Those articles in Italian point out that the Divine Comedy is obligatory reading in all Italian schools, including the Jewish and Islamic ones, and apparently the Italian Ministry of Education micromanages to the point of telling schools which canto's are obligatory - one among them being the one describing Judas. The NGO also claims that the notes in (what I assume must be) the most commonly used editions don't really discuss the racism or antisemitism. Hard to know what to make of all those claims without further evidence, I suppose. And of course it doesn't help that they end with the rather equivocating recommendation to "expunge the Divine Comedy from the ministerial school programs, or at least to insert the necessary comments and clarifications" - the difference between the two is fairly huge, it would have been rather smarter to pick one or the other. But then, I suppose merely recommending the latter course of action wouldn't have gotten them any media attention whatsoever... "Divine Comedy needs better footnotes, says Italian NGO" is not really a headline that will draw any readers.


I think that's going a bit far - in this case the offensive content was quite deliberate and intended that way, after all.

And of course there is a big difference between removing a book from required reading lists on the one hand, and removing it from library in an attempt to restrict access to it on the other.