During the Reformation, the Catholic theologians at the University of Paris (the Sorbonne) took responsibility for the censorship of texts within the kingdom of France. Relying on the French Crown and Parliament to enforce its decrees, the Faculty of Theology sought to control domestic printing presses as well as the importation of foreign books, particularly those from Calvinist Geneva and Zwinglian Basel. Suspicious of humanist scholarship, conservative theologians at the university even censured the works of the great Catholic scholar Erasmus of Rotterdam, despite his strong support from the French royal court. The theologians of Paris also extended their strict censorial powers in a series of catalogues of prohibited books, published regularly beginning in 1546.

                   

Erasmus vs. the Sorbonne

The Sorbonne vs. Erasmus

Holbein, Dance of Death

Calvin’s French Bible

Estienne’s Latin Bible

Estienne’s Response