Untitled - Monoskop

ORIGINS AND DEVELOPMENT OF BOOK-PRIVILEGES
other printers to refrain from reprinting it for three years. 1
agreement' had already by then broken down.
This 'gentlemen's
The first privilege application to the Council of the duchy, made by another
Antwerp printer, Claes de Greve, in 1512, was prompted in the first instance
by a dispute with an unscrupulous competitor in the same town. It is very
circumstantial. Claes had a potential best-seller to
print, the Almanac for the
coming year by Dr Jasper Laet. Almanacs were always in demand: they
provided a reliable calendar, phases of the moon, etc. as well as astrological
predictions about weather and events. 2 Laet's were particularly popular at
this time. And as Claes began to print, with the approach of the New Year,
Henrik Bosbas and his associates managed to get hold of an advance copy:
working secretly, 'with four or five presses and fifteen or sixteen workmen',
over Christmas time, which was anyway illegal, they were able to put Laet's
Almanac on sale more quickly and cheaply than Claes. Claes had had the law
of Bosbas in Antwerp, and secured a certain sum by way of compensation, but
Bosbas was unrepentant and openly threatened to pirate his copies again.
And so Claes presented a petition to 'the emperor and the prince', that is, to
Maximilian in his capacity as guardian of his grandson Charles, who was not
yet of age, and to Charles himself as 'prince', duke of Brabant. In this petition,
Claes set out at length the story of the injustices done and threatened by
Bosbas, and invoked the practice ofother places where the authorities already
provided protection against unfair reprinting: in Paris, in Venice, in Lyon and
elsewhere, printers received privileges whereby the profit on their new
publications was safe-guarded for a set period, and he asked for a privilege of
ten years in any work which he should be the first person in the duchy to
print.
This petition came before the Council of Brabant in Brussels and was granted
in the terms requested (except that six years and not ten were given). Claes
paid the standard fee for the use of the seal of Brabant, 1 2s 6d, and was
evidently well satisfied with the effect of the privilege, for he paid the same
sum to have it renewed in 1519.
As the payments for use of the seal on this and similar documents issued by
the Council of Brabant were carefully recorded, with the petitions, and the
record happens to be extant, we can trace the development of book-privileges
here with some precision. Claes de Greve's original application was followed
1 P. Verheyden, 'Drukkersoctrooien in de i6e eeuw,' Tijdschrift voor Boek- en Bibliothekswesen, vm
(1910), p. 204.
2 For example, Erhard Ratdolt, who published a number of calendars and almanacs, actually
paid qualified astronomers to draw them up or revise them (e.g. Johannes Mueller). Cf. Symon
de Phares, Recueil des plus celebres astrologues, ed. E. Wickersheimer (Paris, 1929), pp. 2634, 267.
John Dome, a Dutch bookseller in Oxford whose day-book has been preserved for 1520, sold
about forty books described as Almanacs or Prognostications, one of them definitely by Jasper
Laet, between 19 January and the end of the month. F. Madan, Daybook ofJohn Dome, in
Collectanea, i, ed. C. R. L. Fletcher, Oxford Historical Society (Oxford, 1885), pp. 78-82, item
155, pronosticon jasper.
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