If, however, the Catholic Church were hostile to the sacred Scriptures, we should naturally suppose that in Italy, at least, little enthusiasm should have been displayed in the diffusion of the Bible in the vulgar tongue; for Italy was more immediately subject to the influence of the Holy See; in its centre stood the capital of the universal Catholic world--the new Jerusalem of the Church--the See of Peter. Nevertheless, of all European countries, Italy was, perhaps, the most remarkable for the diffusion of the sacred text during the ante-Reformation period. Jacopo de Voragine, Bishop of Genoa, who died in 1298, was the first to translate the Scriptures into the Italian tongue, and thus his version dates before Dante and the other great masters of the language. New translations by Nicholas de Neritono, of the Dominican Order, Pietro Arighetto, Cavalca, and others, followed soon after; and so rapid was the diffusion of the sacred text, that, as Lamy informs us, the archives of Florence alone contain forty manuscripts belonging to the fourteenth century, all presenting various portions of the Bible in the Italian tongue (_De Eruditione App._, page 308, _seqq._). The discovery of the art of printing was hailed in Italy with special delight. Sweynheyne and Paunartz, under the auspices of Cardinal Cusa, hastened thither with the newly-found treasure, and Rome was the first city that welcomed them within its walls. Various editions of the Bible, the classics, and the Fathers, soon appeared; indeed, before the year 1500, almost every city of Italy had one or more printing presses in operation, but, above all, the names of the great Benedictine monastery of Subiaco, and the "Palazzo Massimi" in Rome, record to posterity the religious patronage and princely munificence which welcomed the German artists to the divinely favoured patrimony of the successors of St. Peter.