Untitled - Monoskop

THE CRITERION OF NEWNESS
books had been printed but were by then out of print, if they were being
printed for the first time in translation, if they contained a substantial addition
or improvement to an existing publication, they might qualify: not otherwise.
Whether the Tightness of this principle was self-evident to the authorities at
the time is uncertain. No discussion of the subject is recorded. Possibly it was
clarified by specific applications being received and, after consideration, or
after opposition from other publishers, being refused. Thus a thrusting
applicant might have tried about 1508 to secure a privilege in some established
favourite like the Roman de la Rose, or the Chronicles of Froissart, or the
farce of Maitre Pathelin. Such an application, if made (for instance) to the
Parlement of Paris, would probably have been contested by other members of
the book-trade as soon as it reached the first hearing, if not indeed queried by
the magistrates themselves. All these texts had been printed freely already,
and only gross favouritism could have removed them from the common stock
to assign them exclusively to a particular firm. On the other hand a newly
modernised version of the Roman de la Rose won a privilege (PR 1526, 2), a
translation into Latin of Pathelin was privileged (PA 1512, 9 (4)), and much later
Denis Sauvage was to obtain a privilege for his pioneer critical edition of
Froissart. Again, someone might have tried to obtain a privilege for any of the
works of Erasmus, a European best-seller, giving him the exclusive French
rights in it. In practice, among the many French publishers who printed and
reprinted works of Erasmus in the period up to 1526 the only one who appears
to have obtained a privilege was Conrad Resch, for the seven-part commen-
tary on the Lord's Prayer (PA 1524, i) of which his was the first edition to
appear after its original publication shortly before at Basle, and for the
Paraphrasis in euangelium Matthei (CH 1523, 4). Galliot Du Pre indeed obtained
a privilege for the Praise of Folly, but that was for the first translation into
French, which Galliot had commissioned (PR 1520, 5).
It so happens that a best-seller hardly less famous than the most celebrated
works ofErasmus is known to have been turned down by the Parlement of Paris
when it was proposed for a privilege. Nicolas de La Barre applied on 1 2 May
1520 for a grant for the Papal Bull canonising Saint Francis of Paola, 'et ung
petit livre intitule de Inuentoribus Rerum' (PA 1520, i). This can hardly be
anything else than Polydore Vergil's De inuentoribus rerum, which had been first
published at Venice in 1499. For twenty years this had been reprinted both in
1
Italy and in France. One may charitably suppose that La Barre was unaware
of this. Evidently the Parlement was not. It gave the privilege for the Papal Bull
only, ignoring the request for De inuentoribus rerum to be included. The first
translation into French, on the other hand, obtained a privilege (PR 1520, 12).
1
If on the other hand a book had been printed before, but some years before,
Denys Hay, Polydore Vergil: renaissance historian and man of letters (Oxford, 1952), Chapter in.
Polydore added three books - VI-VIH - to the text in 1521, but La Barre cannot have had this
additional material in his hands in Paris in May 1520.
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