Untitled - Monoskop

THE CRITERION OF NEWNESS
sought which was in line with the court's usual practice and not a sign of
misgiving. Jean de Selve was a future president of the Parlement; even in 1514
he was already a person of some influence. His colleagues would no doubt
lend a sympathetic ear to a plea from his publisher for this privilege. They
would not wholly depart from their usual principles. And their reasons for
making even this concession are carefully recorded.
The Parlement granted a two-year privilege on 7 September 1518 to the
printer-publisher Henry Estienne for Aristotle's Phisica in Latin, 'puis
nagueres corrige, augmcnte et translate a plus part de grec en latin par
maistres Jaques Fabri et Francois Wateble' (PA 1518, 7). The Greek text of
all Aristotle's surviving works had been printed by Aldus Manutius at Venice
14958, but most scientists and philosophers still naturally relied on translations
into Latin; the latter (both medieval and humanist) were already in
print long since. Francois Wateble or Vatablus, the future Royal Professor of
Hebrew and also a scholar in Greek, in association with Jacques Lefevre and
using the printing skill of Henry Estienne, had however produced an edition
with considerable claims to originality. In the first place the standard
medieval Latin version, the 'antique tralatio', was carefully revised by
reference to the Greek text and corrected where it seemed to be corrupt. This
was then printed in parallel columns with a modern Latin translation, the first
three books in the version of Argyropylus (1460), but the remainder in a new
version by Vatablus himself. These particulars, given by
Vatablus in his
dedication to Guillaume Bric.onnet, who (he said) had suggested the plan
'ante paucolos annos', amplify the grounds on which the Parlement could be
persuaded to judge that there was a sufficient element of new work in the
publication to justify a privilege. Estienne could not have prevented competitors
from continuing to publish Latin versions of the Physics already in
circulation, but he could establish a title to the Vatablus translation specially
made for this edition and for the way it was presented side by side with the
'antiqua tralatio', possibly also for the emendations made by Vatablus to the
'antiqua tralatio'.
In 1512 Jean Petit, with Poncet le Preux, published the Summa in questionibus
Armenorum of Richard FitzRalph, archbishop of Armagh, a work inspired by
the discussions which FitzRalph had had in Rome in 1349 with envoys of the
Armenian church, followed by a group of FitzRalph's sermons preached in
London in 1356-7. This material had never been printed before ('nusquam
antea impressioni demandata' as the editor, Jean Le Sueur, correctly stated in
his dedication). There was, however, a single sermon of FitzRalph which had
been printed before. This was the so-called Defensorium curatorum, or defence of
the secular clergy against the mendicant orders, which FitzRalph preached on
8 November 1357 before Innocent VI and the full consistory in Rome. Of this
Le Sueur says, in a note at the end of the sermons, that he had omitted it
because it was already in print ('unum tamen omisi quia est impressus et
97