Untitled - Monoskop

DISPLAY AND ADVERTISEMENT OF
PRIVILEGES
CHOICE OF POSITION IN BOOKS: PRINTING IN FULL OR
SUMMARY
Throughout the period 1498-1526 printers, publishers and authors enjoyed
complete freedom to advertise possession of a privilege as they thought best.
The first French-printed book to obtain a privilege (CH 1498, i) was the
Canon of Avicenna with the commentary of Jacques Despars. This great book
was undertaken by Johann Trechsel, a German printer who had settled in
Lyon. In his favour, or that of his heirs, a royal privilege was obtained for five
years. This privilege is known through a summary of it incorporated in the
prefatory letter by Janus Lascaris, under the heading 'Operis huius magistri
Jacobi de Partibus in Auicennam nuncupatio ac priuilegii ne alibi imprimatur
aut aliunde aduehatur manifestatio.' 1
In the latter part of this letter,
beginning 'Quod ut sine preiudicio aut damno impressorum in lucem edatur',
we recognise behind the Latin paraphrase the terms of Letters Patent issued
by the royal chancery, but there is nothing to say
where or when it was
granted, or by whom it is signed.
This is a very literary way of notifying the privilege. The same procedure
was followed by Conrad Celtes, when he edited the works of Hroswitha in
1501 :
2
the imperial privilege, one of the first if not the first to be granted for a
book, is paraphrased in his preface, in terms which leave no doubt about its
scope, but there is no mention of it on the title-page and no details as to where,
when and by whom it was signed. It was clearly only appropriate as long as
the privilege of the king of France or of the emperor was a quite exceptional
favour. It did not serve as a precedent.
In any case, the end of the book, rather than the beginning, was the position
in which most readers at the close of the fifteenth century would expect to find
if anywhere details of the place, date and circumstances of publication. Such
was the tradition in manuscripts, and many of the books in circulation were
still manuscripts or early printed books which took manuscripts as their
models. The title-page of a printed book was not at once developed for general
1
Reproduced in A. Claudin, Histoire de I'imprimerie en France au xv' siecle (1900), iv, p. 88. Cf. ibid.
P-5J-
2 See above, pp. 13-14.
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