List of Illustrations Introduction Part 1 In the World of the Book1 Protecting the Book 1 The Printed Book: a New Beginning 2 The Fragile Legal Status of the Book 3 (Partial) Commercial Protection2 Controlling the Book 1 Printing with Licence 2 Knowledge for the Few 3 On the Necessity for Censorship3 A System of Censorship 1 Better to Forbid Than to Prevent 2 One Book to Monitor the Others 3 The Frontiers of Contagion 4 Books on the Bonfire4 Rome and the Others 1 An Elite Alliance 2 The Other EuropePart 2 Books under Control5 Anticlericalism 1 The 'Fomenter of All Heresies' 2 'Little Writings' 3 Anticlericalism in the Counter-Reformation6 The Reason of Church 1 An 'Illegitimate Order' 2 Machiavelli and His (Infidel) Followers 3 An Ecclesiastical 'Reason of State'7 From Philosophy to Science 1 The Fragile Thread of the Double Truth 2 Atomism, Corpuscularianism, and Atheism 3 A New Enemy 4 Science on TrialPart 3 Looking down the Social Ladder8 The Campaign against the Vernacular 1 Rome and the Empire of Latin 2 Beyond the Confines of the Sacred 3 In the Classroom 4 'Fables and Novellas'9 Censorship and the 'Unlettered' 1 Fogli volanti, libelli famosi, and Superstitious Prayers 2 Historiette, 'Rhyming Verse', and Astrological Predictions10 Controlling the Gaze 1 An Art without Heresy 2 'Custody of the Eyes' 3 The Irreverence of the Everyday and the 'Historical Rule' 4 Serving the 'Uneducated'11 Censoring the Spoken Word 1 An Inextricable Interweaving 2 Controlling and Guiding the Spoken Word.