Publisher's Synopsis
Book Excerpt: and prohibitingto be read what they fancied not; yet sparing in their censures, and thebooks not many which they so dealt with: till Martin V., by his bull, not only prohibited, but was the first that excommunicated the readingof heretical books; for about that time Wickliffe and Huss, growingterrible, were they who first drove the Papal Court to a stricter policyof prohibiting. Which course Leo X. and his successors followed, untilthe Council of Trent and the Spanish Inquisition engendering togetherbrought forth, or perfected, those Catalogues and expurging Indexes, that rake through the entrails of many an old good author, with aviolation worse than any could be offered to his tomb. Nor did they stayin matters heretical, but any subject that was not to their palate, they either condemned in a Prohibition, or had it straight into the newpurgatory of an index.To fill up the measure of encroachment, their last invention was toordain that no book, pamphlet, or paper should be printed (as if St.PRead M
