The _Concordat_ was the last arrangement arrived at between Rome and Venice on the matter of the supervision of the Press until the year 1766. During the century and a half following the date of the _Concordat_, repeated attempts were made by the Holy See to induce the Venetian Government to authorise the publication of an augmented _Index_, but the Republic had persistently refused. The list of new prohibitions finally accepted in 1766 was announced as _juxta formam concordatorum_. The contest of 1596 gave evidence of a material change in the attitude of Venice towards the Church since the passing of the law of 1562. The tone of the Government had become suspicious and hostile. While it was still ready to leave to the Church the responsibility of supervising matters which were purely theological or dogmatic, it objected decidedly to the attempts made by the Church to extend its control over all classes of literature, and still more to the tendency of the Church to utilise the censorship of literature as a means of asserting its authority over the State as a whole. The varying phases of the long contest between the Papacy and the other Catholic States of the world, had of necessity an important influence upon the stability and upon the value of literary property, and, in fact, in not a few instances, upon its existence. When the promulgation of a new _Index_ could, without warning, stop the sale and therefore destroy the selling value of a book or of a series of books, the readiness of the publishers to invest capital in literary undertakings must have been not a little hampered, and the possibility of securing from such undertakings any adequate returns for the authors was much lessened. The efforts of the Church to extend its control over all literature and to enforce a general censorship which should expurgate and, if it seemed necessary, re-shape books in every division of thought, hampered enormously the development of literature and of publishing not only in Italy but in Spain and France. In Germany and in England the Papacy was never permitted to interfere seriously with the production or the distribution of books. It was not only in Venice and in Florence that the attempts of the Church of Rome to enlarge its control over the Press excited active opposition. King Philip II. had refused to permit the promulgation in Spain of the _Tridentine Index_ and its ten _Rules_. He wrote to his ambassador at Rome that, “Spain has her own special _Index_ and her own special _Rules_ on the prohibition of books. It cannot be permitted to Rome to place her under general orders. Books which in one country may be innocuous, in another may be dangerous.”