Untitled - Monoskop

DISPLAY AND ADVERTISEMENT OF PRIVILEGES
penalties for infringement. On the other hand, the summary declared his
willingness to show the document whenever need arose and good reason was
shown ('cuius exemplum apud se Conradus habet idipsum deprompturus
atque exhibiturus quoties opus fuerit et iure petetur', CH 1520, 1 1). In 1521
he advertised a privilege similarly in a philosophical work of Gabriel Biel, and
inserted at the end of the book an address to the reader, 'De priuilegio et gratia
huius operis emissoribus concessis', again offering to show the 'instrumentum
publicum' to any legitimate enquirer (PR 1521, i). This time, however, he
gave it as a reason for omitting to print the text that it was written in French
and that ignorance of French might be made an excuse for disregarding it
('quia gallice scriptum, ne quis sermonis ignorationem excuset, his non est
insertum'), all this appearing rather oddly over the signature of Louis Ruze,
the Lieutenant Civil who had issued the privilege.
A few other university publishers similarly printed a summary of their
privilege couched in classical Latin, sometimes meeting possible objections by
stating that they withheld the text of the document because it was by ancient
custom written in French, but were willing to show the original to any
enquirer with reasonable cause to ask for it, e.g. Damien Higman at the end of
his edition of the works of Peter the Venerable, 1522 'Cuius rei testimonium
fidele habet instrumentum, sed gallice pro veteri more scriptum: eiusque
videndi potestatem omnibus rite exacturis est facturus', PR 1522, 2). What
justification was there for this reticence about French?
printing a document in
Paris academic publishers might expect to sell many copies of their editions
in foreign countries. The appearance of a document in French in such books,
otherwise wholly in Latin, might appear strange or even incomprehensible
abroad. For French, although spoken in territories well beyond
the eastern
frontiers of the kingdom of France, and familiar to polite society in Britain and
the Low Countries (for instance), was not the international language which it
was later to become. Scholars in Spain, or in the southern half of Italy, or in
parts of Germany not to mention eastern Europe might
not know it at all.
Nor, if they did, would they be interested in the privilege. Outside France,
advertisement of the privilege served one purpose only, namely to warn
foreign members of the book-trade that, if they reprinted the book, they would
not be able to sell their copies legally in France. Still, the majority of French
publishers who catered for an international market did print their privilege.
Badius, who set the example of Latin summaries, may have been actuated by
an unusually acute sense of incongruity about printing something in the
vernacular within a Latin book, possibly originating in some kind of intel-
lectual snobbery on the part of an ex-schoolmaster who was touchy about his
claims to be a humanist.
Latin summaries seem often devised as much to impress by the elegance of
their language as to provide precise information about the terms of the grant
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