In Italy, also, the publishers and booksellers worked during these centuries under similar difficulties, but there were mitigating circumstances. The Inquisition was able to retain in its hands only a partial control of the censorship, while outside of the papal States its authority was not infrequently set at naught. In fact, in Venice, for a large portion of this period (to use a phrase of a later century), the writs of the Inquisition “did not run,” an exemption which was by no means the least of the several factors combining to make Venice a centre of book-production. The division of the Peninsula into a number of states or principalities was an important influence in maintaining for the printer-publishers some measure of independence, as the undertakings that were stopped or interfered with in one State could, with no insuperable difficulties, be carried across the nearest boundary and brought to completion in another. A further influence serving to secure protection for the printing-press, and to promote its activity, was the personal interest on the part of many of the Italian princes in intellectual pursuits and in literary production, an interest that caused them to compete with each other for the possession of scholars and to offer special advantages to enterprising printer-publishers, and which made them frequently willing, for the sake of the literary prestige of their States, to brave the disfavour of the ecclesiastical authorities. In Italy, therefore, while the production and distribution of books was frequently interfered with by the operations of the Congregation or by the Inquisition, it is probable that (at least outside of the papal States) the actual detriment caused by the censorship to intellectual interests was by no means as great as, from the long list of mandates, prohibitions, and penalties, might at first be inferred.