Untitled - Monoskop

GROUNDS FOR SEEKING AND
GRANTING PRIVILEGES
DURING THE PERIOD 1505 to 1526 inclusive, the printing presses of Paris
alone produced at least 7,719 editions. 1 Of these, the proportion known to
have been covered by privileges is about 54 per cent. It is unlikely that the
proportion of privileged books is any higher, or even as high, for any
and most books
provincial centre in France. The proportion is not large,
undoubtedly came out to take their chance in the public domain.
What were the considerations, then, which decided authors or publishers to
seek privileges, and the authorities to grant them? In the absence of any
formal statement of policy on the part of the authorities, we turn to the
arguments advanced by successful applicants.
The grounds on which applicants made their plea for a privilege are known
from various sources, although no autograph original of a requete dating from
the first quarter of the sixteenth century is extant. The Letters Patent issued
by the chancery, of which the text is known for sixty, and by the prevote of
Paris, of which the text is known for eight, recapitulate in the preamble the
terms in which the successful petitioner had presented his case. This was
standard form in all such grants. Although the outline of the form is
standardised, and had been so for generations, the arguments used in these
applications for privileges are not. The object of the petition was something
new, and authors and publishers differed considerably, or their legal advisers
did, in their estimate of what arguments would weigh most with the authority
to which they were applying. The text of the Letters Patent therefore repays
very close study. In addition to this indirect evidence, there are six requetes by
publishers to the prevote of Paris which were reprinted verbatim by the
beneficiaries with the Prevot's favourable reply, 2 and one requete to the
Parlement ofToulouse which is preserved entire within the privilege itself and
printed in the book (PA 1517, 3).
Grants of privileges by the Parlement of Paris are uninformative in this
respect. The court never gave the reasons for its decisions in the registers, and
it is only very rarely that there are traces of the arguments which the petitioner
had used.
1
Statistics obtained from Brigitte Moreau, Inventaire chronologique des editions parisiennes du xvi' siecle,
3 vols. (1972-85), i, pp. 141-390; H, pp. 57-630; and HI, pp. 49-319.
2 For this form of privilege, see above, pp. 72-3.
78