Books and their makers during the Middle Ages

by George Haven Putnam

In 1399, appears on the records the name of Dyne, or Digne Rapond, a Lombard. Kirchhoff speaks of Rapond’s book business as being with him a side issue. Like Atticus, the publisher of Cicero, Rapond’s principal business interest was that of banking, in which the Lombards were at that time pre-eminent throughout Europe. In connection with his banking, however, he accepted orders from noble clients and particularly from the Duke of Burgundy, for all classes of articles of luxury, among which were included books.

In 1399, Rapond delivered to Philip of Burgundy, for the price of five hundred livres, a Livy illuminated with letters of gold and with images, and for six thousand francs a work entitled La Propriété de Choses. A document, bearing date 1397, states that Charles, King of France, is bound to Dyne Rapond, merchant of Paris, for the sum of 190 francs of gold, for certain pieces of tapestry, for certain shirts, and for four great volumes containing the chronicles of France. He is further bound in the sum of ninety-two francs for some more shirts, for a manuscript of Seneca, for the Chronicles of Charlemagne, for the Chronicles of Pepin, for the Chronicles of Godefroy de Bouillon, the latter for his dear elder son Charles, Dauphin. The King further purchases certain hats, handkerchiefs, and some more books, for which he instructs his treasurer in Paris to pay over to said Rapond the sum of ninety francs in full settlement of his account; the document is signed on behalf of the King by his secretary at his château of Vincennes.[376]

Jacques Rapond, merchant and citizen of Paris, probably a brother of Dyne, also seems to have done a profitable business with Philip of Burgundy, as he received from Philip, for a Bible in French, 9000 francs, and in the same year (1400), for a copy of The Golden Legend, 7500 francs.

Nicholas Flamel, scribe and librarius juratus, flourished at the beginning of the thirteenth century. He was shrewd enough, having made some little money at work as a bookseller and as a school manager, to carry on some successful speculations in house building, from which speculations he made money so rapidly that he was accused of dealings with the Evil One. One of the houses built by him in Rue Montmorency was still standing in 1853, an evidence of what a clever publisher might accomplish even in the infancy of the book business.

The list of booksellers between the years 1486-1490 includes the name of Jean Bonhomme, the name which has for many years been accepted as typical of the French bourgeois. This particular Bonhomme seems, however, to have been rather a distinctive man of his class. He calls himself “bookseller to the university,” and was a dealer both in manuscripts and in printed books. On a codex of a French translation of The City of God, by S. Augustine, is inscribed the record of the sale of the manuscript by Jean Bonhomme, bookseller to the University of Paris, who acknowledges having sold to the honoured and wise citizen, Jehan Cueillette, treasurer of M. de Beaujeu, this book containing The City of God, in two volumes, and Bonhomme guarantees to Cueillette the possession of said work against all. His imprint as a bookseller appears upon various printed books, including the Constitutiones Clementinæ, the Decreta Basiliensia, and the Manuale Confessorum of Joh. Nider.

Among the cities of France outside of Paris in which there is record of early manuscript-dealers, are Tours, Angers, Lille, Troyes, Rouen, Toulouse, and Montpellier. In Lille, in 1435, the principal bookseller was Jaquemart Puls, who was also a goldsmith, the latter being probably his principal business. In Toulouse, a bookseller of the name of S. Julien was in business as early as 1340. In Troyes, in the year 1500, Macé Panthoul was carrying on business as a bookseller and as a manufacturer of paper. In connection with his paper-trade, he came into relations with the book-dealers of Paris.

Manuscript Dealers in Germany.

—The information concerning the early book-dealers in Germany is more scanty, and on the whole less interesting, than that which is available for the history of bookselling in Italy or in France. There was less wealth among the German nobles during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, and fewer among the nobles who had means were interested in literary luxuries than was the case in either France, Burgundy, or Italy.

As has been noted in the preceding division of this chapter, the references to the more noteworthy of the manuscript-dealers in France occur almost entirely in connection with sales made by them to the members of the Royal Family, to the Dukes of Burgundy, or to other of the great nobles. The beautifully illuminated manuscript which carried the coat-of-arms or the crest of the noble for whom it was made, included also, as a rule, the inscription of the manuscript-dealer by whom the work of its preparation had been carried on or supervised, and through whom it had been sold to the noble purchaser. Of the manuscripts of this class, the record in Germany is very much smaller. Germany also did not share the advantages possessed by Italy, of close relations with the literature and the manuscript stores of the East, relations which proved such an important and continued source of inspiration for the intellectual life of the Italian scholars.

The influence of the revival of the knowledge of Greek literature came to Germany slowly through its relations with Italy, but in the knowledge of Greek learning and literature the German scholars were many years behind their Italian contemporaries, while the possession of Greek manuscripts in Germany was, before the middle of the fifteenth century, very exceptional indeed. The scholarship of the earlier German universities appears also to have been narrower in its range and more restricted in its cultivation than that which had been developed in Paris, in Bologna, or in Padua. The membership of the Universities of Prague and of Vienna, the two oldest in the German list, was evidently restricted almost entirely to Germans, Bohemians, Hungarians, etc., that is to say, to the races immediately controlled by the German Empire.