What It Cost to Borrow a Book in Medieval Paris
A fourteenth-century price list for hiring manuscripts from the University's booksellers
A curious historical footnote on the earliest regulated book-lending trade in Paris, when scholars paid the University's set rates to borrow manuscripts they could not afford to buy.
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Burlington Weekly Free Press · February 25, 1876 · Page 1
1 min readWhen the trade in books began first to flourish in Paris, early in the fourteenth century, the previous volumes slowly accumulated in numbers sufficient to supply the needs of scholars, and laws were made compelling booksellers to hire their books to students who could not buy or otherwise procure the use of them. The rates of charges were established by the University.
A Bible Concordance, 9 sous; A Bible Concordance of Concordances, 20 sous.
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