There were at this time no less than sixty-six printing establishments in the Low Countries, of which thirteen were at Antwerp, some of the latter rivalling the best printers of Paris, Basel and Venice in the beauty of their productions. Plantin’s first book was issued the year of his accident, in 1555, and was entitled “La Institutione di una fanciulla nata nobilmente.” During the next seven years his presses turned out a limited number of works, but in 1562 his office was raided by order of the Regent, Margaret, the Duchess of Parma, and three of his workmen seized and condemned to the galleys for a heretical book they had printed unknown to him, entitled “Briefve instruction pour prier.” Plantin fled to France, and to avoid confiscation he had some of his friends, acting as creditors, sell and buy in his printing plant. The following year—having convinced the Government of his orthodoxy—he returned to Antwerp and organised a company consisting of himself and four partners, including some of his pretended creditors. While this arrangement lasted, from 1563 to 1567, more than two hundred books were printed, and forty workmen kept constantly employed. His work was already considered notable for the beauty of its type and excellence of the paper used.
Soon after the partnership was dissolved Plantin undertook what was destined to be the greatest work of his career, and one of the most notable in the history of printing, the famous Biblia Regia. This was an edition of the Bible in four ancient languages, Latin, Hebrew, Greek and Chaldean. The Hebrew type was purchased from a Venetian printer, while the last two were cast expressly for this book. His friend Çayas interested Philip II in the project and that monarch sent the great scholar Arias Montanus from Alcala to supervise the work. At the suggestion of Cardinal Granville, Syriac was added to the other texts, so that, including French, there were six languages in all. The first volume of this “Polyglot Bible,” as it came to be called, appeared in 1569 and the eighth and last in 1573. The work proved to be exceedingly costly, and to help meet the expense the King of Spain advanced 21,200 florins, and granted Plantin a monopoly for its sale throughout the Spanish dominions for the period of twenty years. A similar monopoly was granted by the Pope, the Emperor, the King of France and the Republic of Venice. In spite of all this, the book brought its printer no profits, but kept him in debt for the rest of his life. Pensions promised by Philip II to himself and his son-in-law, Raphelingen, were never paid.
Between the editor of the great Bible and its printer a strong friendship sprang up. “This man,” wrote Arias on one occasion, “is all mind and no matter. He neither eats, drinks, nor sleeps.” And again, “Never did I know so capable and so kindhearted a man. Every day I find something fresh to admire in him, but what I admire the most is his humble patience towards envious colleagues, whom he insists on wishing well, though he might do them much harm.”
Besides the Biblia Regia Plantin, now at the height of his fame, managed to turn out a vast quantity of printed matter. High in royal favour by reason of this worthy work, he had no difficulty in obtaining for himself and his heirs a profitable monopoly for printing and selling missals and breviaries throughout Spain’s wide dominions. While the largest printers at Paris rarely employed more than six presses, Plantin kept twenty-two constantly at work, had agents at Paris and Leyden, and sent a member of his family every year to attend the fairs at Leipzig and Frankfort. In 1575 his office is said to have had seventy-three kinds of type, weighing over seventeen tons.
In 1570 he was appointed by Philip to the newly created office of Prototypographer in the Netherlands. Masters and men in the printing trade had to apply to him for certificates as to their fitness, while he was also required to draw up a list of forbidden books. In this, curiously enough, one of the earlier products of his own press found a place—a rhyming version of the Psalms in French by Clement Marot. This office does not seem to have paid much salary, if any, or to have given its first possessor anything but a lot of worry.
The Plantin Press was located at various places about the city until 1576, when it was established on the rue Haute near the Porte de St. Jean. Three years later Plantin purchased from the owner of this property the premises occupied by the present museum and extending from the rue Haute through to the Friday Market, with a large gateway opening into the latter. Plantin had been only eight months in this new location when the Spanish Fury broke out. He was away on a journey himself, but his son-in-law, Moretus, had to pay a heavy fine to save the printing-office from pillage. The next few years were full of trouble and anxiety. For a time Plantin had to leave Antwerp, going to Leyden, where he met Justus Lipsius and was made printer to the University. During the great siege of Antwerp he fled, with many other Catholics, to Cologne, where he thought for a time of establishing his chief printing-office. After the siege he hurried home, but a short time later his health began to fail.
COURTYARD OF THE PLANTIN MUSEUM, ANTWERP.
It was in the house on the Friday Market that the dying printer gathered his family about him. His only son had died in infancy, but his five daughters had all lived to be married, three of them to men associated with him in the printing office. The eldest, Margaret, married Francis Raphelingen, the chief proof-reader and an able linguist; while the second, Martina, married Jean Moretus, the father of a long line, of which the eldest sons bore the same name so that they came to be distinguished by numbers, the first being Jean Moretus I—like a line of kings. This son-in-law was Plantin’s business manager. The third daughter aided the mother, who ran a linen business in the frugal way that many Flemish housewives have of helping their husbands. A fourth, Magdalen, when only a child, corrected proofs on the Biblia Regia in five languages, and later married her father’s Paris agent. The fifth married a brother of Jean Moretus I, who became a diamond-cutter.
Plantin had from a very early date adopted the motto “Labori et Constantia,” together with the emblem of a hand holding a pair of open compasses, which may be seen over the Friday Market gateway to the museum. This emblem, with the motto entwining it in the form of a scroll, or appearing above, below or across it in a hundred variations, is the mark by which connoisseurs can distinguish the products of the Plantin Press. It must have been constantly in the mind of the great printer himself, for on his deathbed he composed the following French couplet, which expresses and describes his own character better than any epitaph could do: