Untitled - Monoskop

THE SOVEREIGN COURTS
received its privilege from the Parlement of Toulouse, especially as the orator,
Marc de Rorgues, professor both of canon and civil law, a conseiller, was also
vicar general of the bishop of Cahors, and responding to the conferment of an
honorary degree in law from the University of Cahors.
In 1512 Jean de Clauso of Toulouse obtained a privilege from the Toulouse
Parlement for Les Ordonnances royaulx (PA 1512, 6). For these Ordonnances,
published on 27 April 1512, the Paris Parlement had given a privilege on 12
May 1512 to Jean Petit (PA 1512, 4), but the Toulouse Parlement, on
receiving them for registration, was perfectly entitled to give a separate
privilege within its own jurisdiction. It may be safely assumed also that De
Tholosanorum gestis, an almost official account of the history and institutions of
Toulouse, by Nicole Bertrand, published at Toulouse in 1515 'Cum gratia
amplissimoque Priuilegio' (PA 1515, 5), had a privilege from the Parlement
of Toulouse, of which Bertrand was a senior conseiller. The enlarged French
edition of Bertrand's work, Les gestes des Tholosains, which came out two years
later, indeed boasts a privilege from the Toulouse Parlement, displayed in full
(PA 1517, 3). Although Bertrand's book, in both the Latin and the French
version, might easily have qualified for a privilege from the Parlement of Paris
or for that matter from the royal chancery, it is understandable that his
publishers contented themselves with a privilege granted by the Parlement of
Toulouse. This, after all, meant that no bookseller could legally deal in any
other edition for the stipulated period within the Parlement's jurisdiction,
that is to say, the whole of Languedoc, including not only Toulouse itself but
towns as important as (for instance) Nimes. Was not this precisely the area in
which the book would necessarily be of the greatest interest? Would any
publisher outside this area, if he could not lawfully sell any of his edition here,
bother to reprint the book at all? So might the argument well have gone, and
the long and costly journey to the Parlement of Paris, or to seek out the royal
court and the chancery, had no longer to be contemplated.
Nor was it only works of mainly or purely Languedoc interest which
received privileges from the Parlement of Toulouse. That Parlement granted,
also in 1517, a privilege to a prominent Toulouse doctor, Etienne Chenu, for
his Regimen castitatis conseruatiuum, followed by an anti-semitic tract, Liber arboris
Judaice (PA 151 7, 5). The grant is printed in the book itself, as an 'Extraict des
registres de Parlement', certified by Michaelis, the Toulouse greffier, in exactly
the same way as grants by the Paris Parlement are reproduced in the books
concerned. More directly concerned with the work of the Parlement was Les
articles et confirmations des privileges du pais de Languedoc] as soon as this had been
approved and confirmed by the Parlement, Mathieu Du Monde of Toulouse
obtained a grant for it from two of the conseillers (PA 1522, 7). The following
year Antoine Le Blanc had a privilege for the coutume of Toulouse (PA 1523,
conseiller who it granted was careful to have the text checked first by the
2) . The
cappitols of the city. And when Le Blanc received his corrected copy back, with
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