The work of publishing material for popular circulation begins practically with the Reformation. It was with the great popular demand for instruction and information which had been developed through the work of the reformers, that there came to the people at large the realisation of the value to them of the invention of Gutenberg, and an understanding of its importance for the work of educating and of organising the people and for the securing the right of individual thought production against the oppression of Church and State. The system of censorship, ecclesiastical and political, a system which was to do much to hamper the development of literature and of publishing, dates in substance from the Reformation. The effect of the censorship of the Church on the activities of publishers and on the production of books varied very materially, even in those States in which the regulations of the Church were, in form at least, accepted as authoritative. The States in which, during the 16th and 17th centuries, the work of the printer-publishers came into conflict, in one way or another, with the censorship edicts, and in which literary production and activity were influenced by censorship policy, were: Italy, France, South Germany, North Germany, Switzerland, England, Spain, the Spanish Netherlands, and Holland. In Italy, the edicts of the Roman Inquisition and of the Congregation of the Index having to do with the prohibition or the expurgation of books were of course, at least in form, binding equally upon all the States and cities in which printing-presses were at work. As a fact, however, at no time, not even after the labours of the Council of Trent, did it prove practicable to secure any uniformity of procedure or of result in the enforcement of the censorship decrees throughout the territory of the Italian peninsula. The printers of Rome were under obligation to take immediate action in regard to the cancellation or withdrawal from sale of books condemned. Outside of Rome, or at least outside of the States of the Church, periods of from thirty to ninety days were allowed within which the printers were expected to secure knowledge of the prohibitory edicts. The Church authorities assumed that these edicts were binding throughout the entire Catholic world, but, outside of Italy, the printers, booksellers, or readers were not under obligation to have knowledge of the prohibitions until the edicts had been published by the local bishops or the local inquisitors. It was the case that from time to time the local bishops were not in sympathetic accord with the literary policy of Rome, and delayed indefinitely, or declined altogether, to make publication of the edicts. In certain of the Italian cities, of which Venice is the most noteworthy example, the civil authorities took the ground that no regulations concerning printing and bookselling could be considered as in force unless and until such regulations had been confirmed