“Heresy and Error”:
The Ecclesiastical Censorship of Books, 1400–1800


An Exhibition at Bridwell Library, September 20 – December 17, 2010

SAVONAROLA’S PROHIBITED SERMONS


40
. Girolamo Savonarola (1452–1498). Prediche de fra Hieronymo sopra Amos propheta. Venice: Cesare Arrivabene, 1528.

The title page of this edition of Savonarola’s Lenten sermons on the prophecies of Amos bears a woodcut depicting the author’s public execution. While the assembled men and women look to his empty pulpit, the martyr, engulfed in flames, holds aloft a scroll that reads “Verbum Dei non est alligatum” (“the word of God is not bound”). Nevertheless, inside this copy, Sermon 12 on Amos, chapter 4, was stricken through with brown ink and marked “prohibita” (“prohibited”).

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