Journée d’étude Le privilège de publier : entre norme, censure et commerce à l’époque moderne

Journée coorganisée par Leonardo Ariel Carrió Cataldi, Délia Branciard et Anne Béroujon dans le cadre de l’axe Savoirs.

Programme :

10h-12h, Atelier de travail collectif sur les privilèges d’impression et de de librairie

14h-15h, Marius Buning, Privileging Normativity: Printing Privileges and the Stabilisation of Knowledge in Early Modern Europe

15h15-16h, Hadrien Dami, Supervision of book production, censorship, and privileges in 17^th-century Geneva: commercial and reputational issues of an export activity.

16h Débat général

Résumés

Marius Buning

Privileging Normativity: Printing Privileges and the Stabilisation of Knowledge in Early Modern Europe

This paper examines how printing privileges contributed to the production and stabilisation of normative knowledge in early modern Europe. Focusing on religious, educational, and scientific texts, it analyses the legal frameworks governing publication and circulation, and shows how privileges functioned not only as economic protections but as instruments of authorisation and control. Particular attention is paid to intermediaries (such as booksellers, translators, and government officials) who navigated diverse regulatory and political landscapes. Through their negotiations and editorial decisions, texts were recast into privileged versions as they moved across jurisdictions, acquiring epistemic authority in the process. The paper thus highlights how privilege regimes shaped the authority of normative knowledge in the early modern Europe.

Hadrien Dami

Supervision of book production, censorship and privileges in 17^th-century Geneva: commercial and reputational issues of an export activity.

Since the mid-16^th century, two fundamental characteristics have distinguished Geneva as printing centre among Western European publishing cities in the Early-Modern era: book production was mainly intended for export, and this production was marked by an indelible religious reputation stemming from the city’s special status as the birthplace of Calvinist Reformation.

In the 17^th century, books published in Geneva, whether religious or not, were still intended for circulation in transnational book markets. The authorities’ control over publishing was partially dictated by commercial considerations. Geneva was an independent commercial republic, located at the crossroads of trade routes between French-, Italian- and German-speaking regions. The city was governed by a merchant oligarchy that was concerned with the economic interests of its subjects. However, a detailed examination of censorship cases throughout the century reveals that the main concern in controlling publishing activity was to preserve Geneva’s reputation. Censorship was therefore exercised more with the aim of managing and shaping the image of the city and its Church, as conveyed by the books produced in Geneva, than with the intention of controlling the texts, ideas and opinions accessible to the population.

In my talk, I will address the commercial and reputational issues underlying the regulation of publishing and the control exercised by the authorities. I will base my study on the analysis of the system for granting privileges and printing licences, and the application of censorship.