Book Privileges in the Early Modern Age: From Trade Protection and Promotion to Content Regulation. Institutions and Strategies (15th-18th Centuries)

The system of book privileges was a crucial aspect of both book production and trade in the early modern age. Once introduced as an exception measure, book privileges soon began to provide a necessary infrastructure for the regulation of the book market at large, in Italy as well as in many parts of Europe. The system was initiated and took shape in the Republic of Venice, with the main goal of promoting the printing sector; however, it developed on a different trajectory in the papal state. The popes in fact soon learned to deal with books less as products of an industry and more as vehicles of texts and ideas with potentially dangerous content which needed to be regulated or censored from the start.