Untitled - Monoskop

GRANT OF PRIVILEGE AND
PERMISSION TO PRINT
THE SUBMISSION OF A NEW BOOK to the royal chancery, to the Parlement
or to a royal official to obtain a privilege was throughout this period a
voluntary act, initiated by the applicant for his own advantage.
It did not
form part of any organised system of licensing.
Much later, in 1566, Charles IX decreed by Article 78 of the Edict of
Moulins that no new book should be published 'sans notre conge et
permission et lettres de privilege expedites sous notre 1
grand seel.' From 1566
onwards, until the end of the Ancien Regime, the separate identity of the
privilege, as a commercial concession, was merged in that of a licence to print.
No such connection with the granting of privileges was made by Francis I
when he ordered on 18 March 1521 that any new works should be examined
and approved by representatives of the University of Paris, and in particular
that any concerning the Christian faith or the interpretation of Holy Scripture
should be passed as orthodox by the Faculty of Theology before being put on
sale. 2 In principle, henceforth no such book could be published at all in
France without having received the approval of the Faculty, whether it was to
be published under privilege or not.
What element of permission or licence had there been hitherto in the grant
of a privilege, and did the requirement of March 1521 change it in any way?
THE ROYAL CHANCERY
There is no direct evidence that books were censored or scrutinised before
being granted a privilege in the royal chancery. The chancellor probably
looked through them, or deputed one of his staff to do so, to check that they
contained nothing objectionable, as his was the final responsibility for the
correctness of all Letters Patent. Some of the early privileges were sought by
authors so well known to the royal court, or recommended by persons of such
high standing in it, that there can have been no problem. The first author to
obtain a privilege from Louis XII for a particular book, Eloi d'Amerval, was
F. A. Isambert, Recueil general des anciennes loisfran^aises, xiv, i
rr
1
partie, p. 210.
'
z Charles Jourdain, Index chronologicus chartarum pertinentium ad historian universitatis Parisiensis
(1892), no. 1594, p. 326. Royal Order in Parlement repeating the provision, 4 November 1521,
ibid., no. 1597, p. 327.
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