Reply #22: Reading banned books should be a crime, but not possession!

[L. Coyote]

Make them prove you read it, I say! :rofl:

The Spanish Inquisition and Censorship - http://jqjacobs.net/anthro/cannibalism.html

The Spanish Inquisition had a very significant impact on writing. Spanish controls over printing date to 1502, when a pragmatic issued by Ferdinand and Isabella made licenses for printing or importing books obligatory (Kamen 1997:103). In 1564, the Council of Trent granted bishops the general power to license book printing (Kamen 1997:103). In the case of the Catechism by Fray Luis, approval by the Council of Trent and the Pope was not sufficient to deter the inquisitors from demanding corrections before the book was allowed to circulate (Kamen 1997:111).

Various indices listed banned books. The 1559 Spanish Index even prohibited works circulating in manuscript form. The Index of Prohibited Books issued by the Council of Trent in 1564 influenced subsequent indices, including an expurgatory Index requiring the excising of offending passages from otherwise orthodox books (Kamen 1997:113). By 1583, the General Index banned 2,315 books, an increase from 700 in 1571, and the 1584 Index expurgated many more. Book burning was common at the time of discovery. The Arabic books in Granada were burned on order of a royal decree in 1501 (Kamen 1997:114). In 1552 the Inquisition ordered that heretical books be burned in public. A Jesuit working in the Barcelona Holy Office reported mountains of books burned on seven or eight occasions (Kamen 1997:114).