The opening of the archive of the former Congregation of the Holy Office in Rome (the office of the 'Inquisition') yielded an extraordinary wealth of documentation, altering dramatically many long-standing views on the repressive activity of the Roman Church during the counter-Reformation. Drawing extensively upon this archival source, this 2001 book highlights the wide gap between the Church's aim to exert control over all knowledge and actual implementation. The plurality of the central offices, their contradictory decisions, and the inadequacy of the peripheral offices combined to hamper truly effective censorship. But despite this failure in developing a unified expurgatory policy, such prohibition as there was had a disastrous effect upon Italian culture, and for centuries Italians - jurists, scientists, Jews and common readers, as well as scholars - were deprived of their most cherished books.

2001 essay collection on the Italian Church's attempt to control and censor 'knowledge' during the counter-Reformation.

About the Author
Gigliola Fragnito is Professor of Early Modern History in the Faculty of Letters and Philosophy, Universit... degli Studi, Parma. Her many publications on early modern Italian church and government include La Bibbia al Rogo ('The Bible at the stake'), Il Mulino, 1997.

Reviews
Review of the hardback: '... so much fascinating material in such a comparatively short space of time ...' Times Literary Supplement
Review of the hardback: ' ... a welcome addition to our knowledge of the effects of ecclesiastical censorship of books on sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Italy.' Journal of Ecclesiastical History



Book Information
ISBN 9780521661720
Author Gigliola Fragnito
Format Hardback
Page Count 280
Imprint Cambridge University Press
Publisher Cambridge University Press
Weight(grams) 585g
Dimensions(mm) 229mm * 152mm * 19mm