Abstract
Studies into the activity of the Congregation of the Index and of the Holy Office have examined extensively the history of Vatican’s practices of book censorship. While up until the 16th century the Church imposed substantial modifications to literary texts, mainly in order to moralise them, in the 17th and
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18th century it used book censorship to preserve ecclesiastical doctrine and its own power. In the 19th century the Roman Inquisition aimed to discredit noxious literature – and the dangerous ideas it contained – through its inclusion in the Index of Prohibited Books. In the 20th century, when the Church’s secular power was fading, the Holy Office reacted against modernism thus intensifying its campaign against pernicious literature, seen as the main medium through which modernist ideas could infiltrate public opinion. In the aftermath of the promulgation of Pius X’s encyclical letter Pascendi dominici Gregis (1907) the Congregation of the Index, boosted by the motu proprioSacrorum antistitum (1910), trialled and condemned the works of Antonio Fogazzaro and Gabriele d’Annunzio among others. With the proscription of d’Annunzio’s novels, the Holy See inaugurated its campaign against literature regarded as ‘obscene’, which would eventually culminate in the publication of the instruction to bishops and ordinaries Inter Mala (1927). Promulgated after a ten-year long debate inside the Holy Office on the dangerousness of catholic decadent works, following the condemnation of the Action Française (1926) and of Italian dandy and bestseller novelist Guido da Verona (1920), Inter mala was an attempt to re-establish the Church’s cultural and social control away from Rome and the Vatican. The new inquisitorial laws triggered a stronger reaction of the clergy against ‘modernist’ literature and several “mystico-sensual” works, among which André Gide’s Corydon, faced investigation and a subsequent trial. However the Holy See soon realised how the impact of book censorship on the public opinion had changed and threatened to give authors and their books most unwanted publicity. As a consequence, during the papacy of Pius XI (1922-1939) the policies of the Holy Office aimed mainly to support the ‘interventism’ of the Holy See and its attempts to “catholicise” public opinion and society. The Italian case renders a clear picture of a transformed Roman Inquisition: analysing the trials to Gabriele d’Annunzio (Opera omnia, 1928), Mario Missiroli (Date a Cesare, 1929) and Giulio Cogni (Il razzismo, 1938), this work demonstrates how the Roman Index and book censorship stood out as the core of the Church’s relentless attempt to forge a ‘catholicised’ society between the two wars and to regain – through the forbiddance of authors and books closely linked to fascism – the political and social influence that Mussolini threatened to take-over before and in the aftermath of the Concordate (1929).
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