Untitled - Monoskop

PRIVILEGE-GRANTING AUTHORITIES IN FRANCE
privilege was printed in full in the books concerned. Clement Longis obtained
an order from the Lieutenant General of the Prcvot, Ruze, for two years, for La
vie et les miracles de Saint Eusice, on 19 September 1516 (PR 1516, i), and from
then onwards a privilege was issued by the Prevot or one of his officials every
month or two for most of the period, though never as frequently as by the
Parlement. The system continued for at least twenty-five years after 1526. A
late example is the four-year privilege dated 3 October 1550 and signed P.
and Gilles Corrozet for the second and
Seguier, granted to Arnoul L'Angelier
enlarged edition of Joachim Du Bellay's L'Olive. 1
The practice of the Prevot differed little from that of the Parlement. The
terms of years asked for in the requete were sometimes not granted in full,
suggesting that here also serious consideration was given to the duration of the
privilege. Privileges were most commonly given for one, two or three years,
exceptionally for four (e.g. PR 1521, 2). Usually the same penalties were
specified as those favoured by the Parlement: confiscation of unauthorised
copies, and a fine. Theprocureur du roi in the Prevot's court at the Chatelet was
consulted if the proposed publication seemed to concern the interests of the
Crown ('Ouy sur ce les gens du roy', PR 1516, i; 'Et ouys sur ce les gens du
roy', PR 1521,4).
It may be supposed that the Prevote, as an alternative to the Parlement,
offered to certain authors and publishers in Paris a facility of which they
availed themselves for personal reasons: that they had other business to
transact at the Prevote, that they knew the Prevot, the Lieutenant or one of the
clerks who might expedite the granting of their application, or that the fees
were not quite so high. It was resorted to from an early date, but until 1515
exclusively for ephemeral publications. From 1516 to 1526 there was a
marked expansion in the number and importance of the book-privileges
obtained from it.
It can hardly be coincidence that these years correspond to the period when
the Prevot was Gabriel, baron d'Allegre, seigneur de Saint-Just, conseiller et
chambellan du roi. Some active interest on his part in the grant of book-
privileges is indeed suggested by the fact that he personally signed ten of the
privileges issued by the Prevote during his term of office, 2 of those which are
known in sufficient detail to give the name of the signatory (the others are
signed either by his Lieutenant Louis Ruze, by the greffier Almaury or by one
of the clerks J. de Calais, J. Corbie and I. Lormier). Allegre, as well as his
Lieutenant Ruze who signed the privilege, is thanked by the publisher
Toussaint Denys in some Latin verses in the Compendium parisiensis universitatis
1
Reprinted in Du Bellay, CEuvres poetiques, ed. H. Chamard, STFM (1908), Vol. i, p. 3.
2 PR 1516, 5; 1517, 2; 1518, i; 1518, 2; 1518, 3; 1519, i; 1520, 3; 1520, 12; 1525, 2; 1526, i. Under
his successor Jean de La Barre, comte d'Etampes, the first book-privileges issued by the Prevote
were signed Moifait; La Barre himself signed the grant of 1 1 March 1530 to Nicole Volcyr de
Serouville for La chronicque abregee printed by Nicolas Couteau for Didier Maheu (BL
9315.333.7.)
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