Plantin-Moretus Museum

Christoffel Plantin (1520 - 1589) settled in Antwerp around 1549. At first he worked as a bookbinder, but in 1555 he set himself up as a printer founding his publishing house 'De Gulden Passer' (The Golden Compasses). In 1576 he moved his printing business to the Vrijdagmarkt square in a building that is now the oldest part of the Plantin-Moretus Museum

Plantin's ideological flexibility illustrates what a shrewd businessman he was. He printed works of humanists and Catholics, and published authors from the Reformation and the Counter-Reformation alike. In 1571 the strictly Catholic Spanish king Philip II granted the printer the exclusive right to print and sell all liturgical publications for Spain and its colonies. In 1578, on the other hand, Plantin became the official printer of the protestant Staten Generaal (States-General), which led the insurgence against Spanish rule.

Plantin's printing of the famous Biblia Polyglotta (Bible in five languages) was also dictated by his ideological pragmatism. He proposed the project himself, strongly urging Philip II to grant him the privilege to print the Polyglot Bible. This project was meant to underline his catholic beliefs and obscure his activities for the protestant cause.

Plantin's business instinct turned his company into a thriving enterprise. In six years' time the number of presses tripled from five to sixteen. By 1575 he was running a printing empire with seventy employees, whom he united in a kind of trade union, called the 'chapel'. This idea of a trade union with accompanying health service puts Plantin certainly far ahead of his time. The chapel's complaints book gives a vivid account of what went on in the early days of printing.

The Plantin residence was also an important centre of humanist learning. Justus Lipsius (1547 - 1606), with Erasmus one of the leading humanists in the Low Countries, entrusted Plantin with the publication of practically his entire oeuvre. Plantin printed a wide array of scientific publications, among which major works on geography (Theatrum Orbis Terrarum Theatrum Orbis Terrarum by Abraham Ortelius), the natural sciences (Kruydtboeck by Mathias Lobelius), anatomy (works by Andreas Vesalius and Joannes Valverde) and mathematics (De thiende by Simon Stevin).

After Plantin's death in 1589, humanist and scientific publications began to take up a far less important part of the printing firm's activities. His successors, the Moretuses, printed principally for the catholic Counter-Reformation.