Dangerous Books

In the centuries between the invention of printing and the birth of copyright, even the most enlightened men and women believed in the need to monitor the circulation of books and repress ideas considered harmful to society. What distinguished the Roman censorship system from the control mechanisms in force in other parts of Europe? And, above all, how did ecclesiastical censorship influence the development of Italian culture during the modern age? This book reconstructs the tools Rome used to prevent the spread of books considered dangerous and, at the same time, the stratagems authors, printers, and readers used to circumvent these controls. Censorship meant elimination, suppression, and deletion, but also replacement, restitution, and rewriting. The success of the religious and cultural policy of the Counter-Reformation also depended on the ability to provide the faithful with a series of texts to replace books that were no longer available. The books disappeared and then reappeared in different forms, distant but not entirely new compared to their original appearance.



Translation of: Libri pericolosi: Censura e cultura italiana in eta moderna (Editori Laterza, 2022).