# Printed indexes of prohibited books use the press’s own copies as a control list

Date: 1559

## The fact

In 1559 a printed Index of prohibited books listed printed titles for control. This Fact stores that later policing of the press ecology, not a 1455 Catholic plot by Gutenberg.

## Context

Copyable books enable both access and standardised bans. Split improving legal-print from this control list. Neither is a modern constitution.

[Johannes Gutenberg](/people/johannes-gutenberg) is not the sole author of every later object, law, or museum label that uses the name. Shared work with courts, excavators, printers, spouses, officials, and later states does not erase a documented role, and it does not make an ancient person the signer of a twentieth-century statute.

## Evidence and sources

Academic histories of the Index and Britannica’s print frame independently date a sixteenth-century printed ban culture.

Official or archival record: Cambridge University Press (https://www.cambridge.org/; Cambridge University Press).

## Significance

Speech-control path. High confidence on 1559 as a public Index date; Gutenberg’s authorship is none.

A ban list is not a Bible. Keep 1455.

## What is established and what is not

Established: 1559 printed Index as control of a print market. Not established: that Gutenberg wrote a ban, or that 1559 cancelled the 42-line Bible.

What would change the picture: a contradictory original with a different date or name, or a measured series that can be argued, with lag and alternatives, as a consequence of this instrument rather than of later institutions.

The date is the date of this instrument, not a licence to back-date every later harm or benefit.

## People

- Johannes Gutenberg: https://factrail.ai/people/johannes-gutenberg

## Drivers

- Democratic Resilience: https://factrail.ai/drivers/democratic-resilience

## Sources

- https://www.britannica.com/biography/Johannes-Gutenberg
- https://www.cambridge.org/

## Methodology

https://factrail.ai/methodology

Canonical: https://factrail.ai/facts/gut-index-control