Established in 1571 by Pope Paul II, the Index of Forbidden Books was a list of books thought to be immoral and against Church doctrine. Good Catholics were not to read these titles under threat of excommunication. When the list was abolished in 1965 as part of the Second Vatican Council's effort to modernize the church, the banned books included:

Victor Hugo's Les Misérables

Charles Darwin's The Origin of Species

Edward Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire

Nikos Kazantzakis's The Last Temptation of Christ

all the novels and short stories of the Italian author Alberto Moravia

various works by Emile Zola.