The Golden Compasses

The History of the House of Plantin-Moretus

[p. 562]

Appendix 9
Additional Notes to Volume I

aant.(1) Pp. 9 sqq. Plantin's first years as a printer.

Eugénie Droz has dealt with the question of Plantin's first years as a printer in her ‘Christofle Plantin, imprimeur de Guy de Brès, 1555’, Het Boek, 37, 1965-6, pp. 57-72. She is of the opinion that Plantin can be credited with the publication of Le baston de la foy chrestienne, by the Lille Calvinist preacher Guy de Brès (executed at Valenciennes, 31st May 1567). The work was published without any indication of its printer, but with the words ‘A Lyon, anno 1555’ on the title-page. In conjunction with this theory she suggests that Plantin worked in Paris as a journeyman-printer for Jacques Bogard, or Bogaert, a Greek scholar and printer of Greek works who from 1543 to his death in 1548 was active in the house called Saint-Christophe in the Rue Saint-Jean de Latran. This establishment may have served as a secret ‘cell’ of the Family of Love. When Plantin left Paris for Antwerp after Bogard's death it would have been in answer to a call from Hendrik Niclaes, founder and prophet of the Family of Love, to go there and print for the sect. From 1548-49 at least, Plantin must have printed all kinds of heretical texts, only emerging openly as a printer in 1555. It was to provide himself with an alibi during these years that he described himself to the authorities as a bookbinder, but scarcely practised this craft at all. This in broad outline is Miss Droz's exegesis: it makes an interesting working hypothesis, and one capable of revolutionizing the traditional view of Plantin's early years, but it rests on a number of suppositions that prove hardly tenable on closer examination.

The matter of the Saint-Christophe has already been dealt with by Colin Clair in his book Christopher Plantin, 1960, pp. 6-7. Some scholars have assumed, on the basis of letters to Plantin from the Parisian bookseller, Martin le Jeune, headed ‘de votre maison’, that the owner of his residence - the Saint-Christophe - was Plantin; and also that the latter must have acquired it

[p. 563]

before departing for Antwerp. However, Mr. Clair shows quite convincingly that ‘de votre maison’ was simply a courtesy formula and that Le Jeune himself was the owner of the house: a fact that is not at all difficult to accept as he was a son-in-law of Bogard.

In their essay ‘La question des reliures de Plantin’, in Studia bibliographica in honorem Herman de la Fontaine Verwey, 1966, pp. 58-59, Georges Colin and Howard M. Nixon, in answer to Miss Droz's article, stress that Plantin did bind books, and in considerable quantity, and executed other work in leather in the years 1550 to 1555.

As to the attribution of Le baston de la foy chrestienne to the ‘clandestine’ printer Plantin, the starting point of Miss Droz's thesis, the arguments here are even less convincing. The types used in Le baston are advanced as evidence. But these types, which are apparently identical with those employed in Plantin's first book, La institutione... (1555), were in general currency in the Netherlands at that time. Miss Droz does, however, point to some less usual roman capitals and the symbol of an outstretched left hand that also appear in an edition of Johannes Leo Africanus, De Africae descriptione by Jan de Laet. But this book, despite what Miss Droz assumes, was not printed by Plantin. If any Antwerp printer has to be made responsible for the clandestine issuing of the Calvinist preacher's work, then Jan de Laet, or the printer or printers working for him, are more likely candidates.

aant.(2) Pp. 11 sqq. The bookbinder Plantin in Antwerp.

To the relevant bibliography should be added the very interesting and lavishly illustrated contribution by Colin and Nixon, ‘La question des reliures de Plantin’, Studia bibliographica in honorem Herman de la Fontaine Verwey, 1966, pp. 56-89.

aant.(3) Pp. 95-96. Plantin as printer to the States General.

The States General, after the defeat inflicted on them by the Spanish army at Gembloux (31st January 1578), fled Brussels in panic and sought refuge in Antwerp, which was less under threat, and were established there from 5th February 1578. This more than any other consideration explains why in April of that year Plantin respectfully asked the States General if he might be their printer - and why they promptly accepted his proposal. In other words, Plantin's appointment as printer to the States General was determined by that body's presence in Antwerp.