In 1547, occurred the first instance of a trial undertaken in Venice by the Holy Office for offence committed through the printing-press. The list is closed in 1730, with the trial of Giovanni Checcazzi. In the 16th century, there were one hundred and thirty-two trials by the Inquisition; in the 17th, fifty-five; in the 18th, but four. It is not clear whether the diminished activity of the Inquisition during the later years was due to the increasingly hostile attitude taken by the Government of Venice towards the Church of Rome after 1596, or to the fact that the vigour of the press prosecutions during the last half of the 16th century had effectively stamped out the publication in Venice of heretical and immoral publications. [Sidenote: Venice and the Pope] It is in connection with the Index of Pope Clement VIII and the Concordat that the history of publishing in Venice comes for the first time into touch with general history. The claim of the Church to the control of all publishing undertakings soon became involved in the larger question of the relations between Venice and Rome. Paolo Sarpi, who became the champion of the cause of the independence of the State against ecclesiastical domination, comes into the history of literature as the upholder of the rights of authors and of publishers against the crushing censorship of the Inquisition. The problem presented to the Venetian Government was whether the Venetian press, supported in its liberty by the Government, should continue to maintain its character as one of the freest presses in Europe (and therefore one with the most active production); or whether it should be permitted, for want of the support of the Government, to fall under the repressive influence of the Inquisition and the Index. As early as 1491, Franco, Bishop of Treviso and Papal Legate, had issued a decree prohibiting any one from printing in Venetian territory or from causing or permitting, to be printed, any books treating of the Catholic faith or of matters ecclesiastical without the express permission of the bishop or of the vicar-general of the diocese. The Legate named at once two works, Rosselli’s _Monarchia_ and Mirandola’s _Theses_, which were absolutely prohibited, and all existing copies of which were to be burned in the cathedral or in the parish churches within fifteen days from the publication of the decree. There was no charge that these works were in any way immoral or scandalous. They were condemned simply on the ground of the unsoundness of their doctrine. The contention raised in this order on behalf of the Church was far-reaching. If it were heretical to discuss, in a sense at all hostile to the Curia, the relative powers of the pope and the emperor, there would be an implied right in the Church to censure and to condemn any political writings in which reference was made to the authority of the pope or to the responsibilities of the emperor. It became in fact the keystone of the