Dealing with the issue of ecclesiastical censorship and control over reading and readers, this study challenges the traditional view that during the eighteenth century the Catholic Church in Italy underwent an inexorable decline. It reconstructs the strategies used by the ecclesiastical leadership to regulate the press and culture during a century characterized by important changes, from the spread of the Enlightenment to the creation of a state censorship apparatus, and it provides a comprehensive analysis of the Catholic Church's endeavour to keep literature and reading in check by means of censorship and the promotion of a "good" press.
