terrible, were they who first drove the Papal Court to a stricter policy
of prohibiting. Which course Leo X. and his successors followed, until
the Council of Trent and the Spanish Inquisition engendering together
brought forth, or perfected, those Catalogues and expurging Indexes,
that rake through the entrails of many an old good author, with a
violation worse than any could be offered to his tomb. Nor did they stay
in matters heretical, but any subject that was not to their palate,
they either condemned in a Prohibition, or had it straight into the new
purgatory of an index.

To fill up the measure of encroachment, their last invention was to
ordain that no book, pamphlet, or paper should be printed (as if St.
Peter had bequeathed them the keys of the press also out of Paradise)
unless it were approved and licensed under the hands of two or three
glutton friars. For example:

Let the Chancellor Cini be pleased to see if in this present
work be contained aught that may withstand the printing.

VINCENT RABBATTA, Vicar of Florence.


I have seen this present work, and find nothing athwart the
Catholic faith and good manners: in witness whereof I
have given, etc.

NICOLO GINI, Chancellor of Florence.


Attending the precedent relation, it is allowed that this