Dealing with the issue of ecclesiastical censorship and control
over reading and readers, this study challenges the traditional
view that during the eighteenth century the Catholic Church in
Italy underwent an inexorable decline. It reconstructs the
strategies used by the ecclesiastical leadership to regulate the
press and culture during a century characterized by important
changes, from the spread of the Enlightenment to the creation of a
state censorship apparatus. Based on the archival records of the
Roman Inquisition and the Congregation of the Index of Forbidden
Books preserved in the Vatican, it provides a comprehensive
analysis of the Catholic Church's endeavour to keep literature and
reading in check by means of censorship and the promotion of a
"good" press. The crisis of the Inquisition system did not imply a
general diminution of the Church's involvement in controlling the
press. Rather than being effective instruments of repression, the
Inquisition and the Index combined to create an ideological
apparatus to resist new ideas and to direct public opinion. This
was a network mainly inspired by Counter-Enlightenment principles
which would go on to influence the Church's action well beyond the
eighteenth century. This book is an English translation of Il
governo della lettura: Chiesa e libri nell'Italia del Settecento
(Bologna: Il Mulino, 2007).
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