The council, before adjourning, authorized the pope to
draw up a list, or Index, of works which Roman Catholics might not read. This
action did not form an innovation. The Church from an early day had condemned
and destroyed heretical writings. However, the invention of printing, by giving
greater currency to new and dangerous ideas, increased the necessity for the
regulation of thought. The "Index of Prohibited Books" still exists,
and additions to the list are made from time to time. It was matched by the
strict censorship of printing long maintained in Protestant countries.
THE INQUISITION
Still another agency of the Counter Reformation consisted
of the Inquisition. This was a system of church courts for the discovery and
punishment of heretics. Such courts had been set up in the Middle Ages, for
instance, to suppress the Albigensian heresy. After the Council of Trent they
redoubled their activity, especially in Italy, the Netherlands, and Spain.
INFLUENCE OF THE INQUISITION
The Inquisition probably contributed to the disappearance
of Protestantism in Italy. In the Netherlands, where it worked with great
severity, it only aroused exasperation and hatred and helped to provoke a successful
revolt of the Dutch people. The Spaniards, on the other hand, approved of the
methods of the Inquisition and welcomed its extermination of Moors and Jews, as
well as Protestant heretics. The Spanish Inquisition was not abolished till the
nineteenth century.
