MALS program, University of Michigan Dearborn

download a copy of this paper: The Index of Banned Books

image courtesy the Bridwell Library, Southern Methodist University

The Index of Banned Books [editor: Index librorum prohibitorum] saw conflicts and misunderstandings during its history. Though Galileo’s Dialogue did not appear on the list until 1664, the Index of Banned Books began as the Muratorian Canon in C. AD. 170. The Canon declared which New Testament books would be excluded from liturgical usage. Two sources provide conflicting origins. One source, the New Catholic Encyclopedia, placed the composition date during the pontificate of Pius I (AD 14-155) because of the poorly phrased Latin, suggesting a translation from Greek.1 In the second source, Roy Hoover stated Marcion believed the Jewish scriptures should be elim­in­ated from the Christian institutions following the Bar Kochba Rebellion. This kindled the church to determine which secular writings should be placed in the Canon. Eusebius, bishop of Caesarea, selected twenty books. The number fluctuated until 631 C.E. when the Roman Emper­or Constan­tine sent a letter to Eusebius to print fifty Bibles. This action settled the debate of what would appear in the New Testament, culled from gospels, dialogues/revelations attributed to Jesus, Jesus’ birth, Acts of the Apostles, homilies and other secular material. The Council of Trent accepted the official Roman Catholic Canon April 8, 1546.2 Since the Protestant Canon differed from the Catholic Canon, a conflict in ideas continued into the present. Essentially, the Muratorian Canon was the first Index of Banned Books. The Inquisi­tion under Pope Paul IV in 1557 wrote the first Index. In 1571, a committee of cardinals and a prelate, under Pope Pius V, estab­lished The Assembly on the List of Banned Books. Starting with 22 rules, the committee drafted sixteen, divided into four groups: books written against the Catholic faith, books on superstitions and false moral values, books by anonymous authors and printers whose content could damage the Christian faith, and books inflicting damage on ecclesiastical or civilian repu­tations.3 In other words, The Assembly scrutin­ized what people could read, avoiding anything detrimental to what the Catholic Church believed at the time. This was wrong. Unless there were changes, the Index of Banned Books could wield an injustice on people learning.

There were two notable changes during the years before the Index was dissolved. One, the Holy Office permitted book publication teaching the earth’s motion in 1822.4 A date given but no scientific or technological evidence to suggest a reason for adopting books teaching the Earth’s motion. Thirteen years later in 1835, the books written by Galileo, Kepler and Copernicus were removed. The second notable change occurred during the Vatican Council I meeting in 1870. They requested a revision to the church’s policy on restricting the number of books ex­plicitly con­demned.5 Time for a change because The Assembly had made a formidable list? A long list might leave authors and publishers feeling nothing was good, leading to frustration. In 1966, the Index was dissolved and became a historical document. Thus, the church declared,

In the aftermath of the Modernist crisis, the bitter controversy that arose from the intensified effort to suppress open investigation and inquiry in theology, biblical studies, and the philosophy drew at­tention to the appropriate­ness of the Index of Prohibited Books as part of the Church’s apostolic mission within moder­nity.6

Evidence of a change, it was time to accept misun­derstandings as one cause of injustice for the sake of religion over science.

After abolishing the Indices, the hardship that had wrought wide­spread dissatis­faction among the Catholic leaders and harsh restric­tions on the citizens changed attitudes. Authors and printers need not fear excommunication because they were caught pub­lishing heretical books. Book­sellers no longer had to maintain an exact list of their stock and be pre­pared for impromptu inspections. When a book was on the Index, readers were more deter­mined to keep their books and risk being pun­ished.7 Thus, the end of the Index of Banned Books made people relax without worrying about misunderstandings when they reached for a book.

[Editor's note: the University of Pennsylvania has a list of banned books, edited by John Mark Ockerbloom.

Amazon recently added “real” page numbers to their Kindle reader, so that one can now have a correspondence between a printed text and its electronic equivalent. This is useful for students who want to use an e-reader but who need to cite the text, especially as the professor will probably have assigned printed, published books for the course.

Take the concept of a page, for example. A page is a block of content divided by what “fits” into a given physical space. If you’ve ever done an essay for a course, you’ve probably changed the amount of content on a page by changing the line spacing or changing the font size. But the page itself rarely represents a semantic break in the content. That is, a page is a page not because it makes sense for the content itself, but because that’s just what happened to fit. (Inkling website)

Exactly–and that’s going to be a problem in classrooms because not every student will be equipped with an e-reader, and those who are, will have different ones. How do you standardize a textbook so that page 245 (or line 3200) in one e-text file is in the same place in another format and reader? How do you cite e-text?

I haven’t even tried an e-reader yet. I just keep ordering books, weighty books which arrive days after I place the order (but an ebook would download in a minute). I like books, but the day when students will be bringing e-readers to class, or reading the text on their laptops, isn’t far off–if it hasn’t already begun…see this Newsweek article.

While Amazon,  Barnes and Noble, and Chapters/Indigo have reduced prices for most of their e-books, and there are, of course, tens of thousands of free (pre-1923) books, many university publishers, such as the University of California, are still charging printed-text prices on many of their e-titles. The University of Chicago Press offers better prices on downloadable books; each month they offer one title for free.

Of special note is the latest version of Kate L. Turabian’s Student’s Guide to Writing College Papers (fourth edition) which is available from the University of Chicago Press as an e-book: the hardcover version is 39.00, the paperback and ebook retail for 15.00, or only 7.00 if you want a time-limited version (30 day license).

Kobois wi-fi enabled, allowing uploads of library books, epub and pdf files (Chapters/Indigo and Borders). More details here. Barnes and Noble's Nook now offers a full-color screen as well as the greyscale version. Apple has its iPads, but there is an issue of eyestrain, with extended reading using an LCD screen, compared with the e-ink screens of the other readers. But that hasn't deterred a San Francisco developer/publisher, Inkling, which is making textbooks interactive--on the iPad (see update below).Comparisons of the leading eReaders.

For the collection of pdf files–especially scientific papers, but applicable to any kind, Papers (for Mac users) is a great application, letting you browse, download, organize, search, print, annotate and otherwise deal with the hundreds of articles you collect.

While e-reader compatibility, annotation and citation issues have yet to be worked out,  this revolution, and the challenges it poses for academia, is going to be in the classroom, and on the faculty agenda, sooner rather than later.

Beyond e-text is the fusing of text and film/video both online and in ebooks. See Filmic Texts and the Rise of the Fifth Estate, and Learning from You Tube.

iPad 2 ad ©Apple.

**UPDATE January 2012: The article above was written in March 2011 and 10 months later it’s already out of date: Apple introduced this month (in this video) free apps to create e-texts (iBooks in their lingo) for the iPad (and iPhone, iPod, and whatever else they come up with). The apps (iBook Author, iTunesU), are free, the iPad starts at $500, which puts another burden on already cash-strapped students and parents. However, it could be argued that one iPad costs about the same as three or four textbooks. You can’t fault them for their marketing genius (even with Steve Jobs gone): a resources page is full of helpful, Apple-oriented tips and programs.