They made study odious, because they attempted to restrain it to the out-worn husks of pedantry and rhetoric.

These, they thought, were innocuous.

But what the intellectual appetite then craved, the pabulum that it required to satisfy its yearning, was rigidly denied it.
Speculations concerning the nature of man and of the world, metaphysical explorations into the regions of dimly apprehended mysteries, physics, political problems, religious questions touching the great matters in dispute through Europe, all the storm and stress of modern life, the ferment of the modern mind and will and conscience, were excluded from the schools, because they were antagonistic to the Counter-Reformation.
Italy was starved and demoralized in order to avert a revolution; and learning was asphyxiated by confinement to a narrow chamber filled with vitiated and exhausted air.[144] [Footnote 144: As Sarpi says: 'Of a truth the extraordinary rigor with which books are hunted out for extirpation, shows how vigorous is the light of that lantern which they have resolved to extinguish.' _Lettere_, vol.i.p.

328.] Similar deductions may be drawn from the life of Paolo Manuzio in Rome.
He left Venice in 1561 at the invitation of Pius IV., who proposed to establish a press 'for the publication of books printed with the finest type and the utmost accuracy, and more especially of works bearing upon sacred and ecclesiastical literature.'[145] Paolo's engagement was for twelve years; his appointments were fixed at 300 ducats for traveling expenses, 500 ducats of yearly salary, a press maintained at the Pontifical expense, and a pension secured upon his son's life.

The scheme was a noble one.