It was, therefore, not permitted to the libraire to bring discredit upon his profession by also engaging in any “sordid pursuits” (viles occupations), and in so doing he rendered himself liable to being deposed from his high post (declaré déchu de son noble office). He could, however, unite with his work as libraire that of a notary, or that of a royal counsellor or practitioner in the higher court (avocat du roi au Parlement).

Notwithstanding the personal prestige and the substantial advantages which were thus enjoyed by the book-dealers of the university, there were from time to time instances of protest, amounting occasionally to insubordination, on the part of the libraires, who, as their business aims and possibilities developed, became restive under the long series of trammels and restrictions, and particularly in connection with those imposed by the ecclesiastical division of the university authorities. The dread, however, of losing any portion of their privileges, and particularly the risk of any impairment of their monopoly of the book-trade of the university and of Paris, operated always as a sufficient consideration to prevent the insubordination from going to extremes. Throughout the entire period of the Middle Ages the control of the university continued, therefore, practically absolute over the book-trade of Paris, the influence of the Church and the (more or less spasmodic) authority of the Crown being exercised by means of the university machinery.

This state of affairs continued for some period of years after the introduction of printing. The university still insisted upon its responsibility for the correctness and the completeness of the texts issued from the Paris press, although it gave up of necessity the routine of examining individual copies of the printed editions. On the other hand, the censorship control on the part of the theological Faculty over the moral character and orthodoxy of the works printed was insisted upon more strenuously than ever as the Church began to recognise the enormous importance of the influence upon public opinion of the widely distributed printed volumes. The effect of this ecclesiastical control upon the business of printing books is set forth with some detail in the chapter on the early printers of Paris. It is sufficient to say here that the contention on the part of the university to control, as a portion of the work of higher education, the business of the makers and sellers of books, while sharply attacked and materially undermined after the middle of the seventeenth century, was not formally abandoned until the beginning of the eighteenth. At this time the Crown took over to itself all authority to regulate the press, an authority which disappeared only with the revolution of 1789.

For six centuries the book-trade of Paris and of France, whether it consisted in the production of manuscripts for the exclusive use of members of the university, or of printed books for the enlightenment of the general public, had been obliged to do its work under the hampering and burdensome regulations and restrictions of a varying series of authorities. The rectors of the university, the theologians of the Sorbonne, the lawyers of the Parliament of Paris, the chancellors of the Crown, the kings themselves, had all taken a hand, sometimes in turn, not infrequently in conflict with each other, in the task of “regulating” the trade in books. The burden of the restrictions was, in pretence at least, offset by various privileges and exemptions, but they remained burdens notwithstanding. It may well be a cause of surprise that in the face of such a long series of hampering difficulties, difficulties more serious than those with which any publishers in the world, outside of Rome, had to contend, the manuscript publishers and the later printer-publishers of Paris should have been able to do so much to make Paris a literary and a publishing centre. As has been already indicated, it was certainly the case that during the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries Paris shared with Florence the position of being the centre of the manuscript trade of Europe. It was also the case, as will be set forth in a later chapter, that the first printer-publishers of Paris did most noteworthy work in furthering the development of scholarly publishing and the production of scholarly books. It required, however, the revolution of 1789 to establish the principle that the business of producing and distributing books could secure its legitimate development only when freed from censorship restrictions and regulations, and that it was a business the control of which belonged properly not to the university, the Courts of Parliament, or the Crown, but to the people themselves.

Considering the scarcity and the costliness of books in the Middle Ages, it is somewhat surprising that the work of instruction rested so directly upon books, that is, depended upon the mastery of a text. Thurot says: “It is the distinctive character of instruction in the Middle Ages that the science was not taught directly and in itself, but by the explanation of books which derived their authority solely from their writers.”[299] Roger Bacon formulates it: “When one knows the text, one knows all that concerns the science which is the object of the text.”[300] Instead of taking a course of logic or of ethics, says Compayré, the phrase was reading a book on logic or ethics, legere or audire librum. This close adherence to the text secured, of course, an assured demand in the university towns first for the hired pecias and later for the purchased manuscripts.

The foundation of the College of the Sorbonne dates from 1257. It was organised by Robert de Sorbon, chaplain to Louis IX. The college was at once affiliated with the University of Paris, of which it became the theological Faculty, and in the general direction of which it exercised at times a controlling influence. The college is connected with my subject on the ground of its assumption of the theological censorship of the Paris book-trade and of its frequent attempts to exercise a general censorship over all the productions of the Paris printing-press.

As we shall note later in the history of the Paris book-trade, various complications arose between the publishers and booksellers possessing a university license (the libraires jurés) and certain unlicensed dealers who undertook to come into competition with them. The locality occupied by these unlicensed booksellers was on the Island of the Cité, immediately by the precincts of Notre Dame. In fact it was the case with the book-trade generally north of the Alps that its business was very largely carried on in the portals of a church if not under the immediate shadow of the cathedral.

While in Italy the Church furthered but slightly the early production of books and, later, did not a little to hamper the undertakings of the publishers, it was the case in France and quite largely also in South Germany, that the publishers found themselves very largely dependent upon the scholarly interests and the scholarly co-operation of the clerics, and the association of the Church with the book-trade was, for a large proportion at least of the fifteenth century, an important one.

In Paris, the booksellers licensed by the university were all in the Latin Quarter, and in the same region were to be found the sellers of parchment, the illuminators, the scribes, binders, etc., who also carried university licenses and were under university supervision. It is probable that the specification in the Tax Roll of 1292 of eight librarii in Paris refers only to the booksellers licensed by the university and carrying on their business in the Latin Quarter.

In Bayeux, in 1250, certain clerics were exempted from taxation if they dealt in parchment or if they were engaged in the copying of manuscripts, and the book-shops along the walls of the cathedral were also exempt from taxation. It is not clear to me in looking up this record, whether the tax mentioned was a town tax or a general tax, or whether it was one of the ecclesiastical levies.[301]

Roger Bacon’s reference to the scribes of Paris has already been mentioned. He could not secure from the Brothers of his Order a transcript of his work which he desired to present to Pope Clement, because they were too ignorant to write the same out intelligently, while he was afraid to confide the work to the public scribes of France lest they might make improper use of the material.[302] It is Wattenbach’s opinion that the wrongful use of his production dreaded by Bacon was the sale of unauthorised copies of it by the scribes to whom the preparation of the authorised copies should be confided.

In 1292, Wenzel, King of Bohemia, presented to the monastery of Königsaal, 200 marks in silver for the purchase of books, and the purchases were made from the book-sellers in Paris. Richard de Bury extols Paris as the great centre of the book-trade. Of the value of the book collections in Rome and the possibility there of securing literary treasures, he had already spoken, but the treasures of Paris appear to have impressed him still more keenly. There he found occasion to open his purse freely and took in exchange for base gold, books of inestimable value. Joh. Gerson, in his treatise De Laude Scriptorum expresses the dread lest the persistent carrying away from Florence of his books by wealthy visitors may not too seriously diminish its literary treasures.

The Paris publishers appear to have sent out travelling salesmen or representatives to take orders for their wares. As early as 1480, a publisher named Guillaume Tousé, of Paris, made complaint to the chancellor of Brittany to the effect that he had entrusted a commission to a certain Guillaume de l’Espine to carry books into Lower Brittany and to make sale of the same during a period of six months. He had taken with him books to the value of five hundred livres and was to have a salary of ten crowns for the six months’ work. He had, however, failed to return or to make report of his commission. Tousé secured a judgment against his delinquent traveller, but the record does not show whether he ever succeeded in getting hold of him again.[303]

In the universities of Oxford and of Cambridge, the stationarii began their work some years later than in Paris or Bologna. They had the advantage, however, of freedom from the greater portion of the restrictions and special supervision which hampered the work of the scribes in the Italian and French universities, and as a result their business developed more promptly and more actively, and in the course of a few years, they became the booksellers of the university towns. It was, of course, from this university term stationarii that the name of stationers came at the outset to be applied to the organised book-dealers of Great Britain. The Guild of the British book-dealers completed its organisation in 1403, nearly sixty years before the introduction into England of the printing-press.[304]

The art work put into the manuscripts produced in the Low Countries, particularly in Belgium, was more highly developed and was a more important part of the industry than was the case in any other portion of the world.

In the earlier German universities, the stationarii also found place and found work, but this work seems to have been of less importance and the scribes appear to have secured for themselves a less definite university recognition than in Italy or in France. The explanation given by Wattenbach is that the German students, being better informed and more industrious, did for themselves a larger portion of the transcribing required and were, therefore, freed from the necessity of hiring their hefts.

The statutes of the universities of Prague and of Vienna permitted the masters and the baccalaureates to secure from the university archives, under certain pledges, the loan of the books authorised as text-books or of works of reference, for the purpose of making trustworthy copies of the same. The copyists were enjoined as follows:

Fideliter et correcte, tractim et distincte, assignando paragraphos, capitales literas, virgulas et puncta, prout sententia requirit.[305] The practice also obtained in these universities of having texts dictated to the students by the magisters or the Bachelors of Arts. This was described as librum pronuntiare, and also as ad pennam dare.

In this phrase, Karoch sent word to Erfurt that ad pennam dabit his treatise Arenga.[306]

The text-books utilised in the German universities in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries were as limited in range and in number as those of Bologna and of Padua. The instruction in the medical departments of Prague and Vienna was based in the main on the works of Hippocrates and Galen, with some of the later commentaries, principally from Arabian writers. In philosophy the chief authority was Aristotle, in mathematics Euclid, and in astronomy Ptolemy. A few works of later date were utilised, such as the Summula of Petrus Hispanus and the De Sphæra Mundi of Johannes de Sacro Bosco. Bosco is otherwise known as John Holywood or Halifax. He held the chair of mathematics in the University of Paris about the middle of the thirteenth century. The use of his treatise for classes in Prague is evidence of a certain interchange between the universities of books in manuscript.

An important reason for the very large membership of the universities of the Middle Ages as compared with their successors of to-day, is to be found in the fact that they undertook to supply not only the higher education which belongs to the present university curriculum, but also the training now furnished by the gymnasia or High Schools, which were at that time not in existence. We find, therefore, in their membership, thousands of students who were little more than boys either in their years or in their mental development.

The universities also, on the other hand, attracted to their membership very many students of mature age, who came sometimes for special purposes, but more frequently because it was only in the university towns that circles of scholars could be found, that books were available, and that any large measure of intellectual activity was to be experienced. As Savigny puts it: “The universities were, during the Middle Ages, practically the only places where men could study or could exercise their minds with any degree of freedom.” It was inevitable therefore, that, with the generations succeeding the discovery of printing, there should be a decrease in the influence and in the relative importance for the community of the universities. With the establishment of secondary schools, the training of the boys was cared for to better purpose elsewhere; and with the increasing circulation of printed books, it became possible for men to come into relations with literature in other places than in the lecture room. The universities were no longer the sole depositories of learning or the sole sources of intellectual activity. This lessening of the influence of the universities represented, or was at least coincident with, a wider development of intellectual activity and of interest in literature on the part of the masses of the people. The universities alone would never have been in a position so to direct the thought of the community as to render the masses of citizens competent to arrive at conclusions for themselves and sufficiently assured in such conclusions to be prepared to make them the basis of action. This was, of course, partly because, notwithstanding the large membership and the fact that this membership represented nearly all the classes in the community, the universities could at best come into direct relations but with a small proportion of the people. A more important cause for such lack of intellectual leadership is to be found in the fact that the standard of thought and of instruction in the universities concerned itself very little with the intellectual life or issues of the immediate time. As Biot puts it (speaking, to be sure, of a later century): “The universities were several centuries in arrears with all that concerned the sciences and the arts. Peripatetics, when all the world had renounced with Descartes the philosophy of Aristotle, they became Cartesians when the rest were Newtonians. That is the way with learned bodies which do not make discoveries.”

It was the dissemination of literature through the new art of printing rather than the diffusion of education through the university lecture rooms, which brought to the masses of the people the consciousness of mental existence and of individual responsibility for arriving at sound conclusions. Prior to the printing-press, this responsibility had been left by the people with their “spiritual advisers,” who were charged with the duty of doing the thinking for their flocks. It was this change in the mental status of the people which was the precursor (although at a considerable space of years) of the Reformation.

With the beginning in Germany of the movement known as Humanism, the representatives of the new thought of the time were not to be found in the university circles, and had not received their inspiration from the lecture rooms. Says Paulsen: “The entire traditional conduct of the universities, and in particular of the instruction in arts and theology, was rejected with the utmost scorn by the new culture through its representatives, the poets and orators, to whom form and substance alike of this teaching seemed the most outrageous barbarism, which they never wearied of denouncing.” In the Epistolæ Obscurorum Virorum, which were issued about 1516 from the band of youthful poets gathered about Mutianus at Erfurt, the hatred and detestation felt by the Humanists for the ancient university system raised to itself a lasting monument.

Within a few years from the publication of the Epistolæ, the influence of the Humanists had so far extended itself as to have effected a large modification in the systems of study in all the larger universities. “The old ecclesiastical Latin was replaced by classical Latin; Roman authors, particularly the poets, were made the subject of lectures, and the old translations of Aristotelian texts were driven out by new translations on principles advocated by the Humanists. Greek was taken up in the Faculty of arts and courses in the language and literature were established in all universities.”[307]

An immediate result of these changes and extensions was an active demand for printed texts. The Humanistic movement, itself in a measure the result of the printing-press, was a most important fact in providing business for the German printers during the earlier years of the sixteenth century. The strifes and contentions of the Reformation checked the development in the universities of the studies connected with the intellectual movement of the Renaissance and lessened the demand for the literature of these studies. The active-minded were absorbed in theological controversies, and those who could not understand the questions at issue could still shout the shibboleths of the leaders. As Erasmus put it, rather bitterly, ubi regnat Lutheranismus, ibi interitus litterarum. The literature of the Reformation, however, itself did much to make good for the printing-presses the lessened demand for the classics, while a few years later, the organisation of the Protestant schools and universities aroused intellectual activities in new regions, and created fresh requirements for printed books. Within half a century, in fact, of the Diet of Worms, the centre of the book-absorbing population of Germany had been transferred from the Catholic states of the south to the Protestant territories of the north, and the literary preponderance of the latter has continued to increase during the succeeding generations.