As in the case of the privileges, the censorship was, for something more than half a century, that is, from 1469 to 1528, carried on without the aid of any general law, and was based simply upon a practice or series of precedents evolved from the individual action taken by the Government in each instance as it arose. The granting of privileges had, as we have seen, been the duty sometimes of the College, sometimes of the Senate. The responsibility concerning censorship rested naturally with the Council of Ten, which in its capacity as a standing committee of safety, assumed a general charge of the morals of the community. The censorship of the Press in Venice, as elsewhere, was concerned with three aspects of literature: the religious, the moral (which included the political), and the purely literary. Morality was considered from both the public and the private or personal point of view, the former including as its chief consideration the safety of the State. The operation of the censorship was marked by the presence of an _imprimatur_ or record of authorisations. As has already been noted, applications for a privilege were occasionally accompanied by a certificate or _testamur_ from certain competent authorities, who had examined the work in question and who were willing to certify as to its soundness and importance. The earliest example of an ecclesiastical _testamur_ printed in a book published in Venice, appears at the beginning of the _Nosce Te_, issued by Jenson in 1480. The _Nosce Te_ was a book of devotion, written by a Carthusian monk, Giovanni di Dio, and the _testamur_ in this case might, therefore, be interpreted simply as an approval by his ecclesiastical superiors of the work done by him as an ecclesiastic. There is no record that the _Nosce Te_ ever secured a privilege from the Venetian Government, and it seems certain that at the date in question no such _testamur_ was required under the regulations of the secular government. No further instance of a clerical _testamur_ occurs before 1505, when Jacomo di Penzi, of Lecco, a printer, in applying to the Council for a privilege for certain books he desired to print, states that he has an _imprimatur_ from the Council of Ten, and a _testamur_ from the Patriarch as to the merit of one of the works, the _Tre famosissime Questioni_, by Zane, Archbishop of Spalato. In the year 1508, we have the first example of an ecclesiastical _testamur_ being required by the Council of Ten, as a condition for their own _imprimatur_. The work was the _Universalis animæ traditionis liber quintus_ of Gregoriis, and the ecclesiastical censor appointed to examine the work from a theological point of view, reported that he found in it nothing opposed to Catholic verity.