The term commonly given to the earlier German scribes was _clericus_, or _pfaffe_, and nearly every well-to-do nobleman or citizen had a _clericus_, or _pfaffe_, to take charge of his correspondence and his accounts. While the general use of this term indicates the ecclesiastical origin of the scribes and confirms the previous records to the effect that the first scribes undoubtedly were monks trained in the monasteries, it is of course by no means to be accepted as evidence that the art of writing continued, at least after the fourteenth century, to be limited to ecclesiastics. As has before been indicated, the monastery schools accepted very many pupils who had no intention of entering the Church, but who secured from their monkish teachers a knowledge of reading and writing. As early as 1403, mention is made of a certain Heilmannus, formerly a cleric of the diocese of Trier, licensed as a public scribe (_eyn offenbar schreiber_). At about the same time, Dr. Conrad Humery, of Mayence, is referred to in the chronicles as _pfaffe_, _jurist_, and _chancellor_ of the city. Ulrich Zell, who later became the first printer in Cologne, was accustomed to add to the imprint of his works the designation _clericus_ from Hanau in the diocese of Mayence. Notwithstanding the term _clericus_ and the reference to his diocese, Ulrich had never been an ecclesiastic.[393] The ecclesiastical divisions, parishes or dioceses, were utilised in those times, as political divisions are to-day, as the territorial designations that would be most readily understood. The trade in books in manuscript was developed from two great sources. For a certain special and restricted class of work, the trade came into existence and continued, as we have seen, for some centuries, in the Italian universities, in the University of Paris, and in two or three of the older German universities. Some little time later, the scribes found place among the hand-workers and dealers of the larger cities. Their work was at first carried on most actively in connection with cathedrals and churches, and, later, associated itself with the annual markets and fairs. In the trade centres, where the goldsmiths, designers, and illuminators found profitable occupation, the skilled writers (that is to say, those who were competent to prepare the elaborately ornamented manuscripts) soon found occupation, while the writers of common text came to be employed particularly, as mentioned, in the markets and fairs in connection with the records and correspondence required for business transactions. Throughout the first half of the fifteenth century the production of manuscripts, which, from the beauty of their script and the artistic finish of their illustrations and ornamentations, could be classed as works of art, became an important industry, an industry of which the centres in Germany and the Low Countries were Bruges, Ghent, Antwerp, Aix-la-Chapelle, Cologne, Strasburg, Augsburg, Ulm, and Vienna.