Untitled - Monoskop

DATING AND DURATION OF PRIVILEGES
There are however two instances, neither of them recorded in the extant
registers of the Parlemcnt, where a privilege had evidently been granted for a
whole group of books on the same occasion, one for four books and the other
for five. Comparison between books all claiming a privilege given by the
Parlement to the same publisher on the same date, and authenticated by the
same signatory, makes this clear. The first of them was granted to Guillaume
Eustace on 6 September 1512 (PA 1512, 9(1-4)). It is printed in full by
Eustace in the Stilus parlamenti curie, drawn up originally by Guillermus de
text
Brolio, and edited by Antoine Robert, the greffier criminel of the court. ' The
of the privilege, as printed in the book itself, speaks only of this particular
facerent Stilum dicte nostre curie in
book, 'ne imprimerent seu imprimere
latino per se nuper impressum'. But we find exactly the same privilege issued
on 6 September 1512 and signed by Robert, in a translation into Latin of the
Farce of Pathelin, Comedia noua que Veterator inscribitur, alias Pathelinus, also
published by Guillaume Eustace, this time mentioning only the Comedia noua
and making no reference to the Stilus. And it is claimed in two other
publications of Guillaume Eustace, an Ordinatio seu declaratio facta super xiii
punctis stili, and the Ordonnances de parlement touchant tous especialement les parties qui
y out a plaidier (1512). One can only conclude that the original privilege of 6
September 1512 covered all four publications, and that Guillaume Eustace,
seeing no reason to mention all four in reprinting the text of the privilege,
omitted the three other titles. At least the 'package' sought by Eustace had a
certain coherence: all the items included in it were directly connected with the
Parlement itself, even the Farce of Pathelin, since the play probably originated
in the Basoche or social club of the Paris law students and included
scenes in court, with the presiding magistrate ending the case by inviting the
'rogue' advocate Pathelin to dinner. A privilege of three books can also be
detected among the Parlement grants for 1517 (PA 1517, 9). These were three
separate works on Aristotle by the Spanish Paris theologian Juan de Celaya,
one published with the date 1517 and two with the date 1518; the publisher,
Hemon Le Fevre, displayed in each of the three books a privilege granted by
the Parlement on 3 1 December 1517, the Extraict des registres signed by Antoine
Robert. Finally, there appears in several books published between 1519 and
1523 by Claude Chevallon a two-year Parlement privilege dated 29 August
1519 and authenticated by Robert (in one of them misprinted Robertet, the
name of an important royal secretary of state, the compositor having perhaps
heard ofhim and taken the paraph after Robert's signature for 'et'). The latest
book to show it is a collection of Sunday sermons, Sermones dominicales, by the
Dominican theologian Guillaume Pepin, a popular preacher, which was
completed by Chevallon on 18 June 1523. On the verso of the title-page is
printed the 'Extraict des registres de Parlement': the only
1 See
above, p. 70.
I 3 8
book there