“Since certain books, otherwise harmless, had been placed on the Index because they contained offices and litanies of the Church which were disapproved and published contrary to prohibition, it seemed good to expunge these also, since to-day the power is entrusted to Ordinaries to publish litanies and prayers of this kind for the private use of the faithful. “Certain minor works, frivolous, or absurd or superstitious, and such as cite false and apocryphal indulgences, are omitted. For superstitions and magic are sufficiently excluded by _Dec._ 12, 13, 16, and 17; while for the elimination of apocryphal indulgences, there is at hand for all the authoritative ‘decree of the Holy Congregation in charge of Indulgences and Holy Relics,’ published by command and authority of the Pope, and the decree ‘concerning the discrimination between regular or normal indulgences and apocryphal,’ published by the same Congregation on the 10th of Aug., 1899. “It happened often that there were placed on the Index works of slight bulk, sometimes of only a few pages, which were full of venom and danger, but which have been so dispersed by the passage of time (as by the wind) that to-day copies are hardly to be found. These have not been placed on the new Index. Under this head are included a series of pamphlets, for the most part scholastic, which were transferred to the Index proper from the appendices to the Indexes of Innocent XI and of Clement XI. Theses, also, which were prepared for public academic discussion, although not free from error and rightly and justly placed on the Index on their first appearance, have been thought fit for omission, the more as oblivion has long ago blotted out most of them. But those prohibited writings, however small in compass, which claim any part in the historic evolution of Catholic theological doctrine, are for this very cause retained in the Index. “All those works were struck off which had been condemned only by the edicts of the _Magister Palatii_ early in the 17th century, and those in regard to which the Congregation itself decreed that they might or should be omitted by the next decree, as well as certain old collections of declarations, decisions, and interpretations of the Council of the Congregation, which this body proscribed by its decree of April 29, 1621. For although the decrees in these collections are not to be considered authentic simply on the ground of inclusion there, the collections are nevertheless believed to be of some value to-day. Besides, the making of such collections in future has been sufficiently guarded against by _Dec. gen._ 33.