Untitled - Monoskop

THE SOVEREIGN COURTS
even enabled it to exercise a certain political function, by querying the validity
of legislation of which it disapproved, though its powers did not develop on
the same lines as those of the English Parliament. Within the Paris area, the
city itself and the surrounding Parisis,
it functioned also as a court of first
instance. In this capacity it was however expensive and many litigants
preferred the alternative of the court of the Prevot of Paris. Within this area
too the Parlement had also for a long time acted as a body which ensured the
supply of food and fuel to the capital, regulated the prices of essential
commodities, and took part in keeping order among trades and crafts. It had
thus become natural for residents in Paris, particularly artisans and merchants,
to look to the Parlement for justice even in relatively minor matters.
Hitherto, the book-trade had lain outside its jurisdiction: in the manuscript
era, this was controlled by the university, through its librarii jurati who
controlled the copying of books and the selling and hiring of them. Printing
changed this situation. It was a new craft, without restrictions or regulations.
Anyone could set up a press. Anyone could finance or sell printed books.
Understandably, then, cases involving printed books had begun to come
before the Parlement before the end of the fifteenth century. On 8 January
1486, an arret of the Parlement allowed Vincent Commin, bookseller of Paris,
to put on sale in Sens or elsewhere the breviaries and missals of the
archdiocese of Sens (which then included Paris) which he had printed,
notwithstanding the opposition of the 1
archbishop of Sens. Another arret, of 7
September 1503, authorised Mace Panthoul, bookseller at Troyes, to put on
sale an edition of the synodal statutes of that diocese, the sale of which had
been suspended by the king's officers owing to incorrect wording found in
them, on condition that he made the required corrections. 2
The Parlement had also begun to appreciate the usefulness of printing for
its own purposes, namely for circulating large numbers of correct copies of
laws and regulations. On 30 August 1499 it paid the Paris printers Gervais
Coignart and Jean Bonhomme the sum of twelve livres parisis for i oo bound
copies of certain ordonnances supplied by them to the king''s procureur general to be
sent out to royal officers throughout the kingdom. The following 6 March it
paid Coignart forty livres parisis for 200 copies of other ordonnances,
for the
procureur general to send out, duly signed and sealed to authenticate them, 'aux
juges et officiers des provinces de ce royaume.' 3 In 1504 an author brought a
case in the Parlement against a bookseller for causing a work of his to be
printed without his permission. The author, Dr Guillaume Cop, a well-known
member of the Paris Faculty of Medicine, regularly prepared almanacs for the
coming year. Such publications always sold well, especially when the name of
1
Reprinted in A. Claudin, Histoire de 1'imprimerie en France, H (1901), p. 508, n. i.
2 L. Morin, Histoire corporative des artisans du livre a Troyes (1900) (Extrait des Memoires de la Societe
academique de I'Aube, 1899-1900, vols. 63-4), p. 276, Pieces justificatives i.
3 AN x i A 1504, f. 4O2 r
, and x i A 1505, f. 78*.
35