Untitled - Monoskop

THE SOVEREIGN COURTS
The first application, or at least the first successful application, to the
Parlement of Paris, for a privilege came three years later, in June 1 507. A Paris
bookseller, Eustace de Brie, whose shop was a few streets away from the
Parlement, at the sign of the Sabot, behind the church of St Mary Magdalene,
found himself that summer with two highly topical and highly saleable items,
which he could not hope to publish in the ordinary way without the risk of
them being immediately copied by competitors. It is probably no accident
that one of these items, La louenge des roys de France, was by Andre de La Vigne,
who had good reason to know the dangers of unauthorised printers getting
hold of his works. The other, too, was a work which he may have been
instrumental in producing, as secretary to the queen and a regular writer on
behalf of royal policies: La chronique de Gennes, an anonymous account of the
king's conquest of Genoa. As this includes the royal ordonnance issued at Genoa
and dated 10 May 1507, it was almost an official publication, as well as being
undisguised propaganda for the king. There could be no question at that
moment of seeking a privilege from the royal chancery. Indeed the chancery
had not then granted any book-privileges except the one obtained nearly ten
years before for Johannes Trechsel (CH 1498, i) and possibly the personal
privilege obtained by Antoine Verard which seems to have been granted
before the beginning of 1508 (CH 1507, i). So, perhaps in consultation with
La Vigne, Eustace de Brie went to the Parlement with a requete. And he duly
received a privilege, for one year, dated 17 June 1507, given jointly by the
Parlement and the king's procureur general in the Parlement, the terms of which
he summarised in the colophon of both books (PA 1507, i).
The Parlement was creating a precedent, and it was significant that it
issued its first book-privilege in association with the procureur du rot. It was
granting a favour of a new kind, of a kind which it might be thought only the
king himself could grant. And the favour was for books of which the content
closely concerned the king. Since the fourteenth century the Parlement had
been asserting its status as the king's supreme court to do justice in his name
and to preserve the royal prerogative against any encroachment. It was
therefore the established practice of the Parlement to consult the procureur du
roi in any case brought before it which might directly or indirectly, practically
or theoretically, affect the interests of the Crown, before the court proceeded
to adjudicate on a petition requiring the approval of the Parlement. If the
Parlement judged in the petitioner's favour, he could then obtain from it, on
payment, lettres royaux or an arret, which represented the formal dispensation of
royal justice. Consultation with the procureur du roi thus naturally followed the
first petition for a book-privilege. Small as the grant of a short-term monopoly
for two small books might seem, it could not be allowed to serve as a precedent
without the most careful consideration. The procedure of issuing the privilege
Noir's edition, dated 21 May 1504 (BN vh 61 Res.), shows signs of a change of plan after Les
regnars traversans and it does not include Le vergier de honneur.
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