In another Italian state the Inquisition never succeeded in obtaining a thorough hold—Venice, ever zealous for its independence of outside control. When Gregory IX started his campaign against heresy, the republic held aloof; the Constitutions of Frederick II were not incorporated in its laws. Persecution indeed existed and the ordinary bishop’s court existed as elsewhere in Christendom; but the Council, a secular body, maintained a supervision in cases of heresy. The Inquisition was not permitted to enter, and in consequence Venice became an asylum of refuge for heretics from other parts of Italy. But in 1288 Nicholas V ordered the _signoria_ to respect the laws of Pope and Emperor and facilitate the work of the Inquisitor of Treviso in whose province Venice ought to come.[347] According to the recognized principles of the age the attitude of the republic was indefensible. Venice, accordingly, gave way, but was able to effect a compromise, whereby the Inquisition was admitted, but on the other hand the edicts, imperial and ecclesiastical, were still not placed among the statutes of the city and the republic supervised the financial arrangements, defraying the expenses of the inquisitors, but at the same time receiving the profits of confiscations. Thus one of the most prolific sources of inquisitorial abuses was cut off, and at the same time the power of the purse retained supreme control for the state, the imposition of such important restrictions allowed the Inquisition no such prestige in Venice as it enjoyed in Lombardy. We find it at times being deliberately ignored by the _signoria_, and by the middle of the fifteenth century it had almost entirely lost such influence as it had possessed after the compromise of 1288.