Untitled - Monoskop

THE SOVEREIGN COURTS
bookselling. The Rouen Parlement does not, however, seem to have been
called upon frequently for book-privileges in the period up to 1526, and gave
them only for publications in which the court itself was actively concerned. Its
own Ordonnances contre lapeste and other regulations were published by Martin
Morin on 12 September 1513 with the following privilege printed on the
title-page:
1f Lesquelles ordonnances ont este baillees et commandees imprimer et vendre a
maistre Martin Morin demourant devant Saint Lo. le .xii. jour de septembre 1'an mil
cinq cens et traize. Et deffend ladicte court a tous autres imprimeurs et libraires eulx
ingerer imprimer ou faire imprimer lesdictes ordonnances ne d'en vendre ou acheter
que celles imprimees par ledict Morin. Le tout jusques au premier jour de mars
prochain venant. (PA 1513, 3)
In 1516 it granted a privilege to Jean Richard for an edition of its own 'stille et
ordre de proceder' (PA 1516, 3), to be published in partnership with Michel
Angier of Caen, as an appendage to Le grand coustumier de Normandie. This
exactly follows the pattern of the Paris Parlement privileges, the Extraict des
registres de Parlement being printed at the end of the Stille to which it refers, with
the authenticating signature of the greffier. A grant was also made in 1519 to
Thomas Du Four, for ordinances recently published by the Parlement
regulating within its jurisdiction the arrangements for controlling plague,
prostitution and vagrancy (PA 1519, 3).
The Parlement of Bordeaux is not known to have issued a book-privilege
until 1527. When it did, on 4 September that year, the subject of the privilege
was the Coutume of the city and province within its jurisdiction. 1 The city,
important as it was, did not at this period function as an active printing and
publishing centre like Toulouse or Rouen. Dr Gabriel de Tarregua preferred
to seek the protection of a privilege from the royal chancery for his medical
writings in 1520, even at the cost of a journey to the court, which was then at
Amboise (CH 1520, 10). He would have been in a strong position to obtain
one from the Parlement of Bordeaux had he applied to it: his treatise on the
treatment of plague had been printed at Bordeaux the previous year at public
and civic
2
request. Eighteen years later the Parlement of Bordeaux was
sufficiently confident of its privilege-giving powers within its own area to
grant a three-year privilege to Francois Morpain, a printer of the city, who
had it requested to forbid 'tous les imprimeurs libraires de ce Ressort de
imprimer ou faire imprimer ledit Tracte, a tous marchans de n'en vendre
d'autre impression dans troys ans, a peine de mil livres tournois': the book in
1 See below, pp. 198-9.
2
Tracte contre la . . . peste compose a la requeste de messigneurs les maire et soubsmaire etjuris de Bourdeaulx
(Bordeaux, Gaspard Philippe, 1519), 4. Cf. A. Claudin, Les origines et les debuts de I'imprimerie a
Bordeaux (1897), pp. 13-14.
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