Untitled - Monoskop

PRIVILEGE-GRANTING AUTHORITIES IN FRANCE
Richard, bookseller of Albi, who had it printed at Toulouse. 1
Little wonder
that Jean Richard thought this privilege adequate, without resort to chancery
or Parlement: the bishop of Albi had been, since 1528, no less a person than
Antoine Du Prat, the chancellor of France. Already in 1529, the style of the
archiepiscopal court of Bourges had been published with 'Cum priuilegio' on
the title-page, and the arms of the archbishop, Frangois de Tournon,
prominently displayed, the book to be sold at the Sign of the Lily in Bourges. 2
Tournon was a powerful person, and it is just possible that he may not only
have authorised the publication but granted the privilege, within his juris-
diction.
The word 'privilege' itself could be used by an ecclesiastical authority
almost as the equivalent of an imprimatur. Thus Denis Roce published in
1511 a 'golden treasury' of poetry, the Aerarium aureum poetarum, by Jacobus
Gaudensis, O.P., edited by Guillaume Cheron of the College of Montaigu in
Paris University, which prints an 'Epistola cum priuilegio' on the verso of the
title-page. This proves to be a letter to the author by Henricus Zelen, the
Official of the diocese of Cologne, commending the work and incorporating a
licence to publish it (1511, 4. Maz. 18822).
As regards privileges granted by universities, there are two instances of a
privilege given by the University of Paris, one additional to a normal
privilege, one standing alone.
In 1512 Josse Badius published a book, 'Cum priuilegio' printed on the
title-page, which gave on the last printed page, after the colophon, the
following statement:
Cautumque est et districte prohibitum auctoritate regia et dictae uniuersitatis ne quis
praesumat praesentem libellum denuo imprimere sub poena arbitraria. (italics mine)
The book in question was the treatise Auctoritas papae et concilii ofThomas de
Vio, Cardinal Cajetanus, published the previous year in Rome by Marcello
Silber, and sent from the second synod of Pisa to the University of Paris to be
examined ('A sacrosancta generali synodo Pisana secunda ad almam uniuer-
sitatem parisiensem missus'). That the University of Paris was indeed
involved in the publication of the book by Badius is clear from the argument
which broke out on the subject between the university and its Faculty of
Theology in 1516, after the conclusion of the Concordat between Francis I
and the Pope: the faculty then wished Badius to hand over all copies of the
book, for a fee of 20 ecus, until a new refutation of it had been published, while
the university wished him to sell them. 3 It is an isolated case of the university's
1
Spiritualis curia Albiensis statutorum liber, Albi (Jean Richard] [1534], 4. Desbarreaux-Bernard
(le dr.), Establissement de rimprimerie dans la province de Languedoc (Toulouse, 1876), pp. 218-22.
2 Stilus ecclesiasticae iurisdictionis archiepiscopalis biturensis (1529), 8, printed for an unnamed
Bourges bookseller by Simon de Colines. Ph. Renouard, Bibliographie des editions de S. de Colines,
1520-1546(1894), pp. 143-4.
3 See P. Renouard, Imprimeurs parisiens, Vol. 11, no. 203 (p. 101).
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