Reading under Surveillance. Benito Arias Montano and the Invention of the Expurgatory Index (1571)

Expurgation was the distinctive censorial system of the Spanish monarchy. It was built during the second half of the sixteenth century in open conflict with Tridentine and Roman policies of prohibition and often as a means of promoting Hapsburg interests. The purpose of this chapter is to analyze the beginnings of this censorial process in the territories of the Spanish monarchy by studying the first expurgatory index, printed in Antwerp in 1571. I shall examine the political and doctrinal needs that this index met, the conflicts and contradictions that it aspired to resolve, the centers and networks of power behind it, and its impact on printing and reading practices in modern Europe. I conceive of the expurgatory index not only as an instrument for regulating and confronting religious dissent (that is, under the rubric of erasure and repression) but also as an ordered, complex, and productive discourse which established a model for the control and regulation of reading and writing that would, with variations, remain in force for more than three centuries.