Commentary on:
Privilege granted to Valentim Fernandes (1503)

Back | Commentary info | Commentary
Printer friendly version
Creative Commons License
This work by www.copyrighthistory.org is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.

This privilege was attributed to Valentim Fernandes, a German printer who had been printing works prior to that concession, with some of the printed works being of great relevance.

When he first arrived in the Iberian Peninsula, Valentim Fernandes was employed as an interpreter by Jerônimo Münzer, a German physician from Nürnberg, who eventually became known as Jerônimo Monetário. It is said that through such endeavours Valentim Fernandes acquired social prestige and a good network of contacts, travelled around the Peninsula, spoke the language  fluently and eventually moved to Portugal.

In 1495, Valentim Fernandes and Nicolau de Saxónia jointly published a work entitled Vita Christi, authored by Ludolfo de Saxônia. This was tthe first book bearing illustrations to ever have been printed in Portugal and one of the most significant works ever published in Portuguese (see João José Alves Dias, O quinto centenário da Vita Christi, Os primeiros impressores alemães em Portugal, Lisbon, 1995, Presidência do Conselho de Ministros / Secretaria de Estado da Cultura / Instituto da Biblioteca Nacional e do Livro).

Valentim Fernandes also published a Royal Decree, entitled Votivale missarum secundum ritum Romane curiae on 10th April 1496 as well  as Estoria de muy nobre Vespesiano emperador de Roma on 20th April 1496 (see see João José Alves Dias, O quinto centenário da Vita Christi, Os primeiros impressores alemães em Portugal, Lisbon, 1995, Presidência do Conselho de Ministros / Secretaria de Estado da Cultura / Instituto da Biblioteca Nacional e do Livro).

Valentim Fernandes worked as a printer between 1495 e 1514, but only obtained his first privileges in 1502 and 1503, authorising him to print, respectively, The Travels of Marco Polo and and Regimento dos Juízes e Oficiais (containing rules regarding courts and other public entities), in addition to other privileges.

Early on privileges were awarded by means of a document bearing the signature of the monarch, which document was then divulged to the public. However, the first privilege, which as mentioned above was given to Valentim Fernandes in 1502, may not have been divulged to the public.

Later on, a trend emerged whereby the privilege itself was printed alongside the work, so as to provide immediate evidence of royal authorisation to print that work.

It should be noticed that in Portugal, as was the case in other European countries too, printing pioneers dealt with various aspects of printing and thus were awarded privileges that covered those activities.

From the viewpoint of the beneficiary, it should be pointed out that the printing privilege under examination was awarded to a printer, not an author, that is, to one who invested rather than to one who created.

The first authors to be awarded privileges, in Portugal, were Gonçalo de Baena and Balthasar Dias, respectively in 1536 and 1537.

Overall, the printer and bookmaker Valentim Fernandes, as many other German nationals in those days found a new homeland in another corner of Europe, was a pioneer in the field, became one of the major printers in Portual and was given various printing privileges, including the very first one recorded in Portuguese history.

Commentary by Victor Drummond & Translation by Patricia Akester


Our Partners


Copyright statement

You may copy and distribute the translations and commentaries in this resource, or parts of such translations and commentaries, in any medium, for non-commercial purposes as long as the authorship of the commentaries and translations is acknowledged, and you indicate the source as Bently & Kretschmer (eds), Primary Sources on Copyright (1450-1900) (www.copyrighthistory.org).

You may not publish these documents for any commercial purposes, including charging a fee for providing access to these documents via a network. This licence does not affect your statutory rights of fair dealing.

Although the original documents in this database are in the public domain, we are unable to grant you the right to reproduce or duplicate some of these documents in so far as the images or scans are protected by copyright or we have only been able to reproduce them here by giving contractual undertakings. For the status of any particular images, please consult the information relating to copyright in the bibliographic records.


Primary Sources on Copyright (1450-1900) is co-published by Faculty of Law, University of Cambridge, 10 West Road, Cambridge CB3 9DZ, UK and CREATe, School of Law, University of Glasgow, 10 The Square, Glasgow G12 8QQ, UK