three generations and several servants, there are also occasional indications that brothers
may have held manses in common for some periods. Frequently, even in the classic
Carolingian villa, manses are found that may have been large enough to support three or
four families; however, some of those families may also have had rights in other manses.
In the later period, in addition to the manses in compact villages, there were additional
isolated manses located in the interstices between villages; these owed no services to a
lord on his reserve but were held as allods by free peasants.
Constance H.Berman
MANSION, COLARD
(ca. 1425-after 1484). Copyist of manuscripts and bookseller in Bruges. Mansion is first
mentioned as a supplier of books to Duke Philip the Good of Burgundy and Louis de
Gruuthuse, bibliophile and host to Edward IV during his exile from England. In 1471–73,
Mansion was dean of the Guild of St. John, a corporation of booksellers in Bruges, of
which he was also a founding member.
Circumstantial evidence strongly suggests that Mansion and William Caxton were for
several years partners in a printing press. No other printers of their day were also
translators, providing their texts with original prologues and epilogues. There are some
technical similarities in their imprints, and they translated and printed some of the same
texts.
Mansion’s printing of the French version of Boccaccio’s De casibus virorum
illustrium (1476) was illustrated with nine handsome copperplate engravings, the earliest
in any book. His imprint of the Ovide moralisé (1484) was apparently a financial failure,
which caused him to give up printing.
Charity Cannon Willard
[See also: LEFÈVRE, RAOUL]
Michel, H. L’imprimeur Colard Mansion et le Boccace de la Bibliothèque d’Amiens. Paris: Société
Française de Bibliographie, 1925.
Painter, George D. William Caxton. London: Chatto and Windus, 1976.
Sheppard, Leslie A. “A New Light on Caxton and Colard Mansion.” Signature, n.s. 15 (1952):25–
39.
MANTES
. The collegial church of Notre-Dame at Mantes (Yvelines) was founded by the
Montmorency family. The present church was begun with the west façade ca. 1165. The
plan was dramatically revised 1175–80, when the wall of the second story was reduced
by more than half its thickness as a consequence of the incorporation of the flying
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