Untitled - Monoskop

ACADEMIC AND ECCLESIASTICAL
Evreux missal, Jean Petit and Louis Bouvet sought a privilege
from the
Parlement of Rouen for the antiphoners of Rouen diocese, 'never before
having been printed'. Their request was opposed before the Parlement by a
l
Rouen bookseller called Pierre Lignant. Petit and Bouvet claimed that they
had been asked to publish the antiphoners 'par plusieurs gens d'eglise', and
the Parlement sought the advice of Messire Guillaume Dyeul, Tun des
chappelains de 1'Eglise N.D. de Rouen, scavant et expert en tel cas', as well
as that of the 'gens du roy', before finding in favour of Petit and Bouvet.
These are the only references in the case to ecclesiastical authority (PA 1527,
3).
Such later instances as have come to light again illustrate the principle
that an episcopal privilege for the service-books of a diocese, when granted at
all, was regarded by publishers as insufficient when unsupported by a lay
authority. The cardinal archbishop of Lyon, in 1542, gave a privilege for five
years for a new Liber Sacerdotalis, issued on his authority, a very handsome
book with much music. But the publisher also obtained royal Letters Patent,
which conferred a privilege for two years. 2
The revised synodal Constitutiones of the archdiocese of Bordeaux were
printed at Bordeaux by Jean Guyart in 1524 'cum priuilegio' (CP 1524, i),
without any particulars of the privilege being given. It may have been
granted by the Parlement of Bordeaux. On the other hand it may have been
given by the archbishop, who was Jean de Foix, a great personage, son of
Jean, count of Candale and of Catherine, daughter of Gaston IV, count of
Foix, and who was archbishop from 1501 until his death in i52g. 3 A privilege
given by him would have covered the whole ecclesiastical province of Deuxieme
Aquitaine, which extended far beyond the jurisdiction of the Par-
lement of Bordeaux as far north as Poitiers. The Ordinationes synodales of the
diocese of Orleans on the other hand were undoubtedly published under a
privilege given by the Parlement of Paris (PA 1525, 6).
A bishop might be regarded as entitled to issue a privilege for the style of
his own court, by analogy with lay courts which had authorised and protected
a particular edition of their style. The first case when this principle was
and it concerned the Statuto-
undoubtedly asserted did not come until 1534,
rum liber of the episcopal court of the diocese of Albi. Here the bishop is stated
to have revised the text, and a legal document signed by the archdeacon, as
the bishop's vicar general, and the apostolic protonotarius, granted the exclus-
ive right to print and sell the book within the diocese for three years to Jean
1 See also below, pp. 197-8.
a Liber sacerdotalis (Lyon, Joannes Grototus for Corneille de Sept-granges, 1542), 4. BM Lyon
:i
Res. 31 1452 and 316981. Summaries of both privileges on verso of title-page, printed on a strip
of paper pasted in.
Gallic. Christiana, Vol. n (1720), pp. 846-47, which does not however mention ordinances
published in his name for clergy of his archdiocese.
57