Abstract EN:

Many a work by 19th-century novelists or playwrights was put on the Index by the eponymous Roman Congregation. The work was then registered in the Index librorum prohibitorum, thereby prohibiting Roman Catholics to read it. Among them are to be found works by Lamartine, Hugo, Balzac, Sand, Dumas, Sue, Flaubert, Stendhal and Zola. The corpus studied includes all the procedure documents, which have been made public since 1998 – the year when the Archivio della Congregatione per la Dottrina delle fede was opened. For each work sued, the censors of the Index wrote up a votum or review. This examination, or criticism of the work, is akin to a text of literary criticism, not expressing individual criticism but rather institutional criticism, responding to certain criteria, places and aims. The first book presents the literary lawsuits of the Index according to how they were legally organized and historically received. It starts with the initial complaint which launched the procedure against the work and ends with showing how the news of its being put on the Index was received by the Catholic readership. In the first book, the Index appears more like a legal institution based on judiciary workings. The second book expounds the grounds for censorship introduced in the vota and reads like a critical discourse on the works sued. In the latter book, the Index is shown more as an institution in charge of literary criticism. Works are judged according to the nature of their malice – heterodoxy, immorality, sedition – and the danger they present for the reader. Analysing their stylistic qualities enables one to show how malicious works can also be alluring and therefore dangerous.