e Pope. He nominated a congregation of eminent
ecclesiastics, by whose care the catalogue was perfected, and rules were
framed, defining the use that should be made of it in future. It issued
officially, as I have already stated, in 1564, the fifth year of the
pontificate of Pius IV., with warning to all universities and civil and
ecclesiastical authorities that any person of what grade or condition
soever, whether clerk or layman, who should read or possess one or more
of the proscribed volumes, would be accounted _ipso jure_ excommunicate,
and liable to prosecution by the Inquisition on a charge of heresy.[120]
Booksellers, printers, merchants, and custom-house officials received
admonition that the threat of excommunication and prosecution concerned
them specially.

[Footnote 120: Paulus Manutius Aldus printed this Index at Venice in
1564.]

The first rules deal with the acknowledged writings of Protestant
heresiarchs. Those of Luther, Zwingli, and Calvin, whether in their
original languages or translated, are condemned absolutely and without
exception. Next follow regulations for securing the monopoly of the
Vulgate, considered as the sole authorized version of the Holy
Scriptures. Translations of portions of the Bible made by learned men in
Latin may be used by scholars with permission of a bishop, provided it
be understood that they are never appealed to as the inspired text.
Translations into any vernacular idiom are strictly excluded from public
use and circulation, but may, under exceptional circumstances, be
allowed to students who have received license from a bishop or
Inquisitor at the recommendation of their parish priest or confessor.
Compilations made by heretics, in the form of dictionaries,
concordances, etc., are to be prohibited until they have been purged and
revised by censors of the press. The same regulation extends to
polemical and controversial works touching on matters of doctrine in
dispute between Catholics and Protestants. Next follow regulations
concerning books containing lascivious or obscene matter, which are to
be rigidly suppressed. Exception is made in favor of the classics, on
account of their style; with the proviso that they are on no account to
be given to boys to read. Treatises dealing professedly with occult
arts, magic, sorcery, predictions of future events, incantation of
spirits, and so forth, are to be proscribed; due reservation being made
in favor of scientific observat