And finally, the University of Paris, for centuries the most important in Europe, contended through a long series of years that the supervision and control of the book-trade of the kingdom was a university matter, and it succeeded for a series of years, with occasional exceptions and set-backs, in maintaining this contention very largely until, with the gradual extension of the powers of the Crown, the direction of censorship and of privileges had been, with nearly all other divisions of government, brought directly under royal authority. More than one scholar has been quoted as saying that the intellectual life and development of Europe during the centuries between 1556 and 1800 could be traced by the lists of condemned books, and that these books would in themselves constitute a fairly complete library for the thoughtful student. There might be ground for complaint that, owing to the remissness or ignorance of the censors, the lists included titles of a number of works not valuable enough to deserve condemnation, and omitted many of real value and continued importance. Irrespective of such inconsiderable exceptions in one direction or another, there can, I judge, be no question that a very large proportion, one may say by far the largest proportion, of the world’s literature that stood for intellectual activity and insight, literature which expressed the conclusions of the greatest minds of their several generations, and which stood for the development and the civilisation of the community itself, had been placed by the Church in the Index of condemned and prohibited books. Comparatively few of these books of light and leading had been omitted (and those apparently through inadvertence) and comparatively few books had been included which, apart from any questions of heresy or pernicious doctrine, would, under a standard not theological, be classed as dangerous or unwholesome for the community. In fact, the service of the Index in suppressing or in discouraging books _contra bonos mores_ may be characterised as unimportant.