Untitled - Monoskop

THE EMPIRE AND THE LOW COUNTRIES
least to works which, like this one, were printed by his command (Innsbruck,
i January 1515).'
Although this and other privileges were granted by Maximilian, application
for privileges from the emperor was not a common practice. For one thing
they usually cost a great deal. Froben obtained an imperial five-year privilege
for the edition of St Jerome, in addition to the papal privilege already
mentioned, and a four-year privilege for the New Testament, also edited by
Erasmus. 2
Prompted no doubt by Froben, Erasmus wrote on 28 January 1523
to Willibald Pirckheimer asking him to obtain a two-year privilege to cover
any work which Froben should be the first person to print, if possible in time
to apply to his forthcoming Paraphrasis on St John's Gospel, dedicated to the
emperor. 3 Pirckheimer was able to secure the desired privilege 'gratis and
without payment, which is very rare with us'. Reporting this good news to
Erasmus on 17 February 1523, Pirckheimer advised him to write to thank the
councillor Varnbiiler who had personally drawn up the privilege, and to see
that Froben sent him a complimentary copy of the book, 'for such a document,
especially a general one, could not have been obtained under twenty gold
pieces.' 4 The benevolence of Varnbiiler in helping to obtain an imperial
privilege is also acknowledged in the preface addressed to him by another
Basle printer, Andreas Cratander, in his edition of Cicero, 1528, but it does
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not appear that it was granted free of charge. Under the emperor Charles V
forty-one privileges are recorded in the imperial chancery for the period
1522-56, though many more than this are known from their appearance in
books. 6
There are however some instructive records to consider from territories in
the Low Countries, some of which claimed independence from the Empire,
notably the registers of the use of the seal of the duchy of Brabant. Brabant
was one of the lands united under the rule of the Valois dukes of Burgundy
which the Archduke Charles, destined to become the Emperor Charles V,
inherited through his grandmother Mary of Burgundy, the first wife of
Maximilian I. It included a number of towns where printing was practised
from an early date: Brussels, Antwerp and Louvain in particular. No
privileges for this area are known earlier than 1512. Imperial privileges, valid
in provinces which were part of the Empire, such as Holland, did not apply
here. According to Willem Vorsterman of Antwerp, who had been printing for
several years when in 1514 he first applied for a privilege, it had been the
custom and usage in Brabant, when a printer printed something new, for the
1 Bodl. Buchanan e.22. Privilege on f. 2 of the prelims.
2 Erasmus, Opus Epistolarum, ed. P. S. Allen, Vol. v, Ep. 1341, line 10, p. 202.
3
Ibid. Ep. 1341.
+
Ibid., Ep. 1344.
s K. Schottenloher, Die Widmungsvorrede im Buck des i6tenjahrhunderts (Miinster, 1953), p. 199.
6 K. Schottenloher, 'Die Druckprivilegien des i6ten Jahrhunderts', Gutenberg-Jahrbuch (1933),
1 pp. 89-1 1.
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