“The reproduction of a work of scholarship (to which class belonged of necessity the text-books prescribed for the work of the university,)” remarks Delalain, “called for on the part of the scribe a considerable measure of scholarly knowledge and also for a detailed and careful supervision. It was held, therefore, by the university authorities that the responsibility properly belonged to them to supervise the series of operations by means of which these university texts were prepared and were circulated. It was essential that the completeness and the correctness of each copy should be verified, and that these copies should be confided to trustworthy persons for their sale or their hire, in order that there should be no risk of inaccuracies in the texts themselves or of any unnecessary enhancement of the cost to instructors or to students of their purchase or their hire. On this ground, the university of Paris asserted from the beginning of its history the right to control the book-trade of the city, a contention which was confirmed and maintained by all the kings of France after Philip Augustus.”[277] The “book-trade” was held to include all the dealers and artisans who were concerned with the production and distribution of manuscripts; that is, the copyists and their employers, the binders, the illuminators, the sellers of parchment, and, later, the manufacturers of paper. While the control of the university was exercised over the entire book-trade, the interest of the authorities was naturally much keener in regard to the divisions having to do with the production of books than in the work of the booksellers. The matter of chief importance, in fact, according to the accepted theory, the sole purpose for the existence of the book-trade, was to secure for the members of the university a sufficient supply, at a fixed and moderate charge, of correct and complete texts of the prescribed works; while it was also essential to protect those members from the contamination of heretical writings or of heretical comments on books of accepted orthodoxy. A regulation of December, 1316, prescribes that no _stationarius_ shall employ a copyist until such employee shall have been duly sworn before the university, or before the Rector and four _procureurs_, to execute his functions faithfully, and, having been accepted as a trustworthy scribe, shall have had his name inscribed on the official register.