Index of Prohibited Books
Also called: Index Librorum Prohibitorum · Topic: Print Culture and the Modern World · NCERT: Class 10, Ch 5 "Print Culture and the Modern World"
Meaning
The Index of Prohibited Books was a list of books that the Roman Catholic Church banned its followers from reading. Print helped new and critical ideas about religion spread fast after the Reformation, and the Church became afraid of them. So it put controls on publishers and booksellers and kept this list. NCERT dates the Index from 1558. The first official papal Index is usually dated 1559.
Example
After Martin Luther's writings split the Church in 1517, the Church tried to stop such ideas in print. Readers like the Italian miller Menocchio, who read local books and questioned Church teaching, were punished by the Inquisition, the Church court that tried people for heresy.