It seems probable that the old-time ecclesiastical associations of the art (which was still known as “clerical”) may have caused the authorities having charge of the church buildings to look with special favour upon these later scribes, so that they were able to secure for their trade facilities and accommodations which would not have been afforded to workers or dealers in other occupations. There is a reference, in 1408, in one of the Strasburg chronicles to a scribe named Peter von Haselo, who sells books on the steps of the cathedral of Our Lady.[394] In Cologne the manuscript-dealers took possession of various corners or angles of the cathedral for their shops or booths. In Münster the space immediately in front of the cathedral was allotted to them. In a number of the larger cities the scribes dealt not only in the productions of their own pens, but in such ancient manuscripts as they had been able to collect, these coming for the most part from Italy. It was from this branch of their business that the booksellers came to be known quite frequently as _antiquarii_. While there gradually grew up throughout Germany an active trade in manuscripts, the record shows an earlier development of this trade in Italy and France, and even in England. Reference has already been made to the activity as a book collector of Richard de Bury, who in the first half of the fourteenth century secured through travelling dealers manuscripts which had been brought from France and from Italy. De Bury speaks of these dealers as taking commissions for the delivery of the manuscripts at such interval of months as would be required for the long journeys from Oxford to Paris and back, or from Oxford to Florence or Venice. It appears, however, that towards the middle of the fifteenth century, when the work of town scribes in Germany had once begun and the character of their productions came to be known to the common people, the circulation of books among the people was more extensive in amount and more wide-reaching in the territory and the classes of buyers concerned than was the case in any other state of Europe. In 1439, some dealers from the Siebengebirge brought from Basel to Hermannstadt certain political controversies and tracts. Some of the latter treated of the work of the Council of Basel, and came, therefore, under the censorship of the Church, and their circulation in Hermannstadt was forbidden.[395] Between 1440 and 1450, the records of the annual fairs of Nordlingen include repeated references to dealings in manuscripts.