Untitled - Monoskop

PRIVILEGE-GRANTING AUTHORITIES IN FRANCE
Determinatio supplied by the Faculty of Theology from its registers ('Ad
quorum exemplar de mandate nostro praesentes fuisse fideliter impressas
on the
testamur'). I have found no other example of a privilege issued solely
authority of Paris University. The object of it was certainly exceptional.
It might be expected that religious orders would authorise a particular
edition or publisher when printing liturgical or other books for the use of the
order, and discourage the circulation of others. In practice it seems that this
was rarely done, at least explicitly. An exception must however be recognised
in the case of the Carthusians. For many years
the order had laboured to
produce an edition of the works of its founder, St Bruno, and by 1524 this
project was completed. The veteran Paris university printer Josse Radius
Ascensius received the manuscript, sent to him by the Prior of the order,
Gulielmus Bibaucius or Bibaut, 1 from the Grande Chartreuse, and printed it
in a handsome folio volume in 1524, including a Life of St Bruno with
illustrations. On the title-page Badius placed the words 'sub gratia &
priuilegio post vitam explicandis', and indeed immediately after the Life of
the saint there appear two separate privileges, one (summarised in Latin,
following Badius' usual practice) granted by Louis Ruze the Lieutenant Civil of
the Prevot of Paris, for four years, the other granted by the Prior of the order.
The latter, perhaps also a summary of a longer document, reads:
Cauit etiam Reuerendissimus Carthusiae magnae prior ordinis pater generalis, ne dicto
quadrennio durante, quispiam Religiosorum suorum aliubi curet imprimenda, aut
impressa coemat, Sub solita Religiosis poena.
G. Prior Carthusiae
(PR 1524, 2)
Badius, usually very sparing in his allusions to privileges, gave equal weight to
both these. What advantages did he see in the second? It did not enable him,
as did that of the Lieutenant Civil, to sue in the French courts any competitor
who reprinted his edition, or sold within the kingdom of France copies of it
printed
abroad. But it was valid for all members of the Carthusian order
throughout Europe. And they must have been the most obvious customers for
the works of St Bruno. If they were forbidden by the Prior to reproduce or to
purchase any other edition for four years, a publisher in Venice or Basle or
Nuremberg might well decide against reprinting it until Badius' privilege had
expired. With this example in mind, we may surmise that the 'Cum priuilegio'
in Thielman Kerver's reprint of the Breuiarium Cartusiense in 1522 (CP 1522, 4)
may likewise reflect the official approbation of the order.
A book required by all members of a particular religious order was an item
of commercial interest in the book-trade. For one particular religious house to
have its own breviary printed was on the other hand a luxury. And the
1 There are traces of connection between Badius and Bibaut as early as 1498, when Bibaut was
Provincial of the order in Holland. A. Renaudet, Prereforme et humanisme . . . a Paris pendant Us
premieres guerres d'ltalie (1494-1517) (1916), p. 382, n. 8.
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