Untitled - Monoskop

OWNERSHIP, ENFORCEMENT, EFFICACY
possession they were found to appear before the nearest royal judge, to see
whether they had incurred the penalties laid down and other conclusions
which the privilege-holder and the procureur du roi might see had to be done:
mandons au premier nostre huissier ou sergent sur ce requis que a la requeste dudict
exposant ou de son procureur pour luy pregne arestent et saisissent tous et
chascuns les livres qui ou content [sic] de cesdictz presentes auroient este faiz
et imprimez et adjournent ceulx en la possession desquelz il seront trouves par
devant le prochain juge royal pour veoir avoir encouru les peines desusdictes et aultres
conclusions que ledict exposant et nostre procureur verroit estre a faire . . . (CH 1 5 1 5, 2)
This is a privilege which contains several other legal details not usually
mentioned, perhaps because the secretary who drew it up, De Rillac, had not
been responsible for any other known book-privilege and was being especially
careful - or pedantic. The wording is in fact almost the same as that obtained
much later, on 30 September 1559, from Francis II by Guillaume Aubert,
who was an advocate in the Parlement of Paris, and evidently a stickler for
form. 1
An apparent case of defiance of a privilege occurs when the system had only
just started, in 1509. A grant, which covered, among other books, Nicole
Bohier's Tractatus on the powers of the papal legate, Georges d'Amboise,
archbishop of Rouen, was made by the royal chancery in favour of Simon
Vincent of Lyon at Bohier's request (CH 1509, i (i)) on i June 1509.
Vincent's edition came out on 17 June. But an edition of the same work was
published by Jean Petit in Paris on 7 September 1509 (BN Res. .5201). It is
possible that Petit obtained this text independently, through (for instance)
someone in the household of Georges d'Amboise, since he had close connec-
tions with Rouen. He may not have known when he it published in Paris in the
first week of September that an edition authorised by Bohier had been
published under privilege by Vincent on 1 7 June. The privilege-holder may
by September have sold most of his copies,
since the Tractatus was of
considerable topical interest. He may have thought it a waste of money to
institute proceedings against Petit by that time. He may have reached a
not be coincidence that Petit himself first
settlement with him. It may or may
applied for a privilege on 13 July the following year (PA 1510, 3). Thereafter
he became one of the staunchest supporters of the privilege-system.
In 1516, an action was in fact brought by him before the Parlement of Paris
for alleged infringement of a privilege. On 28 June 1516 Petit had obtained
from the Parlement the privilege in the Coutumes of Troyes for two years
(PA 1516, 7). On 2 July 1516 he submitted a requete to the Parlement,
1 'Voulons et nous plait que tout ce qui aura este faict centre la teneur du present privilege fust
incontinent . . . saisy et mis en nostre main, par le premier nostre huissier ou sergent
sur ce
requis, et ceux, qui auront attente contre les presentes, adjournez pardevant celuy de vous [the
royal officers] auquel la cognoissance en apartiendra etc'. G. Aubert, L'histoire des guerres (Paris,
Vincent Sertenas, 1559, 4"). BL gi34.dd.i.
196