During the reigns of Pope Innocent VIII., 1484-1492, and of Alexander VI. (Borgia), 1492-1503, little or nothing was done in Rome to further the development of literature. To the latter was in fact due the initiating of the system of the subjection of the press to ecclesiastical censorship, a system which for centuries to come was to exercise the most baneful influence over literature and intellectual activities and to interfere enormously with the establishment of any assured foundation for property in literature. Some account of the long contests carried on by the publishers of Venice against this claim for ecclesiastical control of the productions of their presses, is given in a later chapter. Venice stood almost alone among the cities of Italy in resisting the censorship of the Church, and even in Venice, the Church in the end succeeded in the more important of its contentions. In Spain, the ecclesiastical control was hardly questioned. In France, it was, after a century of contest, practically merged in the censorship exercised by the Crown, a control which was in itself fully as much as the publishing trade could bear and continue to exist. In Austria and South Germany, after the crushing out of the various reformation movements, the Church and State worked in practical accord in keeping a close supervision of the printing-presses. In North Germany, on the other hand, ecclesiastical censorship never became important. The evils produced by it were, however, serious and long enduring throughout a large portion of the territory of Europe, and the papal Borgia, though by no means a considerable personage, is responsible for bringing into existence an evil which assumed enormous proportions in the intellectual history of Europe. Towards the close of the fifteenth century begins in Italy the age of academies, associations of scholars and littérateurs for the furthering of scholarly pursuits and of literary undertakings. One of the earlier of these Academies was instituted in Rome, in 1468, by Julius Pomponius Lætus (a pupil of Valla), for the special purpose of promoting the study of Latin literature and Latin antiquities. Comedies of Plautus and of other Latin dramatists were revived, and the attempt was made to make Latin, at least for the scholarly circle, again a living language. The Academy was suspected by Pope Paul II. to have some political purpose, and it was for a time suppressed, but resumed its activities some years later under the papacy of Alexander VI.