ABSTRACT
The fourth chapter describes how the Catholic Church adapted to the changes in the literary market and examines how it maintained its influence over reading at the end of the eighteenth century. To respond to the crisis in the inquisitorial system, the Catholic Church shifted its emphasis from repression to persuasion, facing its enemies on the common battlefield of the written word. Waging a war of books, in which the Roman and Italian hierarchies promoted the publication of refutations of volumes included in the Index librorum prohibitorum throughout Italy, was essential, while the Church promoted the publication of ecclesiastical periodicals, dictionaries, novels and conduct manuals which contained the rules about books and reading.
Keywords: Government of public opinion, reading, eighteenth-century Italy
