December 22, 2010

The privilege may be yours, but only with battle: Jan I Moretus and the Struggle for the Plantin Press (Antwerp, until 16 January, 2011)

Forget the snow, forget the glühwein at noisy Christmas markets. Museum Plantin-Moretus (MPM) at Antwerp awaits you for the final month of the exhibition Jan I Moretus and The Struggle for the Plantin Press (until January 16, 2011). According to museum director Iris Kockelbergh, the show, which marks the 400th anniversary of Moretus's death in 1610, so far has been quite succesful with the public.

The serene atmosphere in these historical premises, Christopher Plantin's former print shop, belies the quarrelsome content on display: a family of printers fighting over a will, a roster of competitors aspiring to obtain the Plantin-Moretus exclusive printing privileges.

The story that curator Dirk Imhof (Cambridge University - Munby Fellow) tells is that of a successor having to battle his way through, but who eventually, in the span of his own 20-year career, steers the family business with an able hand. And as with books, Museum Plantin-Moretus is able to illustrate some finer details of this story with its unique archive.

The first document to attract the visitor's eye is Plantin's will, drawn up in 1588. Not only stood Christopher Plantin (d. 1 July, 1589) at the helm of a large printing house that remained active from the mid 16th until the mid 19th century, he also had five daughters who all married future printers who in turn set up shop at Antwerp, Leiden and Paris. Jan I Moretus (pictured, courtesy of MPM) had been assisting his father-in-law at Antwerp.

Plantin's choice to bequeathe the printing business to his wife, and after her death, to Jan I Moretus, did not fall well with the other family members. Moretus first had to come to a financial settlement with the other daughters and sons-in-law, and a final agreement was not possible until after a few drafts, as seen on display.

The battle for printer privileges takes up most of the exhibition, and Dirk Imhof expanded on this theme during a short international symposium entitled The Letter of the Law: Regulation and Censorship of the Book Trade in Early Modern Europe, organized by MPM and Vlaamse Werkgroep Boekgeschiedenis on 20 December, 2010.

Together with the entire business, Jan I Moretus inherited every privilege that Plantin was ever granted by the authorities. A privilege secured a distribution and sales monopoly over each new title that a printer was able to produce.

As Imhof was able to see in the Plantin-Moretus archival material, Jan I Moretus's practices to secure privileges bordered the margins of legality. With one of the Antwerp authorities in this matter he was distantly related, and naturally, having the best of relations. Some civil servants even kept Moretus perfectly in the know about the 'schemes' of his colleagues to steal away some of his privileges.

In the Netherlands, the Plantin-Moretus house had long enjoyed an exclusive position in the very lucrative business of liturgical works and Bibles. As demand for these kinds of books remained very high, several printers in the Netherlands tried to get their share of the cake by petitioning for privileges or simply by printing unauthorized liturgical editions: often by copying Moretus in cheaper editions on lesser quality-paper.

As Imhof was also to show with examples, some of the problems with local or foreign editions were attributed to Jan I Moretus himself, who not always put much effort in securing a general privilege for new editions. Was this negligence? Overconfidence? Whenever foreign printers challenged Moretus with rival editions, he was forced to act and secure his business.

If you think family fended for family in this matter, think again. When Plantin's son-in-law Aegidius Beys in Paris sought to benefit from the same privileges as Jan I Moretus as coheir, he was shown the exact same cold shoulder as many non-family printers. Specifically Beys sought part of the business in liturgical works. Eventually the sons-in-law went to court before the Council of Brabant, and the matter was settled in favor of Moretus.

At the symposium on 20 December 2010, three other speakers presented cases. Angela Nuovo (University of Udine) showed that the privilege system in Venice in the 16th century developed from an anti-monopolistic system, one characterized by a fair chance for each printer to obtain privileges for a limited time for new works that they were able to produce, to a system that became more person-related that required printers to obtain favors from the papal authority at Rome. Rome in Italy was to become the second printing center largely due to the relocation of Venetian firms. Some Italian printers traded their privileges to third parties who gained access to the Italian market.

Natalia Maillard Alvarez (European University Institute, Florence) dwelled on Spanish booksellers' and printers' strategies versus the Inquisition in the 16th century that actually benefited the book trade. Often booksellers became familiares or collaborators of the Spanish Inquisition themselved, thus avoiding severe indictment for themselves and colleagues.

So far, as Maillard Alvarez points out, Spain still lacks a comprehensive study on book distribution, one that supersedes the cases of individual printer families. A very interesting study could be made of the connections between multi-lingual and often interconnected families such as Giunti, Portinari, Boyer and Bellerus and their commercial interests in both Spain and Portugal, the Americas and Europe.

And finally, Stijn Van Rossem (University of Antwerp) zoomed in on the Verdussen family of printers, active at Antwerp in the 17th century. As a printer family, it compares more or less to the Plantin-Moretus dynasty in success, in duration (a printing business of nearly 250 years), and definitely in rich extant archival material, which allows Van Rossem to show how these printers tried to negotiate the legal framework which made their business thrive.

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