ABSTRACT
The third chapter analyses the different ways used by the Church in the Italian Peninsula to control books and reading. Wherever possible, that is, in the Papal States, there was a high degree of continuity with the past: the repressive action exerted by the institutions in charge of censorship (the Index and the Inquisition) continued. Some people were charged with atheism and with disseminating Enlightenment books and were condemned to a public abjuration and to life imprisonment. Outside of the Papal States, the Catholic hierarchies met with significant resistance from State censorships and made great efforts to control reading through the use of spiritual weapons: encyclicals (by Clement XIII in 1766 and by Pius VI in 1775), pastoral instruction, catechism and sermons.
Keywords: Enlightenment, encyclicals against, preaching against
