for submitting all books, old or new, printed or in manuscript, to the supervision of the Holy Office.

He also contrived to place booksellers, public and private libraries, colporteurs and officers of customs, under the same authority; so that from 1543 forward it was a penal offence to print, sell, own, convey or import any literature, of which the Inquisition had not first been informed, and for the diffusion or possession of which it had not given its permission.

Giovanni della Casa, who was sent in 1546 to Venice with commission to prosecute P.
Paolo Vergerio for heresy, drew up a list of about seventy prohibited volumes, which was printed in that city.[114] Other lists appeared, at Florence in 1552, and at Milan in 1554.

Philip II.

at last, in 1558, issued a royal edict commanding the publication of one catalogue which should form the standard for such Indices throughout his States.[115] These lists, revised, collated, and confirmed by Papal authority, were reprinted, in the form which ever afterwards obtained, at Rome, by command of Paul IV.