Untitled - Monoskop

THE PARLEMENT OF PARIS
To print unwittingly material which was objectionable to the State was not
the only danger that a privilege-seeker might fear from the contents of a book
he wished to publish. To print what was objectionable to a powerful family or
individual was another.
As at the present day, the memoirs or autobiographies of men who had
played an important part in public life might arouse the interest of the reading
public, but might contain matter liable to prove personally or politically
embarrassing to people still alive or to the families of people mentioned in
them. The Memoires of Olivier de La Marche were still unpublished in 1504,
two years after his death, when Charles de Lalaing received information that
La Marche had included his father, Josse de Lalaing, among the nobles who
supported the rebels of Ghent in 1482 in their refusal to release the young
Philip of Austria and in their opposition to his father Maximilian. Philip, now
sovereign in the Low Countries, agreed to Charles' request that a committee
should investigate the text of the Memoires, of which La Marche's widow was
made to produce her copy. As a result, order went forth that the offending
passage mentioning Josse de Lalaing was to be excised, and that anyone
possessing the original or copies was to see that it was cut out. It does not, in
fact, occur in any surviving manuscript of the Memoires, nor in the printed
editions, beginning with that of Denis Sauvage (Lyon r 1562), and the incident
is known only from the Chronicles of Molinet, not published until the
nineteenth century. 1 The possessor of a manuscript of this kind when
approached by a publisher, or the publisher offered copy of this nature, might
well feel more secure against possible complaints if the publication was to
appear protected by a privilege. When Jean Petit sought a privilege for the
first time from the Parlement of Paris it was for a late work of Olivier de La
Marche, Le parement et triumphe des dames de honneur (PA 1510, 3). Certainly he
may have anticipated that it would be eagerly read, and therefore particularly
at risk from unauthorised reprints. But there may have been other reasons. La
Marche was known as having been a devoted servant of the house of
Burgundy. No work by him had yet been printed under his own name in
France, though Le chevalier delibere had been published as an anonymous work
by Verard and others. And Le parement celebrated a number of recently
deceased great ladies, Marie de Bourgogne among them, whose relatives
might take exception to what was said about them being published. To obtain
a privilege from the Parlement for the publication might be in some measure
regarded as a safeguard, obliging the Parlement itself to accept responsibility
for the contents of the book being inoffensive. Some light on this aspect of the
Parlement's privilege grants is thrown by an incident several years later.
In 1522 the archbishop of Sens, Etienne Poncher, and his nephew Francois
1 Memoires d'Olivier de la Marche, ed. H. Beaune and J. D'Arbaumont, SHF (1888), iv, Notice
bibliographique, pp. cvii-viii and HI, 264-6. Chroniques dejean Molinet, ed. G. Doutrepont and
O. Jodogne, Academie Royale de Belgique, 3 vols. (Brussels, 1935-7), H, pp. 546-8.
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