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The Golden Compasses (1969-1972)

The Golden Compasses

(1969-1972)–Leon Voet–rechtenstatus Auteursrechtelijk beschermd

The History of the House of Plantin-Moretus


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Chapter 3
Jan I Moretus (1589-1610)1.

‘Au nom de Dieu l'an 1589, le premier de Juillet estant nostre Père trespassé à qui Dieu face mercy, j'ay compté la casse et trouvé en icelle les espèces suivantes...’ With these words Jan Moretus opened the cash-book for the year 1589/90.2. On 23rd June 1589 he had paid out a sum of money from the petty cash for housekeeping expenses, entering it in the usual manner ‘to my father’. The next payment, on 8th July, was entered ‘to my mother’. Smoothly and without interruption the management of the Antwerp Officina Plantiniana had passed from Christophe Plantin to his son-in-law. Having stood by Plantin for thirty-two years (1557-89), that is to say for almost the whole of his career as a printer, the loyal assistant had become head of the firm. He was to direct it for another twenty-one years, until his death in 1610.

A number of legal difficulties had to be resolved, however, before Moretus could call the officina his own. Officially Jeanne Rivière had inherited the concern, and was therefore its head. A deed was drawn up and attested notarially on 16th September 1589 whereby she authorized her son-in-law to continue as manager of the officina,3. although for a time after July 1589 its publications carried the name of the widow: ‘Ex Officina Plantiniana apud Viduam.’

From 1590 until Jeanne's death in 1596 another style was adopted: ‘Ex Officina Plantiniana apud Viduam et Joannem Moretum.’ Even this was a mere legal fiction which bore no relation to the real state of affairs, except in so far as Jeanne Rivière continued to live on the premises in the Vrijdagmarkt until her death. Only then - in 1596 - did Moretus leave his bookshop in the Kammenstraat and set up house in the main officina.

The agreement reached on 16th March 1590 by Plantin's heirs had ensured Moretus's possession and immediate use of the press.1. Jeanne Rivière had transferred all her rights in the matter to her son-in-law, who thereafter had to answer for all subsequent losses - and reap the profits. It was at that time that the stipulation was made (perhaps on the insistence of the other heirs) that the widow's name should continue to appear on works published by the officina. After 1596, however, Moretus retained only his name: ‘Ex Officina Plantiniana apud Joannem Moretum.’

The personality of Jan Moretus has already been outlined.2. It has been seen that he was a practical man who had grown up in the trade and knew all its tricks. He was also an educated person who spoke and wrote Dutch, French, German, Italian, and Spanish with ease, and also knew Greek and Latin. As he entered Plantin's service at the age of fourteen, it may be assumed that, like Plantin himself, much of his intellectual development was due to his own efforts. He was not a scholar like his brother-in-law Frans Raphelengius, but, again like Plantin, he could mingle on equal terms with the greatest humanists of his day.

He certainly showed himself capable of far more than just keeping the accounts and writing business letters. He prepared the first Dutch translation of the famous treatise by Justus Lipsius, De Constantia libri duo: Twee boecken vande Stantvasticheyt. Eerst int Latijn gheschreven door J. Lipsius; Ende nu overgheset inde Nederlantsche taele door J. Mourentorf, published by Plantin in 1584. The particular and exacting Justus Lipsius was wholly satisfied with this translation, which also earned the warm commendations of some of the foremost practitioners of the Dutch language of that time: Dirk Coornhert, Jan van Hout, and Janus Gruterus. Their praise has been fully endorsed by modem specialists. Another extensive translation which he undertook, this time from French, the ‘first day’ of the Première Semaine

de la Création du Monde by Guillaume Saluste, seigneur of Bartas, remained in manuscript.1.

Dutch was Moretus's mother-tongue and his use of this language in his translations was remarkably pure. However, as his French-speaking father-in-law's assistant he kept the books in French. This he continued to do even after Plantin's death; the habit of years was too deeply ingrained to be easily changed. Even his letters to the Leiden branch of the family continued after 1589 to be written in French. Jan Moretus and Frans Raphelengius corresponded exclusively in French, and while the younger Frans and his brother Joost wrote to Moretus's sons in Dutch (or Latin), they always used French to their uncle.2.

In the Plantin literature Jan Moretus enjoys the reputation of being an industrious worker, a loyal son-in-law, and an obliging and worthy man, yet his performance as master of the Gulden Passer is usually judged rather unfavourably. To sum up the usual criticisms, he is described as having been an executor without much originality during Plantin's lifetime, remaining just this after he had taken over the management; as having been content to live on an established name and fortune; as having lacked the great vision of Plantin. This assessment has been prompted in part by the fact that after Plantin's death Moretus's life was passed in relative tranquillity, without the ups and downs, perils and alarms which have given his father-in-law's career its almost epic glamour. There is always a tendency to imagine that someone whose life is uneventful must be a person without much force or energy, forgetting that events are often determined by factors outside the volition of the individual concerned.

Antwerp was near the front-line, but it lay at a safe distance from the guns. Its fame and glory had been dimmed, but life there could proceed in comparative peace. The incidents which mark Moretus's career as a printer in his own right are not therefore particularly spectacular. In 1592 he had, as has already been mentioned, a dispute with his brother-in-law Egidius Beys, but this difference was soon settled.3.

In 1598, at the time of the marriage of his eldest daughter Catharina to Theodoor Galle, the son of his old friend Philip Galle, he had to face a malicious whispering campaign. The Galle family had probably compromised itself with the Protestants during the Calvinist government of Antwerp. Their offence cannot have been very grave, for Philip was not disposed to the reformed religion, but belonged like Plantin and Moretus to the Barrefeltist sect. Whatever may have been the truth of the matter, this marriage of Theodoor Galle and Catharina Moretus started rumours circulating concerning the orthodoxy of Jan Moretus's religion. This gossip was made all the more unpleasant by the fact that his business was largely based on the publication of Catholic religious and liturgical works. It is quite possible that these rumours had been put about by envious competitors. Moretus reacted quickly to the danger: he laid the matter before the church authorities and the city magistrates, and received from the latter a mandate assuring him of the support of the law against the slanderers.1. This counter-move must have been effective as no more was ever heard of this campaign.

In 1605 Jan Moretus was involved in another conflict which, though less dangerous than the heresy rumours, provided him with an abundance of worry and made considerable demands on his diplomacy. With the permission of the author, Cardinal Caesar Baronius, he reprinted the famous Annales ecclesiastici volume by volume as it was published in Rome. This monumental work was a great success and sold well, but in his discourse entitled ‘De monarchia Siciliae’, contained in the eleventh volume, the cardinal ventured to question certain rights of the Spanish crown to the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies and claimed those rights for the Holy See. The scholar was right: the Spanish claims were based on false or falsified documents. This, however, did not please Philip III of Spain, who had the offending text publicly burnt throughout his domains and, after the death of Clement VIII in 1605, vetoed the election of Baronius as Pope.

Cardinal Baronius was not unduly disturbed by this royal displeasure, but when the less happy and much more vulnerable Moretus diffidently sounded the prelate's feelings about the possible omission of the ‘De monarchia Siciliae’ from the Antwerp edition of the Annales, the latter flew into a rage and demanded that the piece should be included. Moretus, living in an area

which, though nominally independent was in fact in the Spanish sphere of influence, had no desire to incur Philip's wrath. Baronius, however, was adamant. The affair dragged on for years, until the cardinal's death on 30th June 1607 restored to Moretus his freedom of action. Volume XI appeared in 1608, without the offending passage.1. The following year, however, the discourse in question was published separately under the title of Tractatus de monarchia Siciliae in Paris, beyond the reach of the Spanish king, being printed and distributed by Moretus's relative, Adrien Beys. Whether this was purely a coincidence or the result of action by Jan Moretus, who wished to salve his conscience in this manner, must remain a matter for conjecture.

Although these incidents gave the Antwerp printer his necessary dose of trouble, they are in no way comparable to the dramatic perils which Plantin had to face.

To a much greater extent the less favourable assessment of Plantin's son-in-law has been occasioned by the fact that during his management the firm's production decreased noticeably in quantity and declined palpably in quality. Perhaps it would be more accurate to say that it became culturally less significant, for at the purely technical and artistic levels Moretus's regime brought about no deterioration.

Plantin's fame as a printer rests in no small degree on the impressive number of scholarly works that came off his presses. In books which assess what the second half of the sixteenth century produced in terms of scholarship and culture, there is honourable mention of Plantin editions on practically every page. Not that there was any lack of liturgical and religious works among Plantin's books; it has already been emphasized that the mass production of breviaries, missals and horae in the years 1567 to 1576 was one of the principal factors in the spectacular growth of the Officina Plantiniana into what was the largest printing concern in the world before the nineteenth century. Trade figures for these religious works must have greatly exceeded those for learned subjects, but the quantity and importance of Plantin's editions of the latter remains impressive.

Under Jan Moretus there was a drastic change. Liturgical and devotional

works came to form the greater part of the firm's book list, works of scholarship dropping to a very small percentage of the total production. Moretus never gave up publishing the latter altogether. He produced a number of excellent books which found their way to the libraries of scholars throughout Christendom: Baronius's Annales ecclesiastici, and the Annales Magistratuum et Provinciarum by Stephanus Winandus Pighius (started in 1609, and completed by Moretus's sons) are important works of scholarship, and from the technical point of view excellent specimens of the printer's art. Other examples which may be quoted and commended are: the various editions of botanical treatises by Dodoens, Clusius and Lobelius; the Thesaurus geographicus (1596) and new editions of the Theatrum Orbis Terrarum by Abraham Ortelius; the revised third edition of Kiliaan's dictionary of the Dutch language, the famous Etymologicum Teutonicae linguae (1599); the standard legal work edited by J. Hopperus, Seduardus sive de vera jurisprudentia... libri XII (1590); the Flandria commentariorum lib. IIII descripta (1596) by J. Marchantius; the Antverpia and the Origines Antverpiensium (1610) by C. Scribanius. After the return of Justus Lipsius to the Southern Netherlands in 1592, Moretus became his principal publisher. Not a year went by without his bringing out a first edition or republication of one or other of this great and productive scholar's works, or publishing pieces in his honour or defence. Nevertheless the fact remains that the mighty flood of former years had diminished to a trickle. Apart from the books of Lipsius and Pighius, humanist works and editions of classical authors had almost disappeared from the list of the ‘Officina Plantiniana apud Joannem Moretum’.

It was the liturgical and devotional publications which sustained the Gulden Passer in the time of Jan Moretus, He made typographical masterpieces of them, illustrating many of them profusely, if not excessively. Engravers of the Antwerp school, which was flourishing as never before in this period of the Wiericx brothers and the Galle family, found in Jan Moretus one of their chief employers. The illustrated breviaries, missals, and devotional books of the Officina Plantiniana spread the fame of the Antwerp engravers throughout the entire Catholic world, even becoming a source of inspiration for painters and draughtsmen of religious subjects in Latin America and China. The two editions of the Officium Beatae Mariae of 1600 and 1609

may be regarded as the most beautiful works produced by the Antwerp officina, and the Graduale Romanum of 1599 can compete with Plantin's most massive publications. All three rank with the finest illustrated books of their time.

These liturgical and devotional books which Moretus produced were masterpieces from the typographical and artistic point of view, but their importance lay only in their form, not in their content. This implies that, in comparison with Plantin's day, the Officina Plantiniana was playing a less significant part in the intellectual life of the time.

It has already been pointed out that the Leiden officina, although its business was small compared to that of the mother house in Antwerp, in fact adhered more closely to the Plantinian tradition. The younger Frans Raphelengius aptly described this divergence between the two branches when he wrote to his uncle on 17th November 1590:1. ‘As for the sorts, I feel that as we are (almost) equal inheritors, thus we must share these things among us, for to plead that the privileges be of Antwerp or Leiden, Breviaries, Missals, Books of Hours, Diurnalia, Conciones, Bibles etc. are these not nice privileges for Antwerp? As for us we content ourselves with Authors of fine literature.’2.

It is this deviation from die Plantinian line that has earned Jan Moretus most reproach from the historians, beginning with Max Rooses. But could Christophe Plantin's successor have acted differently? The different orientation of the Antwerp and Leiden officina corresponded to a cultural divergence between the Northern and Southern Netherlands.3. In the second half of the sixteenth century there was intense intellectual activity in the South. Plantin became humanism's great printer because of the large number of scholars in his vicinity whose works he was able to print. Those involved in this intellectual life were mainly laymen. The revolt against the rule of Philip II made the North a Protestant republic, where the laity continued to play a dominant role in cultural life, retaining its ‘worldly’

interest in nature and man. In the seventeenth century the North became the principal heir to the Netherlands' traditions of scholarship.

The South, brought back under Spanish rule, was developed within a few years into a bastion of Catholicism by the forces of the Counter-Reformation. This meant that in the Southern Netherlands, thoroughly Catholic again, the best intellects were absorbed into the clergy. Among these priestly or monastic intellectuals there were many great minds. They did not renounce the natural and social sciences and they maintained their contact with classical antiquity, attempting to reconcile its philosophy and view of life with their own Christian vision. Some of them won great and deserved fame in these branches of human knowledge. But for the intellectuals in the Catholic South the first consideration was always man's relationship to God and to the Catholic church. Their interest and their activities were directed especially towards theological reflection. What they entrusted to the printers were chiefly theological discourses and devotional writings for the masses.

Plantin became a great humanist printer because the environment in which he lived and worked was suffused with the humanist spirit - in the sense of an intense interest in nature and in man. His successors in Leiden were able to continue in this tradition because their environment remained true to this spirit. Jan Moretus was obliged to turn aside from this tradition, because the society in which he lived and worked had taken a different cultural direction. Plantin's son-in-law became of necessity the printer of the Counter-Reformation, with its emphasis on religious speculation, which after 1585 enlisted the intelligentsia of the Southern Netherlands under its banners.

A printing-press is not a philanthropic undertaking, able to work for what it considers useful and proper, but a business which has to take serious account of its market. In the circumstances in which Moretus found himself, no other course was open to him than the one he took. Even Plantin would have had no choice. In fact, in the author's opinion, it was Plantin who showed his successor the way he should go. If the publications of the Officina Plantiniana are considered chronologically then it becomes obvious that they began to bear the stamp of the Counter-Reformation immediately after Plantin's return from Leiden in 1585, and were already showing the characteristics of the later Moretus productions. The change in the type of books produced by the Plantin press did not take place in 1589 when Moretus

took over, but in 1585 in the last years of Plantin's life. It must be ascribed to circumstances, not to any defect in the character of Plantin's son-in-law.

There is another important factor that is generally overlooked when passing judgment on Moretus as master of the Gulden Passer. He inherited a very large concern, but one which had dwindled to a mere semblance of what it had once been. At the time of Plantin's death there were only four presses in operation, and the staff which had numbered 56 in the prosperous years of 1574 to 1576 had been cut down to sixteen (seven printers, seven compositors, two proof-readers). ‘D'Anvers en nostre jadis florissante et ores flaitrissante imprimerie’ lamented Plantin in the letters he wrote during the closing years of his life.1. Jan Moretus inherited a much reduced business and at die same time found himself obliged to pay out considerable sums of money to his fellow heirs, money which he had to borrow at crippling rates of interest from moneylenders. This was a handicap that greatly reduced his freedom of action for many years.

To all outward appearances the life of Jan Moretus may have gone on peacefully enough after Plantin's death, but his accounts show that he had to wage a hard and bitter struggle to ensure the viability of the press. He in his turn strove with ‘Toil and Steadfastness’, gratefully using the weapons which Plantin had forged. He managed to keep the influential contacts his father-in-law had made. He made good use of diem to obtain his appointment as printer to the city of Antwerp on the same terms as Plantin, and most of all to have Plantin's numerous privileges for the printing of liturgical works in the Southern Netherlands transferred to his own name - a first prerequisite for becoming the great printer of the Counter-Reformation.2.

His business activities remained, like Plantin's, wide-ranging and international. In this, the Gulden Passer's new master was helped by circumstances: the fighting had died down in the Netherlands and the civil war in France had ended, which made it possible to operate in the Dutch and French markets once more and to reach Germany via the Frankfurt Fairs. Contact with Spain, all but broken off during Plantin's last years because of difficulties in communications, was restored. The so-called Salamanca branch played

no part in the modest resumption of trade. In 1602 Jan Poelman's account showed a deficit of 2,737 fl. 5 st., which Moretus had to write off as a loss:1. the unfortunate Poelman had not been able to secure a livelihood for himself in the Spanish university town. Last but by no means least, in his two sons, Bathasar and Jan II, Moretus had two competent assistants who served him as loyally and ably as he and Frans Raphelengius had served Plantin.

Under Jan Moretus the tempo of work in the officina was gradually increased again. Four presses were in operation in 1590, five in 1593, five-and-a-half in 1597, six in 1604, seven in 1607. The number fell to six in the later half of 1607, but in 1610, the year of Jan Moretus's death, it was raised again to seven.

The Officina Plantiniana was perhaps no longer the largest concern of its kind in Christendom, but it ranked among the giants once more, and had certainly regained its position as the largest printing business in the Southern Netherlands. Moretus proved himself worthy of his father-in-law. In brilliant fashion he came through the worst crisis that threatened the Antwerp officina in all its three centuries, the same crisis that had embittered Plantin's last years, and was able to ensure its continued existence. Jan Moretus was a self-effacing, quiet figure, yet as master of the Gulden Passer he showed himself fully equal to a difficult task in a difficult period.

Jan Moretus died on 22nd September 1610 and was buried in Antwerp Cathedral beside his parents-in-law. His family gave him a splendid memorial, a triptych - the Resurrection of Christ, with Joannes and Martina, patron saints of the deceased and his wife on the side panels - painted by Rubens. Sumptuously framed by Otmaer van Ommen, it cost a princely 2,000 fl. The frame was destroyed during the French occupation of the Napoleonic period, but the painting itself can still be admired in its accustomed place in the cathedral.2.

Jan Moretus and Martina Plantin had eleven children, six sons and five daughters, but of these only three sons and two daughters survived their



illustratie
(46) Opposite: New Year's wish from Jan I Moretus to Christophe Plantin (1573). In this panegyric to Ratio Jan Moretus explains to his father-in-law why he chose the Moorish King (rex morus = Moretus) guided by the Star of Reason as his personal symbol. The document is headed by a small copper engraving showing the ‘Rex, Morus’.




illustratie
(47) Jan I Moretus (1543-1610). Oil painting on panel by Rubens, commissioned by Balthasar I Moretus between 1613 and 1616.




illustratie
(48) Martina Plantin, Jan I Moretus's wife (1550-1616). Oil painting on panel by Rubens, commissioned by Balthasar I Moretus between 1630 and 1636.




illustratie
(49) Central panel of the triptych over Jan I Moretus's tomb. Oil painting by Rubens, who signed a receipt for his fee on 27th April 1612. The panel represents the Resurrection.


parents. Moretus, seeking some emblem which, after the fashion of his time, contained an allusion to his name, finally thought of the ‘rex Morus’,1. the popular Latin title for Balthasar, one of the three Magi who went to Bethlehem to pay homage to the Christ Child. He extended this conceit to include the names of the other two kings, naming his three eldest sons Gaspar, Melchior and Balthasar. In the album in which the happy father recorded the births of his children,2. he noted next to Balthasar's name: ‘... and that he may be able with his other two brothers to seek to do honour and glory to Him after the example of the Three Kings and that they may always be able to live in unity and humility, in the fear of the Lord God and of their earthly parents. Amen.’3. This devotion to the Three Kings continued and made their three names very popular in the family throughout the whole of the seventeenth century; however, by a strange coincidence, it was always a Balthasar who took charge of the Plantin press in that century.

The eldest son, Gaspar, born in 1571, died on 1st September 1583 at Leiden ‘allé pour voir s'il pourroit se refaire d'une maladie qu'il avoit eu de secheresse’. The second son, Melchior, studied at the universities of Douai and Louvain, was ordained as a priest in 1598, but in October of that year he became mentally deranged. For a time he was cared for in a monastery in Antwerp, afterwards staying with Deacon Wrechtens at Courtrai. In 1600 he returned to Antwerp and was looked after by another order. Later he also stayed at Sint Odenrode. Melchior Moretus died on 4th June 1634, ‘multo felicius et sanctius quam vixit’ (much happier and holier than he had lived) as his brother Balthasar wrote to Jan Woverius.4.

It was Jan Moretus's third and fourth sons, Balthasar and Jan II, who worked loyally with their father in the firm, carrying it on together after his death.


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