# The Pauline Index of Forbidden Books lists Machiavelli’s works

Date: 1559

## The fact

In 1559 the Pauline Index Librorum Prohibitorum listed [Machiavelli](/people/niccolo-machiavelli) among authors whose works were forbidden. The instrument is a completed papal-inquisitorial policy. It is not a 1513 letter and not a 1966 abolition.

## Context

Censorship can both restrict a harmful handbook and punish a republican secretary.

Niccolò Machiavelli 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

The Holy See’s later CDF pages record Index competence. Britannica independently narrates the 1559 Pauline Index and Machiavelli’s place in the prohibition tradition.

Official or archival record: Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith — historical Index competence (https://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/congregations/cfaith/index.htm; Holy See).

## Significance

Knowledge-restriction path. High confidence on the listing as received church policy.

A ban is not a refutation. Gentillet and Frederick are later, different instruments.

## What is established and what is not

Established: Machiavelli appears on the 1559 Index tradition. Not established: a complete seizure count of copies that year.

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.
Later competitions, monuments, translations, UNESCO listings, and museums are not converted into extra lifetime acts. The attached driver is edu-[digital-learning-access](/drivers/edu-digital-learning-access). The welfare reading used in this dossier is worsening. That reading is an impact-path choice, not a property stored on the Fact itself. Confidence is stated on the impact path. A later English edition is not a recovered autograph. If a number is not in the two records named above, it is not supplied here.

## People

- Niccolo Machiavelli: https://factrail.ai/people/niccolo-machiavelli

## Drivers

- Digital Learning Access: https://factrail.ai/drivers/edu-digital-learning-access

## Sources

- https://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/congregations/cfaith/index.htm
- https://www.britannica.com/topic/Index-Librorum-Prohibitorum

## Methodology

https://factrail.ai/methodology

Canonical: https://factrail.ai/facts/mc-index-1559