In the sixteenth century, The Roman Catholic Church had to face many dissents. People had written many books that interpreted the God and the creation in their own ways or as they liked. Menocchio, a miller In Italy, read a few books and interpreted the message of the bible and created a view of god and its creation. It infuriated the Roman Catholic Church. Menocchio was hauled up twice and ultimately executed.

Then Erasmus, a Latin scholar and a Catholic reformer also criticized the extremes of Catholicism. The Roman church, in order to control these developments, imposed severe controls over publishers and booksellers. The church banned such books and started maintaining an index of prohibited books from 1558.