Reference has already been made to the prices paid during the Middle Ages for more or less famous manuscripts. The difficulty with the prices of which we have record is that they vary so considerably for goods of apparently about the same description, a variation doubtless depending upon the special conditions of the sale, the wealth or eagerness of the purchaser, etc. In 1054, for instance, a _Book of the Mass_ was sold by the monk named Ulrich (the sale being made with the consent of the Abbot) in exchange for a great vineyard covering the slope of a large hill, the exact dimensions of which are not given. In 1057, a nun named Diemude, of the convent of Wessobrunn, exchanged a Bible, which she had written with her own hand, for a farm on Peissenburg. Without, however, the exact description of any particular manuscript, a description which should specify the nature of the work put into it, the illuminations, the designs, the covers, etc., it is, of course, very difficult to compare one transaction with another. Kapp speaks of a good copy of the _Corpus Juris_ as being valued in 1350 at 1000 gold gulden.[396] He quotes a purchase made by a certain Prahel, in 1427, of a copy of _Livy_ for 120 gold gulden, and the sale of a _Plutarch_ in 1470 (twenty years after Gutenberg’s press began to work) for no less than 800 gold gulden. Jan Van Enkhuisen, of Zwolle, received in 1460 for an illuminated Bible 500 gold gulden, and for a Bible with a plain text (_einfach geschrieben_) 100 crowns. In 1345, Etienne de Conty paid for a handsomely adorned copy of the _Commentaries_ of Henry Bohic, 62 livres and 11 sous, a sum which Kapp calculates to be the equivalent of 825 francs in the money of the present day. For the production of this work, there were paid to the scribes 31 livres and 5 sous, for the parchment 18 livres and 18 sous, for six initials in gold, 1 livre and 10 sous, for other illuminations 3 livres and 6 sous, for the hire of the manuscript (paid to the university _bidellus_), 4 livres, and for binding the volume, 1 livre 12 sous. The Countess of Anjou paid, in 1460, for a copy of the _Homilies_ of Haimon, Bishop of Halberstadt, two hundred sheep, five measures of wheat, and five measures of barley. In 1474, Louis XI. of France, pledged as security for the safe return of a manuscript containing a treatise by the Arabic physician Rhases, which he had borrowed from the medical Faculty of the University of Paris, his silver plate, while a nobleman also stood security for the King in the transaction. In 1392, the Countess of Blois, wife of the Baron of Castellane, left in her will, as a bequest to her daughter, a manuscript on parchment of the _Corpus Juris_. It was made a condition of the bequest that the daughter should marry a jurist, in order that this valuable treasure could come into the right hands.