Untitled - Monoskop

1
Nuremberg and to Geneva. 2
THE EMPIRE AND THE LOW COUNTRIES
Papal privileges were expensive. When Michael Hummelberg, in Rome, set
about obtaining a five-year privilege from Leo X for Froben's edition of the
works of St Jerome, prepared by Erasmus, he was told by Roman booksellers
whom he consulted that it would cost about thirty gold pieces. Submitting the
request to the Pope through a series of highly placed and benevolently
disposed intermediaries, he eventually secured the privilege for six ducats.
'No one, believe me,' he wrote to Froben, enclosing the document and
'could have obtained it for so little.' 3
requesting repayment,
To my knowledge, there exists as yet no general and systematic study of
papal book-privileges in this period. For this reason,
I have ventured to
give some examples of their scope and geographical distribution. In prin-
ciple, they were indeed universal. But Jossc Badius was to reprint
Cajetanus, Psalmi Dauidici, 1532, fol., knowing that the Italian first edition
had a ten-year papal privilege which was still valid, having obtained from
doctors of Paris University advice to the effect that this privilege applied
only to the papal states within which the Pope was temporal sovereign. 4 A
Milan publisher, who infringed a ten-year papal privilege of 1515 and was
prosecuted for it by the privilege-holder, managed with some specious
excuses and no doubt with some expense to secure a pardon and permission
to sell his edition, but took care to print in it the documents in the
case. 1
THE EMPIRE AND THE LOW COUNTRIES
A possibility in privilege coverage, first thought of by the German humanist
and poet Conrad Ccltes, was a grant by the Holy Roman Emperor. In 1501
Celtcs published the first edition of the works of Hroswitha, the manuscript of
which he had discovered. It was printed at Nuremberg for him, or rather for
the 'sodolitas' or consortium which he had organised. In the preface Celtes
paraphrased an imperial privilege which forbade anyone to print
other printed copies' in any of the imperial cities for the next ten years on pain
1 To
'this and the
Hans Koberger for Franciscus Irenicus, Germania, 1518, fol. Bodl.E.i.22.Art. The privilege,
for five years, 14 January 1518, is printed on the verso of the title-page.
2 To Jacques Vivian, for Pierre Michault, Le doctrinal de Court, 1522, 4". BN Res.Ye 858. Privilege,
for three years, date not given, printed on verso of title-page.
:i
A. Horawitz, Analecten zur Geschichte des Humanismus in Schwaben, 1512-1518, Vienna, 1 877, p. 217,
no. xxxviii (30 August 1516). The fee paid by Koberger for the privilege referred to above, n. i,
was in fact thirty florins.
*
Ph. Renouard, Bibliographic des impressions et des oeuvres dejosse Badius Ascensius (1908), HI, 3545.
r'
fol. This
Tacitus, Libri quinque nouiter inuenti cum reliquis operibus (Rome, S. Guilleretus, 1515),
being the first edition of the first six books ofTacitus' Annales, the editor, P. Beroaldus, obtained
the privilege. It was copied at Milan by A. Minutianus, 1517, 4".
'3