Untitled - Monoskop

DATING AND DURATION OF PRIVILEGES
Toulouse privilege already mentioned (PA 1523, 2). The Parlement of Paris
gave this maximum of three years only nine times during the period up to 1 526
inclusive. Were the books, which thus received the maximum duration,
exceptional in their size and character?
The first (PA 1509, i) was an exposition of the Pauline Epistles, attributed
to St Bruno, edited by certain doctors of the Sorbonne; it was printed in style,
and was the first work of scholarship ever to be submitted to the Parlement for
a privilege.
It was 1514 before the Parlement granted any more three-year
privileges. In that year there were two. A new translation into French of
Petrarch's Trionfi., sumptuously printed and illustrated, was an obvious
candidate (PA 1514, 7); the pair of new works on scholastic philosophy
published by Jean Granjon was evidently considered so (PA 1514, 9). In 1515
the only three-year grant went to an elaborate guide-book to Italy, which
boasted a map which is specially mentioned in the privilege (PA 1515, 4). By
1516 one of the books covered by PA 1514, 9 had sold so well that Granjon
obtained a further three-year grant for a revised edition of it (PA 1516, 9). A
three-year grant for the romance La conqueste de Trebisonde (PA 1518, 2),
dedicated to the queen, was given both by the Parlement and by the Prevot.
The next three-year privilege occurs in 1520, obtained by an author, Claude
Perron, for his Compendium philosophiae naturalis (PA 1520, 3), a modest original
contribution to the study of physics and astronomy, which had an ambitious
diagram of the celestial spheres inserted in it. It is obscure why Simon Vincent
of Lyon was allowed a three-year period for a standard legal work (PA 1521,
i), though it may have been the first French edition of it: no surviving copy
has been traced, and it is in doubt whether Vincent ever actually published it.
The only other three-year privilege given by the Paris Parlement during this
period is more easily
accounted for. It covered a monumental work of
scholarship, the records of the early Councils of the Church edited by Jacques
Merlin, the basis of all later editions (PA 1524, 13). On the available
evidence, the choice of books granted the longer duration shows signs of being
rational rather than capricious.
Book-privileges granted by the lawcourts (Parlements, Cour des Aides and
Grands Jours] so far traced total 1 19. Of these the duration is known for 1 13,
and it is distributed as follows:
Less than i year 3
1 year 4
2 years 95
3 years
4 years
5 years i (PA 1523, 2)
Over 5 years
o
122
i o
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