Paper short abstract:

This paper focusses on the transfer of the main technological instrument used for controlling books from Inquisitorial countries into non Inquisitorial ones, more specifically the case of Indexes of prohibited books in Early Modern French Censorship system.

Paper long abstract:

Questioning Early Modern Censorship on the ground of local conditions allows to divide the European countries into two parts, Inquisitorial and non-Inquisitorial ones. It is assumed that the national systems, political, religious and legal, determine these conditions, hence the variety of practices. But a question remained unsolved, if not unasked : to what extent did the border between both parts exist and what kind of exchanges can we observe as to the use of the Inquisitorial Indexes of books ? The function of these technological instruments for controlling books, produced during centuries, has not been sufficiently analysed outside the areas were they were in law. Many of them, not only Roman, circulated and were used in non-Inquisitorial countries. In my paper, I propose to examine the case of early modern France culture (16th-17th Cent.) where many editions of the Indexes of prohibition and expurgation, Roman, Spanish and Portuguese, appear to have been surprisingly numerous.