pending correction and had threatened similar works with prohibition or suspension ‘respectively’, i.e. on a case-by-case basis (aliosque omnes idem docents respective prohibendos vel suspendendos). Indeed, one of the works specifically mentioned and prohibited in the 1616 meeting, Antonio Foscarini’s Lettera sopra l’opinione de Pittagorici e del Copernico della mobilità della terra et stabilità del sole (1615), does not appear h

• Binding: Hardcover

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