A New Look at Works Banned by the Catholic Church

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Index Librorum Prohibitorum,” banned by the Catholic Church and placed in its Index Librorum Prohibitorum in 1786. Ileana Florescu

May 8, 2015 10:00 am
By MARELLA CARACCIOLO CHIA

Rome’s prodigious Angelica Library, founded in 1604 by the Augustinian bishop Angelo Rocca, is endowed with some 200,000 volumes and manuscripts on the history of Catholicism, with particular emphasis on the Reformation and Counter-Reformation of the Church. Enshrined amongst the library’s texts is a precious collection of first editions of books that, over the course of the centuries, were officially banned by the Catholic Church and placed in its Index Librorum Prohibitorum. These volumes include works by Machiavelli, Copernicus and Erasmus, as well as Voltaire’s “Candide” and Jonathan Swift’s “A Tale of a Tub.” The collection, which includes the very first Index of banned books compiled by the Church in 1559, is what inspired the artist Ileana Florescu’s new show, “Libri Prohibiti,” which opens at Angelica Library next week.

The Romanian artist, born in Eritrea but based in Rome, selected 21 of the banned texts — most of them modern editions, some from antique markets — submerged them in the waters off of Maine (during the summer, while visiting her husband’s family) and Sardinia (during the warmer months there), and photographed their disintegration. “The sea is a destructive force, but also one that restores lost treasures,” Florescu explains. “I realized this as I observed its effect on the books. The structure dissolved and the colors blurred together as if they were ablaze, which brought to mind the fires of censorship.” And yet, despite this destruction, the magnifying effect of the water make some of the banned names and phrases appear even more clearly, if distorted — a reminder, says the artist, that culture and ideas, no matter how much they may be oppressed, can never truly be eradicated.



Voltaire’s “Candide, ou l’Optimisme,” banned by the Catholic Church and placed in its Index Librorum Prohibitorum in 1762. Ileana Florescu

http://tmagazine.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/05/08/works-banned-by-catholic-church-ileana-florescu/

http://www.bibliotecaangelica.beniculturali.it/