Forbidden Knowledge
Medicine, Science, and Censorship in Early Modern Italy
- Contents
- Review Quotes
Table of Contents
Contents
Introduction: The Paradox of Censorship
1. The Medical Republic of Letters and the Roman Indexes of Prohibited Books
2. Locating Expertise, Soliciting Expurgations
3. The Censor at Work
4. Censoring Medicine in Rome’s Index Expurgatorius of 1607
5. Prohibited Medical Books and Licensed Readers
6. Creating Censored Objects
7. Prohibited Books in Universal Libraries
Epilogue
Acknowledgments
Appendix
Notes
Bibliography
Index
1. The Medical Republic of Letters and the Roman Indexes of Prohibited Books
2. Locating Expertise, Soliciting Expurgations
3. The Censor at Work
4. Censoring Medicine in Rome’s Index Expurgatorius of 1607
5. Prohibited Medical Books and Licensed Readers
6. Creating Censored Objects
7. Prohibited Books in Universal Libraries
Epilogue
Acknowledgments
Appendix
Notes
Bibliography
Index
Review Quotes
Annals of Science
"Marcus expertly explores the mechanics and meaning of the censorship of medical writings in post-Tridentine Italy in this innovative and original study. . . . Forbidden Knowledge succeeds on multiple levels that allow for the revision of many assumptions about post-Tridentine intellectual activity. By providing details into the practices of expurgation and licensing, the book delineates the priorities of the Catholic Church, while demystifying censorship. . . . Additionally, she unveils the interests and priorities of the medical community in a manner that exceeds what is often found in traditional intellectual histories. . . . Most importantly, Marcus deftly explains the various contradictions that shaped the interactions between Catholic authorities and the medical and scientific communities of early modern Italy, showing how these dynamics defined the role of outside expertise in creating 'Catholic Knowledge' for centuries to come."
Social History of Medicine
"Throughout, Marcus expresses her insights in a very readable prose enriched by an excellent eye for telling anecdotes. . . . Marcus has provided an impressively researched book that makes several important contributions to understanding the application of Reformation-era Catholic censorship to the intellectual world of Italian learned medicine. There is much to draw on, and build on, in this book."
Choice
"This is an important study that all scholars and advanced students of early modern Europe will want to read, especially those interested in early modern medicine, religion, and the history of the book. . . . Highly recommended."
Anthony Grafton, Princeton University
"Marcus shows how censors did their job in Counter-Reformation Italy, using medicine as a test case. Censors’ tools ranged from humanist techniques for reading, which enabled them to find and highlight problematic passages, to pens and scissors, with which they defaced the names of religious enemies and much more. But their means and powers were always limited. Drawing on unexplored documents, Marcus also recreates the system of permissions that enabled medical men to stay abreast of the new books printed in Protestant Europe. As lively as it is learned, this book reveals that Italian libraries witnessed as many scenes of struggle as of repression."
Katharine Park, author of Secrets of Women: Gender, Generation, and the Origins of Human Dissection
“Forbidden Knowledge is a fascinating story of what can go wrong in censorship regimes when the censored field is seen as essential to human health and welfare, and when the works of the authors most in need of censoring are widely recognized as indispensable to the field. In this impeccably researched book, Marcus brings her story alive by focusing on the people involved in censorship and expurgation: frustrated administrators, busy and uncooperative professors, expert readers eager to pad their libraries at the Church’s expense, and an expurgator so pious he insisted on censoring his own works. An important contribution to the histories of early modern medicine, censorship, and the book."
Adrian Johns, author of Piracy: The Intellectual Property Wars from Gutenberg to Gates
"Marcus’s story about censorship ranges much more widely than most Anglophone accounts of the topic. Her point is that the system as we see it developing in sixteenth-century Italy was not only a device for suppressing texts, but a collection of practices for editing them, approving them, and directing their circulation. The book is provocative, overdue, and exciting. It will become an obligatory point of reference in the field, and I can imagine it acting as the launching pad for a generation of future studies."
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History: European History | General History
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