So there is no doubt that the Church was not opposed to the use of lot for assigning offices, provided that no one accorded any religious significance to the procedure. This explains, in fact, why the highly Catholic Italian republics continued to use lot after Ecdesia Vestra without the practice giving rise to any controversy with the ecclesiastical authorities. If the medieval Church contributed to the decline in the political use of lot, it was purely in so far as it propagated the principle of consent, not because it prohibited the assignment of "dignities" by lot.