Actually, Victor Hugo had a huge grudge against the Church, and explicitly wrote a lot of his books to say bad things about it. The thing is, he was both a great artist (who couldn’t help telling stories with truth in them) and was a lot less hateful about the Church than a lot of people around today!
Madame Bovary got on the list for – well, I’ve heard two reasons. One is that they thought it was too nice about cheating on your husband (at least early on), and the other is that it was supposedly pretty risque for the time (which also might be true). No definitive info on that, though.
You have to remember that books had a lot more power in those days. People read The Sorrows of Young Werther and then went and offed themselves immediately, or so we’re told. Maybe it was a sort of tabloid exaggeration and maybe not, but anytime a popular book was said to have started an epidemic of X or Y or Z stupid behavior, it usually got put on the index.
Shrug. Of course, back then, secular governments around the world (including state and local governments in the US) were also in the business of not letting people print or sell certain books for moral reasons, so the Index didn’t use to stand out. Nowadays, it would be an unusual and misunderstood practice (which would probably be used to market the books as forbidden and hence desirable; so it’s just as well it’s gone.
