Page:An Index of Prohibited Books (1840).djvu/97

 unnecessary by anticipation, we will examine the evidence afforded by the Roman Index.

We now, then, come to the Index. On the 5th day of March, 1616, was passed a decree of the Sacred Congregation, condemning all such books as taught the Copernican doctrine respecting the solar system, or that, in that system, the sun is the centre, and immovable. I have, of course, in a general way, stated the main facts of this very observable case, in the proper place, in my Literary Policy of the Church of Rome; but the circumstances which have of late transpired on the subject render it expedient to be more diffuse and precise. The terms of the condemnation are very decisive and detailed; and the whole being exceedingly unknown, it will be desirable to exhibit them at length. The decree itself, for we are not speaking of the entry made, in consequence, in the body of the subsequent Indexes, is found in three places — in the two separate Collections of Decrees of the date of 1624, appended to two different editions of Capiferreus's Elenchus, and in the Collection which closes Alexander VIIth's Index of 1664. No. XIV. pp. 307, 8.