Kirchhoff is of opinion that, prior to the middle of the thirteenth century, the book-trade connected with the university, while it had already assumed considerable proportions, had not been brought thoroughly under university control. With this control came also as an effect, the privileges which attached to the dealers as members of the university body, and there is no evidence that the booksellers enjoyed these privileges before 1250. Depping takes the ground, that during the fifteenth century the sale of books in Paris was not sufficient to constitute a business in itself, and that all dealers in books had some other occupation or means of support, and interested themselves in the sale of manuscripts only as an additional occupation.[359] It appears hardly likely, however, that manuscript-dealers should be able to secure immunity from the general tax, which fell upon nearly all other classes of dealers, on the ground of the importance of their trade for education, unless they were able to show that they were actively engaged in such trade. The regulation quoted by Depping specifies among the free citizens of the city of Paris who were not liable to the King’s tax,--_libraires parcheminiers_, _enlumineurs_, _escriipveins_. It was evidently the intention of the framers of the law to include under the exemption all dealers upon whose trade the preparation and sale of manuscripts was directly dependent. Under this heading were included, of necessity, the scribes, the illuminators (who added to the text of the scribes the artistic decorations and initial letters), and (most important of the three) the dealers in parchment. The fact that the booksellers are named in this schedule separately from the scribes is an indication of the existence of a bookselling trade of sufficient importance to call for the work of capitalists employing in the preparation of their manuscripts the services of the scribes and of the other workmen required. Work of this kind can properly be classified as publishing. The dealer was himself prohibited from making purchase of a manuscript left in his hands until this had been offered for sale during the term of not less than one month. Record was to be kept of the name of the purchaser and of the price received. The requirement that the price obtained for a manuscript should be recorded, has secured the preservation, on a number of manuscripts of the time, of a convenient record of their market value. In a collection of sermons dating from the latter part of the fifteenth century, for instance, is the record, “This book was sold for 20 Parisian sols.” In a text of _Ovid_ of about the same time is noted simply the price,--6 sols, Parisian.[360]