Canones et decreta sacrosancti oecumenici et generalis concilii tridentini… Adiectus est Index librorum prohibitorum.

(TALMUD).

Sebald Mayer

Dillingen (Bavaria)

1564

Marginalia. Woodcut historiated initials.

The Index Librorum Prohibitorum, was a list of books prohibited by the Catholic Church and first issued in 1559 by the Roman Office of the Inquisition under the direction of Pope Paul IV (known as the Pauline Index). It banned more than 583 authors. The present 1564 edition of the Index was issued in several locations across Europe and included a ban on the Talmud: “Thalmud Hebraeorum, eius’, glossae, annotationes, interpretationes, expositiones omnes” (The Talmud, glosses, annotations, interpretations, and expositions.) Yet the prohibition is somewhat modified by the added stipulation: “Sitamen prodierient sine nomine Thalmud, & sine iniuris, & calumnijs in religionem Christianam tolerabuntur” (But if they shall be published without the title Talmud, and without calumnies and insults to the Christian religion, they shall be tolerated.) The historian Heinrich Graetz describes the situation: “Strange, indeed, that the pope should have allowed the thing, and forbidden its name! He was afraid of public opinion, which would have considered the contradiction too great between one pope, who had sought out and burnt the Talmud, and the next, who was allowing it to go untouched.” See M.J. Heller, The Sixteenth-Century Hebrew Book, Vol. 2 (2004) p. 551; Yeshiva University Museum Catalogue, Printing the Talmud: From Bomberg to Schottenstein (2005) pp. 230-31.