Untitled - Monoskop

TWO OR MORE BOOKS; PACKAGE PRIVILEGES
The 'deferred' privilege, giving the holder the right to reckon the duration
from the date when the book should be published, did however open the way
for a publisher with an important series of first editions in prospect to secure a
privilege for all of them in advance. Only very well-organised and very
substantial publishers could be in this position. Most publishers lived a much
more hand-to-mouth existence. But grants for a veritable 'package' of new
books were sought and granted occasionally within the royal chancery. There
were at least some Italian precedents: five or six items were included in a
Milan privilege of 1498.' The beneficiary must have found the proceeding
more saving of time and money than seeking a fresh privilege for each book as
he brought it out, even if the fees and the gratuities demanded were larger at
the time.
The royal chancery
The chancery never granted, any more than did the Parlement, a privilege for
a whole category of books, such as Bibles. On several occasions, however, it
granted a privilege for a considerable number of individual books to the same
author or publisher. These were enumerated, so the concession differed from
the 'personal' privileges granted by Louis XII to Anthoine Verard and to
Guillaume Eustace, which evidently gave them 'carte blanche' to claim
automatically, from then onwards, a privilege in any book which they should
be the first to publish.
Thus a privilege was obtained by Nicole Bohier for four different works
composed or edited by him, all of which he planned to entrust to the Lyon
publisher Simon Vincent (CH 1509, i). They were a treatise on the powers of
the Papal Legate in France, an edition of the Coutumes of the realm, an edition
of Gulielmus Mandagotus' Tractatus de electione and of 'les reigles de droit'. The
relevant passage of the Letters Patent reads:
certains livres 1'ung desquels livres est la puissance et faculte de nostre trescher et feal
cousin le cardinal d'Amboyse legat en France. L'aultre les coustumes de nostre
royaulme de France additionnees en 1'onneur faveur et contemplation de nostre ame et
feal chancelier Jehan de Ganay chevalier; le tiers Mandagot es honneurs et faveur de
noz amez et feaulx conseillers les evesques de Roddes et d'Angolesme et 1'aultre dygne
des reigles de droit . . . lesquelz livres de faculte coustumier Mandagot et Reigles ledit
Boyer a/intention faire faire imprimer par un nomme Symon Vincent.
The extract from the text of the privilege is here quoted from the Mandagotus
where it is printed in full, enumerating all four works. Bohier's editing of the
Coutumes was in fact confined to the Coutume of Bourges. At least the first three
of the works mentioned were duly published in the course of 1509.
Another royal privilege granted to an author for several different books was
that obtained by Jean Lode, 'licencie en loix et tenant tutelle en 1'universite
1 See above, p. 5.
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