Catholic Censorship and the Demise of Knowledge Production in Early Modern Italy.

The article examines the impact of the Catholic Church's censorship, specifically the Index Librorum Prohibitorum, on the growth of knowledge in Italy from 1400 to 1750. Using a newly constructed database of Italian scholars and their publications, the authors develop and estimate a structural endogenous growth model that accounts for censorship's dual effects: reducing the availability of non-compliant (revolutionary) ideas and inducing scholars and printers to shift toward compliant (orthodox) knowledge production. Their findings indicate that censorship caused a 43% decline in average scholarly publications by 1680–1749, with half of this effect attributable to talent reallocation toward compliant activities. The study also shows that adverse macroeconomic and demographic shocks had significantly smaller impacts on knowledge production than censorship, highlighting censorship as a key factor in Italy's relative decline in scientific output compared to Northern and Western Europe during this period.