An informal organisation that is becoming quite influential in the spread of Italian in Italy, as well as abroad, is the "Accademia della Crusca" which began its activities during the Renaissance, under quite different auspices. Founded in Florence in 1582-1583, this Academy was inspired by the theories of Pietro Bembo (1470-1547), a Venetian who felt that the best models for literary works were those of the old Tuscan writers of the Trecento. In 1590 its members set out to select and define the words and norms in the works of the great Tuscan writers, especially in Dante, Petrarch and Boccaccio. This project led to the compilation of the "Vocabolario degli Accademici della Crusca" (1612), the first modern language dictionary. It was produced to provide the models of the literary language: a rationale due to the paradoxical condition of Italian, a language with a great literature but without a nation state. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the "Accademia" exercised an editorial role on the linguistic qualities of literary texts for publication, based on the puristic distinction between those forms and words which could be included, and those considered impure which were to be excluded. The last Presidents have secured for the "Accademia" the new role of leader of national awareness on issues of corpus and status planning with regard to the contemporary Italian language, both in Italy and abroad. In addition, they have engaged the "Accademia" for the first time in language-planning activities, sometimes in support of Italian in Italy, sometimes in defence of Italian in Europe.