LEXICA MALVAGIA ET PERNICIOSA. THE CASE OF ESTIENNE'S THESAURUS GRAECAE LINGUAE

Abstract

The paper aims to investigate – on the basis of materials preserved in the Archive of the Congregation for the Doctrine of Faith – the censorship case of Henri Estienne’s Thesaurus Graecae linguae, printed in Geneva in 1572 and forbidden in 1596 with the formula donec corrigatur. Since 1559 other diffused and esteemed Greeks and Latin dictionaries were put on the Index librorum prohibitorum, e.g. the Latinae linguae thesaurus of Robert Estienne and the Lexicon Graeco-Latinum of Jean Crespin, and the Catholics were kept from possessing and reading them. The paper will analyse the principal arguments for the ban and the proposed amendments in order to revise Estienne’s lexicon, and beyond that explore the general impact of the censorship proceedings against the ‘dangerous’ lexicography both on the book production and on the development of philological studies in the Catholic area.