No book shall be printed without the author’s name in full, together with his nationality, upon the title-page.  If there be sufficient reason for giving an anonymous work to the world, the censor’s name shall stand for that of the author.  Compilations of words, sentences, excerpts, etc., shall pass under the name of the compiler.  Publishers and booksellers are to take care that the printed work agrees with the MS. copy as licensed, and to see that all rules with regard to the author’s name and his authority to publish have been observed.  They are, moreover, to take an oath before the Master of the Sacred Palace in Rome, or before the bishop and Inquisitor in other places, that they will scrupulously follow the regulations of the Index.  The bishops and Inquisitors are held responsible for selecting as censors, men of approved piety and learning, whose good faith and integrity they shall guarantee, and who shall be such as will obey no promptings of private hatred or of favor, but will do all for the glory of God and the advantage of the faithful.  The approbation of such censors, together with the license of the bishop and Inquisitor, shall be printed at the opening of every published book.  Finally, if any work composed by a condemned author shall be licensed after due purgation and castration, it shall bear his name upon the title-page, together with the note of condemnation, to the end that, though the book itself be accepted, the author be understood to be rejected.  Thus, for example, the title shall run as follows:  ’The Library, by Conrad Gesner, a writer condemned for his opinions, which work was formerly published and proscribed, but is now expurgated and licensed by superior authority.’

The Holy Office was made virtually responsible for the censorship of books.  But, as I have already stated, there existed a Congregation of prelates in Rome to whom the final verdict upon this matter Was reserved.  If an author in some provincial town composed a volume, he was bound in the first instance to submit the MS. to the censor appointed by the bishop and Inquisitor of his district.  This man took time to weigh the general matter of the work before him, to scrutinize its propositions, verify quotations, and deliberate upon its tendency.  When the license of the ordinary had been obtained, it was referred to the Roman Congregation of the Index, who might withhold or grant their sanction.  So complicated was the machinery, and so vast the pressure upon the officials who were held responsible for the expurgation of every book imprinted or reprinted in all the Catholic presses, that even writers of conspicuous orthodoxy had to suffer grievous delays.  An archbishop writes to Cardinal Sirleto about a book which had been examined thrice, at Rome, at Venice and again at Rome, and had obtained the Pope’s approval, and yet the license for reprinting it is never issued.[121] The censors were not paid; and in addition to being overworked and over-burdened with responsibility, they