Untitled - Monoskop

THE CLASSICS AND EDUCATION
Triste is a late-medieval sequel to the Tristan and Iseut legend purporting to
record the hitherto unpublished adventures of their son (PR 1522, 3). The
Histoire singuliere is a second sequel to the Quatrejilz. Aymon, carrying the story
into the next generation, including the episode of Mabrian which had not
until then been printed (PR 1525, 3 (i)). Guy de Warwick, originating in a
thirteenth-century Anglo-Norman poem, was an adventure story which had
been very popular both in France and England: this was the first printed
edition of the French prose version (CP 1525, 2).
Privileges were rarely granted for plays. A political satire in the form of a
morality, entitled Le nouveau monde, and a Sotise a huit personnages also of a topical
nature, were published by Guillaume Eustace under his personal privilege
(CH 1508, 2 (i and 4)), perhaps being propaganda approved by the royal
government. A translation into Latin of the well-known legal farce Pathelin
was included in a privilege obtained by Eustace for a group of juridical works
(PA 1512, 8). Pathelin in the original French had long since been printed, at
Lyon in 1485 or 1496. It may have been considered, at this period, that
performance in itself constituted publication, and that a play once performed
was therefore usually ineligible for a privilege.
THE CLASSICS AND EDUCATION
The editio princeps of a work from classical antiquity had a strong claim to be
granted a privilege. Such a windfall could normally hardly come the way of a
French publisher in the first quarter of the sixteenth century. Henri (I)
Estienne had, however, the honour of bringing out the first edition of the
Itinerarium Antonini Augusti. 1
This was not a literary text, but an official guide to
the Roman road system throughout the Empire, giving routes between the
principal places, naming all the stages or stations between them and giving
the distance between each stage in Roman miles. It is an important source for
ancient history and topography. It was edited by Geofroy Tory
from a
manuscript, now lost, lent to him by Christophe de Longueil or Longolius
(PA 1512, 7(0).
Classical texts already in print did not earn privileges. Certain features of a
new edition, certain features of a new commentary, might have sufficient
originality to do so. Thus the scholar-printer Josse Badius obtained privileges
for his editions, with explanations and commentaries, of Plutarch's Lives (in
Latin) and. Seneca's Tragedies (CH 1514, 6); of Quintilian (PA 1516, 2), of
Horace (CP 1519, 9) and of Aulus Gellius (CP 1519, 10). Sometimes a grant
might be given for, say, a commentary on a single speech of Cicero such as
that of Jean Vatel on De lege Manilla (CP 1520, 7). Such privileges did not
make it
illegal for other publishers in France to reprint the text itself. A new or
1 The
most modern edition of it is by O. Cuntz, Itiruraria Romana I (Leipzig, 1929).
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