It was evident in the course of the controversy that Venice was, ostensibly at least, as anxious as the Church could be for the purity of the press. In fact, judging from the Indexes, this point had not caused the Church any particular anxiety. The unsettled question was, which authority should exercise the censorship over the offences of libel, scandal, and obscenity--the Church or the State? It was the opinion of Sarpi that all such books should be absolutely prohibited. The risk, as emphasised by him, was that the Concordat might fall into desuetude, leaving the Venetian press, deprived of the bulwark which the State had secured for its defence, placed completely under the control of the Inquisition. The future justified Sarpi’s dread. The heat of the argument died away, and the Concordat was substantially forgotten. The Inquisition secured full control of the censorship. The press of Venice came under the influence of the Index and the Rules. Its losses were greater than those of the other presses that the Council of Trent had undertaken to regulate, for the reason that it had so much more to lose. From the middle of the 17th century, the printing-press of Venice, though not destroyed, ceases to hold pre-eminence in Europe. The last contest of Venice with Rome occurred in August, 1765, when the Senate issued a decree instructing the _Rifformatori_ to publish and to circulate the Index of Clement and the Concordat, and providing further that the _Rifformatori_ should appoint as an equal associate with the inquisitor an ecclesiastic who should be a subject of Venice, and whose _testamur_ as to matters of faith and doctrine should have equal weight with that of the inquisitor.