ions touching navigation, agriculture,
and the healing art, in which prognostics may be useful to mankind.
Having thus broadly defined the literature which has to be suppressed or
subjected to supervision, rules are laid down for the exercise of
censure. Books, whereof the general tendency is good, but which contain
passages savoring of heresy, superstition or divination, shall be
reserved for the consideration of Catholic theologians appointed by the
Inquisition; and this shall hold good also of prefaces, summaries, or
annotations. All writings printed in Rome must be submitted to the
judgment of the Vicar of the Pope, the Master of the Sacred Palace, or a
person nominated by the Pontiff. In other cities the bishop, or his
delegate, and the Inquisitor of the district, shall be responsible for
examining printed or manuscript works previous to publication; and
without their license it shall be illegal to circulate them.
Inquisitorial visits shall from time to time be made, under the
authority of the bishop and the Holy Office, in bookshops or printing
houses, for the removal and destruction of prohibited works. Colporteurs
of books across the frontiers, heirs and executors who have become
depositaries of books, collectors of private libraries, as well as
editors and booksellers, shall be liable to the same jurisdiction, bound
to declare their property by catalogue, and to show license for the use,
transmission, sale, or possession of the same.

With regard to the correction of books, it is provided that this duty
shall fall conjointly on bishops and Inquisitors, who must appoint three
men distinguished for learning and piety to examine the text and make
the necessary changes in it. Upon the report of these censors, the
bishops and Inquisitors shall give license of publication, provided they
are satisfied that the work of emendation has been duly performed. The
censor must submit not only the body of a book, to scrupulous analysis;
but he must also investigate the notes, summaries, marginal remarks,
indexes, prefaces, and dedicatory epistles, lest haply pestilent
opinions lurk there in ambush. He must keep a sharp lookout for
heretical propositions, and arguments savoring of heresy; insinuations
against the established order of the sacraments, ceremonies, usages and
ritual of the Roman Church; new turns of phrase insidiously employed by
heretics, with dubious and ambiguous expressions that may mislead the
unwary; plausibl