What’s the role of the #➀ part.

Where does #?part agree with?

The passage below is from The Library A Fragile History by Andrew Pettegree.

Publication of the first papal index was accompanied by substantial book burning, but mostly in Rome itself. Many secular authorities elsewhere in Italy were hesitant to put the full force of the index into effect. In Florence, Duke Cosimo de’ Medici forbade the monks of San Marco from burning any books in their library which his predecessors had donated. Future indices relaxed the most sweeping

prohibitions and placed more emphasis on the capacity of local inquisitors and bishops to grant exemptions for certain individuals to own dangerous books. Expurgation of texts was also considered, because that made large texts permissible by removing the few doctrinal errors they contained. The publication of some of Erasmus’s works in Italy would be permitted after special

expurgated editions were prepared, but this proved such an immense task that ultimately the papacy allowed collectors to expurgate their own copies. Many copies survive today with large segments of texts crossed through or otherwise defaced. Between 1597 and 1603, the Inquisition carried out a survey of all books in Italian monasteries, to purge them of forbidden books. This systematic

investigation of some 9,500 libraries provides a vivid demonstration of how entrenched library culture had become even in the smaller, poorer religious houses, as well as ?the new-found power of the church to shape the development of institutional book collecting.

I have a question on the last sentence on what’s the role of the #? part.

Is #? the object of the verb ‘provides’?

Or, is #? the object of preposition ‘of’?

Or, is #? the object of preposition ‘in’?

I think #? is the object of the verb ‘provides’. But that doesn’t mean anything since I cannot suggest any basis for my thought.

Thanks in advance.