In the introduction to the tenth edition of the German-language Index Romanus from 1951, the editor and Osnabrück priest Albert Sleumer states: "There is hardly a second disciplinary issue in the Catholic Church that is fought against from time to time with such spitefulness and with such a lack of love for the truth as the establishment of the Index librorum prohibitorum, i.e. the list of forbidden books."
The author follows this with a detailed justification of church book censorship. In it, he emphasises above all the barely questioned state bans on books and concludes with the sentence: "What is right for the state is fair for the church", i.e. the demand for equal treatment of state and church censorship. As his justification takes up 113 of the book's 192 pages and many counter-arguments are quoted in detail and hardly contradicted, it is clear that book censorship was perceived as problematic in post-war Germany and against the background of the Reichskulturkammer's blacklists.
In fact, the last edition of the Index Romanus was published in 1948 and in 1966 the index regulations were repealed. The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith wrote in an impressive announcement that the faithful should not completely disregard faith and decency in their choice of reading, but that the Church trusts the mature conscience of the faithful and above all of authors and publishers (AAS 1966, 445). However, this trust was not entirely unreserved. This is why books are no longer banned today, but occasionally the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith still issues notifications, as in the case of Leonardo Boff or Jacques Dupuis.
Thanks to the opening of the archives of the former Index Congregation in 1998, the ecclesiastical banning procedures from four centuries have now been increasingly researched. This has also made the internal justifications for the book bans accessible for the first time, including the names of the denunciators. This is because indexing was usually carried out without a hearing and without justification. The reappraisal of the index files is largely thanks to the DFG research project Knowledge Culture and Social Change, in which the Roman files were analysed under the direction of Münster church historian Hubert Wolf. The opening of the index files also brought clarification of seemingly strange book bans: As the English historian Peter Godman was able to prove, among many other bizarre events, the fact that a considerable proportion of the masterpieces of 19th century French literature were on the Index was the merit of a single person, namely a particularly narrow-minded French bishop, whose absurd arguments Godman dismantles with relish. Nevertheless, much more research could be done, for example on the practical consequences of church censorship measures, especially for the authors and theologians concerned, who were often left with nothing when their works were indexed.
In any case, it is clear that the question of banned books in the church touches on larger issues, above all the question of the relationship of the church to science and art, to violence and tolerance. Precisely because the small topic of banned books raises big questions, the following will only deal with monastery libraries shortly before the Index was lifted, i.e. around 1960. There is a very specific reason for this: the book collection from this final period is the most interesting and extensive, because it reflects the whole range of banned books, and for practical purposes we can draw on the memories of confreres and sisters who are still alive. In the following, we will therefore only take an occasional look at the Baroque libraries, whose locked stock consisted mainly of Protestant and some Gallican literature.
Legal requirements
To begin with, it is worth briefly recalling the canonical guidelines for book bans that applied until 1966. These go back to the early Christian prohibitions of heretical writings, which were finally summarised at the Tridentine Council in the Bull Dominici Gregis of 24 March 1564. This bull established 10 rules (regulae decem) in accordance with the council's resolutions, which defined what Catholics were not allowed to read. At the same time, the first index of forbidden books was published.
These regulations can be found in the preamble of the index editions, together with the later legal extensions. As the post-Tridentine regulations are quite extensive, please refer to the fairly good summary in the regulations of the CIC/1917. The canon law in the reformed version of 1917 lists in can. 1399 lists twelve general types of forbidden reading for Catholics. These include Bible translations by non-Catholic authors, writings that attack doctrines, writings by Protestant authors if they deal with religion, erotic and astrological literature. In the case of the Latin classics, which were used for school lessons, offensive passages were purified. Anyone who nevertheless owned, read or passed on such books was, according to can. 2318 eo ipso excluded from the sacraments, i.e. above all from receiving communion and a Catholic funeral. The Holy See had to exempt anyone from this ecclesiastical penalty.
According to can. 1402, the local bishop could dispense from the ban on reading individual books. General permission to read had to be requested from the Congregation for the Index and later from the Holy Office, into which the Congregation for the Index was merged in 1917. According to can. 1405, the bishops also had to issue a suitable public warning against books that were harmful to the faith. For Catholic booksellers, can. 1404, according to which index literature could not be sold. The only exceptions were Catholics with dispensation, such as theological university professors.
In 1919, Friedrich Pustet, chairman of the Catholic book publishers, protested against this restriction and pointed out that this regulation was massively damaging the Catholic book trade. For example, individual volumes of the collected works of popular entertainment writers such as Balzac, Alexandre Dumas, Victor Hugo, Heinrich Heine or Flaubert were not allowed to be delivered because they were on the index. The book trade should be granted a certain degree of freedom. The booksellers' concern was presumably not about the 6,000 or so index entries in the narrower sense, which are mostly rather boring literature and had few readers even then, but about the writings that offended common decency and were therefore of particular interest to buyers.
The book bans reached a certain climax once again in the context of anti-modernism: in the encyclical Pascendi Dominici gregis by Pope Pius X of 8 September 1907, the index regulations were tightened once again and integrated into a system of increased control regulations, especially in the area of theological education and the supervision of teaching. As the Index Congregation could no longer cope with the large number of anti-faith writings, the encyclical suggested that the bishops should intervene more strongly and use censors to ban questionable books for their diocese, even if they may have been authorised in other dioceses. After all, a book that is harmless in one diocese could have harmful effects in another. In addition to the book bans of the church-wide index, there were also regional ecclesiastical book bans.
Practice in ecclesiastical and monastic libraries
Important for our topic is the provision of can. 1403 § 2, according to which the books were to be kept in such a way that they could not fall into the hands of others: Insuper gravi praecepto tenentur libros prohibitos ita custodiendi, ut hi ad aliorum manus non perveniant. This meant that ecclesiastical and therefore also monastic libraries had to separate the forbidden books in some way and make them inaccessible. The Melk library regulations of 1625 stipulate: "The librarian must ensure that the catalogue of forbidden books, which are to be displayed separately and only handed out with the express permission of the superiors, is always up to date." The reason why the catalogue was always up to date was because the poison cabinet was checked during inspections and an unexplained absence or additional stock could lead to inconvenient queries.
Women's convents hardly owned any forbidden books, as these were not even included, but occasionally excluded titles that seemed offensive. The separata also included many titles that were not on the index but were categorised by the convent management or the librarian as an offence against good morals. According to canon law, they were authorised to do so, as books that violated boni mores were also to be kept under lock and key.
The prescribed access restriction was usually fulfilled by lockable cabinets. For larger collections, however, it could also be a separate room, as in Maria Laach. Interestingly, it turned out that in the older monasteries with baroque traditions in Switzerland, Austria and Bavaria that were surveyed, the book bans were apparently not taken particularly seriously. In the Swiss monastery of Engelberg, for example, banned books were accessible without restriction, with only a warning index note on the entrance page. Indexed books were also freely accessible at St Peter's Abbey in Salzburg, but only for the fathers of the convent, as other users were not usually permitted. Only the title page was labelled "liber prohibitus" or "autor damnatus", the latter when the opera omnia was forbidden, as in the case of Luther, Calvin or Melanchthon. In Einsiedeln Abbey there was a restriction in that the books were freely accessible but not listed in the catalogue, i.e. only the librarian knew where they were. This practice of not entering books in the catalogue was possibly also a safeguard against visitations. This unusual practice of free access to banned books can possibly be explained by the influence of the Catholic Enlightenment. In contrast, the newly founded congregations of Beuron or St Ottilien in the 19th century were probably more strongly influenced by ultramontanism and were therefore more law-abiding when it came to setting up poison cabinets.
At least in more recent times, the decision to publish a forbidden book was made by the librarian; in the case of more dubious titles, the decision of the abbot could be obtained. Novices and lay brothers were not given access to banned books and were usually forbidden to enter the library at all. Only the priests usually had unrestricted access to the library. For general reading permission, a dispensation had to be obtained from the Holy See, i.e. the Congregation of the Index. This could also be delegated. At Einsiedeln University, for example, the abbot was always allowed to grant unrestricted reading permission to two professorial fathers.
The monasteries with a scholasticate or a philosophical-theological college such as Einsiedeln, Beuron, St Ottilien or Maria Laach possessed by far the largest quantities of libri prohibiti. The most extensive collections of libri heterodoxi or haeretici in other ecclesiastical areas can also be found in study libraries, especially those of the Jesuits, as can be seen, for example, in the surviving book catalogues of the Jesuit colleges of Rottenburg, Freiburg and Constance.
As the establishment of the poison cabinet shows, the books were not to be destroyed, but access was to be restricted. Access was granted to members of religious orders who were deemed by their superior to have the spiritual maturity to deal appropriately with non-Catholic content. In monasteries with philosophical-theological training, an encounter with non-Catholic or controversial topics as part of the subject of apologetics was also part of the curriculum. Of course, this was done in a carefully secured form, which immediately provided the right answer to critical questions from the anti-Catholic side. However, non-Catholic books could also be issued by the respective lecturer, which had to be confirmed by the librarian. If a religious student wanted to read something forbidden on his own initiative, he had to obtain authorisation from the clerical magistrate.
Overall, the relationship to indexed books seems to have become increasingly relaxed in the post-war period. As one confrere recounted, a lecturer encouraged his students to read Teilhard de Chardin, but asked that it not be publicised.
Where did the banned books come from?
The origin of the banned books can be traced to a considerable extent on the basis of the ownership notes in the entrance area of the books: The names, stamps or bookplates of previous owners can be found in the endpapers of many books. The surviving inventories or lists clearly show that indexed books were never acquired, but came to monastery libraries through donations or bequests, including the estates of monks. However, there are exceptions, namely writings by Catholic theologians such as Joseph Wittig, Franz Wieland or Herman Schell, which were acquired as normal and banished to the poison cabinet after being indexed.
Nevertheless, some monasteries possessed astonishingly extensive collections of thematically wide-ranging index literature, which was mainly due to the quality of the bequests. Here are two examples: In the Maria Laach Abbey poison cabinet, which contains around 2,000 volumes, around 550 volumes, i.e. a good quarter, came from the estate of Friedrich von Rosenberg-Gruszczynski (1838-1913). This person was the scion of a Prussian family of civil servants and soldiers. In keeping with family tradition, he wanted to become a professional soldier, but was forced to leave the service due to ill health. He then moved in with his parents in Bonn, where he increasingly immersed himself in theological questions as a private scholar and finally converted to the Catholic faith. His estate contains a high level of Protestant study and sermon literature, as well as numerous controversial writings, especially on research into the life of Jesus. There are also autographs from theologians who were probably friends of his, such as the Elberfeld pastor Wilhelm Löhr and the Berlin pastor Emil Steffann.
The best part of the St Ottilien poison cabinet also comes from a single bequest, namely that of the Russian priest Count Sergius von Grum-Grgimaylo (1866-1945). Based on the ownership note on the flyleaf, 108 libri prohibiti can be attributed to his estate, although there are certainly several more that were not specifically labelled. Count Grum-Grgimaylo came from a St Petersburg family of landowners and scholars, had converted to the Catholic faith and was ordained a priest in Innsbruck. He lived in Munich as a private scholar at the Ottilianer Studienkolleg. He later moved to Berlin as a chaplain for Russian emigrants. He died in Vienna in 1946. His field of research was a comprehensive reappraisal of modernist theology, which he wanted to prove as religiously coloured Kantianism. With these efforts to systematise modernism, Grum-Grgimaylo was in line with the aforementioned papal encyclical Pascendi Dominici gregis of 1907, which assumed a unified "doctrine" behind all liberal and reform Catholic endeavours. For this endeavour, he had compiled a systematic collection of modernist literature in French, Italian and German.
System and content of the banned books
The banned books were usually catalogued chronologically according to receipt. Occasionally there were special decisions, such as in Maria Laach, where, for example, new additions of writings by Rousseau or Ulrich von Hutten were categorised under one shelfmark. The most elaborate categorisation can be found in St. Ottilien Monastery, where the poison cabinet with a good 1200 volumes is divided into 29 categories, which adopt the classification system of the main library. This means that for every authorised section, such as dogmatics, asceticism, history or art, there is a counter-section with unauthorised literature on the same topics. Due to the thematic classification in St Ottilien, it can also be seen that the most extensive part of the discarded books concerns the area of biblical exegesis and church history. This has to do with the modernist controversies around the turn of the century, which hit these subjects particularly hard because of the historical-critical approach condemned by the Church.
The function of the book bans
Today, there are many complaints about the loss of the closed Catholic milieu that existed well into the post-war period. With this Catholic castle of the past, one must remain aware that the closed front was bought at the cost of many coercive regulatory measures. The poison cabinet was part of these coercive measures and was part of a whole system of canonical regulations and commandments intended to secure Catholic identity. These were laid down at the highest level by papal doctrinal letters, which defined what was Catholic and what was not.
Censorship was only one element in the range of ecclesiastical sanctions: If a Catholic theologian was targeted by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, the head of the order or the responsible bishop was usually informed, a declaration of submission was demanded, unpublished writings were submitted to a censor, the person was demoted and transferred and, in extreme cases, banned from teaching and writing. Increasingly, they were "generous" and left it at a mere demand for submission without forcing a retraction: for example, when the Dominican theologian Marie-Dominique Chenu was removed from his chair in 1954 because of his theological support for the worker priests, he said to the general of the order: "I continue to stand by my teaching, but I also accept the consequences of the truth I have presented."
The Jesuits Henri de Lubac and Teilhard de Chardin suffered a similar fate: although an incriminating dossier was opened at the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, they were only reprimanded and banned from teaching within the order. This was also the case with Graham Greene - when his book The Power and the Glory was to be indexed, Cardinal Montini, the later Pope Paul VI, intervened, so that in the end only the Cardinal of Westminster asked Graham Greene in a personal conversation for more restraint in dealing with Catholic topics.
The preventive counterpart to post-censorship is pre-censorship, which is exercised in the ecclesiastical sphere via the imprimatur. The imprimatur was introduced by the Curia in 1515, i.e. before the Tridentine, but also in connection with the defence against Protestant ideas. Once again, reference may be made to the CIC of 1917, because it summarises the post-Tridentine legal situation well. There, the praevia censura is regulated directly before the prohibition of books. According to can. 1385, any writing with religious content or on moral issues had to be authorised by the local bishop before publication. Authors who belonged to a religious order had to request an imprimatur from their major superior. For priests, all publications, regardless of the subject, had to be authorised by the relevant bishop. Religious priests needed an imprimatur from their major superior and the respective local bishop. Censors were and still are appointed to scrutinise books. The imprimatur had to be printed in the published book, stating the name of the authorising censor and the place and time of approval. Thanks to the imprimatur, it was quickly clear what was Catholic in religious writings and where the poison cabinet could be considered.
Today, the imprimatur has largely disappeared, although it is still common practice in some congregations, religious orders and Catholic universities. Otherwise, the former system of pre- and post-censorship has been replaced by recommendations from various institutions such as the Catholic library or film services, which recommend or critically assess literature, films or art to the Catholic world. This is intended to sharpen the focus on Christian content and concerns, whereby the denominational Catholic point of view hardly plays a role any more.
The scientific value of a study of libri prohibiti
Today, the topic of "poison cabinets" seems strange or arouses disbelief. We react with moral indignation because reading bans restrict civil liberties. It must also be openly admitted that the poison cabinets brought more separation than contact: Many monasteries did have large collections of heterodox literature, but these were rarely read. Today's lack of understanding for phenomena typical of the time, such as censorship and reading bans, has led to the poison cabinets being largely disbanded as antiquated phenomena. But is there perhaps a possible gain in knowledge if we analyse this tradition in depth? The following are some of the aspects that speak in favour of taking a closer look at "banned books":
1) Source-historical aspect: Anyone who deals academically with theological and church-political controversies will appreciate the poison cupboards as treasure troves of hard-to-find and often little-known literature. The modern history of the church is riddled with numerous conflicts, initially the confessional trench warfare between the churches, but then also the disputes over Jansenism, Gallicanism, Febronianism, Josephinism, Illuminati and Freemasons, anti-Jesuit literature, Cologne confusion, Hermesianism, Güntherianism, the First Vatican Council, the founding of the Old Catholic Church, the Kulturkampf, Darwinism, esotericism, modernism, historical-critical exegesis, National Socialism, communism, working-class priests, nouvelle théologie, sexual revolution. Pamphlets, pamphlets and hard-to-find titles on all these topics can be found here in a small space and have survived as contemporary witnesses of a cultural-historical focal point, a fierce ecclesiastical controversy.
2) Local history aspect: A considerable proportion of the banned literature in the poison cupboards contains ownership entries or proof of origin. We can therefore easily trace bequests, purchases or gifts. This helps to clarify the history of the library and to prove the history of a monastery's network of contacts, which in most cases has hardly been analysed. As a number of books also come from the private collections of monks, the Gift Cabinet also provides information about unconventional reading habits in the monastic community and thus sheds light on individual biographies.
3) Aspect of church history: The holdings of the Gift Cabinet underwent an extraordinary consolidation in the period between 1870 and 1958. This was mainly due to the enforcement of the Roman Magisterium within the Church, as well as neo-Thomism and the modernism disputes. Condemnations and indictments were an important instrument of church policy. Depending on the pope and the prefect of the Index Congregation, there were different phases of the indexing procedure. In 1914, for example, Pope Benedict XIV admonished the Index Congregation that its task should not consist exclusively in the condemnation of denounced books, but rather in an impartial evaluation. Analysing the poison cabinets can provide, among other things, building blocks for the history of ultramontanism and anti-Roman sentiment.
4) Cultural-historical-sociological aspect: Identity is gained to a large extent through demarcation. The Catholic Church is no exception. The poison cabinets with their extensive collections of hard-to-find and grey literature provide a condensed overview of the currents, viewpoints, theologies and ideologies from which the Catholic Church set itself apart. If you go through their contents in more detail, you will learn from numerous now forgotten titles where the Catholic Church saw its opponents. In a way, they allow a negative approach to the self-image of the Catholic Church and sharpen our view of an unwelcome and therefore often overlooked side of church life, namely the self-definition by drawing boundaries against other points of view.
5) Phenomenological-theological aspect: Protestant church historiography received an important stimulus from Gottfried Arnold's Unparteiische Kirchen- und Ketzergeschichtsschreibung (1699). This was probably the first time that the pietist theologian Arnold presented ecclesiastical controversies not polemically but, in his words, "impartially": So-called heresies often reveal grievances and lead to theological or spiritual progress in the long term or in reaction, so they bring a gain in knowledge, indeed in a certain sense they are part of the "history of salvation". It is not necessary to follow Arnold in his reassessment that heretics are suddenly declared to be better Christians. But Arnold's broader view of religious life in all its diversity and contradictions helps us to gain a more comprehensive picture of church life. It can make us more aware of the mechanisms by which doctrines come to dominate and other positions are marginalised. Such a cultural history of theological demarcations, Catholic minorities and doctrinal disputes would make many ecclesiastical phenomena and, above all, sensitivities up to the present day more comprehensible and perhaps contribute to a more mature approach to dissent and theological differences of opinion.
All this presupposes that the dissolution of the poison cabinets is stopped. Therefore, stocks of banned books, insofar as they still exist, should be kept and catalogued as a special collection of cultural-historical interest.
