Many noteworthy authors were put on the\u00a0Index librorum prohibitorum<\/em><\/a>\u00a0because their works were seen to cause religious, political and moral controversies. Famous names on the Roman\u00a0Index<\/em>\u00a0include: – Greek and the Roman authors like\u00a0Ovid<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0Petronius<\/a>\u00a0– religious reformers like\u00a0Martin Luther<\/a>,\u00a0Philipp Melanchthon<\/a>, and\u00a0Jean Calvin<\/a>\u00a0– humanists like\u00a0Erasmus of Rotterdam<\/a>,\u00a0Hugo Grotius<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0Nicodemus Frischlin<\/a>\u00a0– natural scientists like\u00a0Nicolaus Copernicus<\/a>,\u00a0Paracelsus<\/a>, and\u00a0Joannes Kepler<\/a>\u00a0–\u00a0political thinkers like\u00a0Niccol\u00f2 Machiavelli<\/a>,\u00a0Jean Bodin<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0Montesquieu<\/a>\u00a0– philosophers like\u00a0Ren\u00e9 Descartes<\/a>,\u00a0Francis Bacon<\/a>,\u00a0Baruch Spinoza<\/a>,\u00a0David Hume<\/a>,\u00a0John Locke<\/a>,\u00a0Jean Jacques Rousseau<\/a>,\u00a0immanuel Kant<\/a>,\u00a0George Berkeley<\/a>,\u00a0Auguste Comte<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0Jean-Paul Sartre<\/a>\u00a0– poets and novelists like\u00a0Giovanni Boccaccio<\/a>,\u00a0John Milton<\/a>,\u00a0Jean de la Fontaine<\/a>,\u00a0Madame de Sta\u00ebl<\/a>,\u00a0Daniel Defoe<\/a>,\u00a0Stendhal<\/a>,\u00a0Gustave Flaubert<\/a>,\u00a0Emile Zola<\/a>,\u00a0Andr\u00e9 Gide<\/a>,\u00a0David Herbert Lawrence<\/a>\u00a0– and many others!<\/p>\n The boundaries between the permitted and the banned were sometimes very thin and unpredictable. Erasmus of Rotterdam\u2019s popular collection of proverbs, the\u00a0Adagia<\/a>, was banned together with his entire opus, only because he did not take a sufficiently critical stance against the Protestant Reformation. Though exorcism was an acknowledged method of casting out demons and the devil, popular exorcism manuals like\u00a0Flagellum daemonum<\/a>\u00a0by\u00a0Girolamo Menghi<\/a>\u00a0were banned because they contained rites which were not compliant with the official Church liturgy. Though widely popular, Machiavelli\u2019s political works were banned because they dealt with politics outside of the Church\u2019s authority. Montesquieu\u2019s proposal to divide political power into legislative, executive, and judicial in his\u00a0De l’esprit des lois<\/a>\u00a0was considered to be politically subversive at the time. But it had a strong impact on numerous state and political regulations, and constitutional acts.<\/p>\n Baldassare Castiglione\u2019s<\/a>\u00a0Il Cortegiano<\/a>\u00a0was the central reference work for aristocratic courtly etiquette throughout Europe. It was put on the\u00a0Index<\/em>\u00a0because of its satirical comments and jokes at the Church\u2019s expense. In order to prevent further opposition to the geocentric worldview, Nicolaus Copernicus\u2019s\u00a0De revolutionibus orbium coelestium<\/a>\u00a0was put on the\u00a0Index<\/em>\u00a0in 1616. This was more than seventy years after it was first published!<\/p>\n D\u2019Alembert and Diderot\u2019s\u00a0Encyclopedie<\/a>\u00a0was banned because of its materialistic and empirical views of science, while Johannes Trithemius\u2019s\u00a0Steganographia<\/a>\u00a0was condemned because of its occultist content.<\/p>\n The novelist\u00a0Ferrante Pallavicino<\/a>\u00a0experienced fierce revenge and was executed in Avignon because of his anti-papal and anti-Jesuit satires. Two notorious 17th- and 18th-century libertines and pornographers,\u00a0Donatien Alphonse Fran\u00e7ois Marquis de Sade<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0Nicolas-Edme Restif<\/a>\u00a0were in fierce personal disputes, but they appeared together on the Roman\u00a0Index<\/em>\u00a0as well as on other censorship lists of the time.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"