[722] Session xxv. de reform, c. 2.

[723] “We by apostolic authority forbid all persons ... that they presume without our authority to publish in any form any commentaries, glosses, annotations, scholia, or any kind of interpretation whatsoever touching the decrees of the said Council; or to settle anything in regard thereof under any plea whatsoever.... But if anything therein shall seem to any one to have been expressed and ordained obscurely ... and to stand in need of interpretation or decision, let him go up to the place which the Lord hath chosen, to wit, to the Apostolic See, the mistress of all the faithful, whose authority the Holy Synod also has reverently acknowledged.”

[724] Llorente, Histoire critique de l’Inquisition d’Espagne (Paris, 1818); Lea, A History of the Inquisition of the Middle Ages (London, 1888); Reusch, Der Index der Verbotener Bücher (Bonn, 1885); Lea, The Spanish Inquisition (London, 1906); Symonds, Renaissance in Italy, The Catholic Reaction (London, 1886).

[725] It is to be found in Gudenus, Codex Diplomaticus, iv. 469.

[726] “Wishing also to impose a restraint ... upon printers ... who print without licence of ecclesiastical superiors, the said books of Sacred Scripture, and the annotations and expositions upon them of all persons indifferently ... (this Synod) ordains and decrees, that, henceforth, the Sacred Scripture, and especially the aforesaid old and Vulgate edition, be printed in the most correct manner possible; and that it shall not be lawful for anyone to print, or cause to be printed, any books whatever on sacred matters, without the name of the author; nor to sell them in future or even to keep them by them, unless they shall have been first examined and approved by the ordinary; under pain of anathema and fine imposed in a canon of the last Lateran Council” (Sess. iv.)

[727] The original Index of Pope Paul IV. contained a list of no less than sixty-one printers, and prohibited the reading of any book printed by them. He afterwards withdrew this clause. But his Index gives a long catalogue of authors all of whose writings are prohibited. It is, with one distinguished exception, a mere list of names; but it contains: “Desiderius Erasmus Roterodamus cum universis commentariis, annotationibus, scholiis, dialogis, epistolis, censuris, versionibus, libris et scriptis suis, etiam si nil penitus contra religionem vel de religione contineant.”

[728] Session xviii.—Decree anent the choice of books; Session xxv.—Anent the Index of books, the Catechism, Breviary, and Missal.

[729] Symonds, The Renaissance in Italy: The Catholic Reaction, i. 301.