Kirchhoff quotes a document dated 1346, the wording of which is in the form of a contract between Wouters Vos and Jan Standard, described as manuscript-dealers, “parties of the first part,” and a group of citizens, “parties of the second part.” The contract has to do with the transfer of certain books as security for a loan. The list of the books includes copies of the Codex of Justinian, some essays on taxes, polities, and rhetoric, a work by Albertus, a treatise by Ægidius, the Physics of Aristotle, a commentary of Averrhoes, etc. These two dealers of Bruges seem to have had an important collection of literature for so early a period. The manuscript-trade in the Netherlands was more important both in character and in extent than that carried on in Germany, and it had also a larger influence upon the general education of the people than the book-trade of the time in either France or Italy. In France and in Italy, the earlier book-trade was, as we have noted, connected principally with the work of the universities. In the Low Countries, on the other hand, particularly in such centres as Ghent, Antwerp, and Bruges, there came into existence, during the first half of the fifteenth century, an active and intelligently conducted business in the production of books both of a scholarly and of a popular character, the sale of which was made very largely among the citizens, outside of the university circles. One reason why the trade in books found a larger development in Belgium than in Germany, was the greater wealth of the trading class in the Low Countries. With the wealth, came cultivation and a taste for luxuries, and among luxuries soon came to be included art and literature. As early as 1424, there was instituted a guild of publishers, _librariers gild_, in Ghent, and a year or two later one in Brussels. These guilds came into relations in 1450 with the St. Lucas Guild in Antwerp.