Untitled - Monoskop

THE PARLEMENT OF PARIS
logian's objections to his Heures, as submitted to them in manuscript, may not
have been insuperable, nor Gringore unduly unwilling to satisfy them before
having his work printed. Indeed his readiness to comply with the directions of
the theologians is expressed in the manuscript verses added to the vellum copy
presented to the duchess of Lorraine:
Mais ay monstre les differends passaiges
A doctes clers, prudens lettrez et saiges,
Mieulx entendans le spirituel scens
Que je ne fais . . .
Suyvant tousjours la seure oppinion
Des gens lectrez a leur discretion. 1
If the Heures were published later openly by Jean Petit, a prominent and
prudent libraire jure of Paris University, with a privilege from the royal
chancery; if the title-page stated that they were translated and versified by the
command of the duchess; if the work was reprinted with additional Chants
rojaulx, under a further royal privilege (CH 1527, 3);
if the work never
appeared in any of the lists of books condemned by the Faculty - one possible
explanation is evidently that the offending material was deleted or amended
to take account of the Faculty's censures.
THE PARLEMENT OF PARIS
As for the Parlement, the earliest privilege of which we have the complete text
makes no mention of receiving or granting a request for permission to print and
publish the book in question:
The court having seen the petition presented to it by Master Berthold Rembolt, master
bookseller of the university of Paris, by which, and for the reasons therein contained,
he requested that it should be forbidden and made unlawful for all booksellers and
printers both of this city of Paris and elsewhere to print or cause to be printed, for six
years, the book composed by one Master Bruno, first Prior of the Carthusian Order, on
the Epistles of St Paul, examined and corrected by several doctors of theology
appointed for the purpose by the said university, and printed to the order of the said
Rembolt: having seen also certain judgements of the said court given in like cases, and
all things considered: the said court has ordered and orders it to be forbidden and
made unlawful for all booksellers and printers, and others however they may be, to
print or cause to be printed from this day for three years the said book and exposition of
the Epistles of St Paul, on pain of confiscation of the said books and of a fine at the
discretion of the court. Enacted in Parlement the twelfth day of January the year one
thousand five hundred and eight. (PA 1509, i; see Plate 2)
A form of request of this kind, asking for others to be forbidden to print or sell
the book, was frequently used until the 15205, and the Parlement continued to
grant requests so worded without any mention of permission.
1 Louis Karl, 'Les Heures de Nostre Dame par Pierre Gringore,' Revue du Seizieme Siecle, xvm
(1931), pp. 352-5.
105