Forbidden Prayer

This book provides one of the first studies on ecclesiastical censorship entirely based on documents from the Holy Office Archives that up to 1998 were inaccessible to the great majority of scholars. It provides for the first time a general overview of ecclesiastical political strategies toward a crucial field of sixteenth-century religious book production, the vernacular devotional literature. In so doing it offers a fascinating insight into the Church's attempt to purge Catholic devotional works of heterodox beliefs and superstitious elements.