In 2009 Vlaamse Werkgroep Boekgeschiedenis inaugurated a lecture series on themes in book history, to be held four times annually on Wednesday's in the Erfgoedbibliotheek's Nottebohmzaal. The initiative has recently turned into the Miraeus Lectures, with additional support of the Vereniging van Antwerpse Bibliofielen (=Association of Antwerp Bibliophiles).
Other venues potentially are not ruled out for the Miraeus Lectures. The first lecture this Spring is held in the Plantin-Moretus Museum, on Wednesday 6 April 2011 at 6 p.m. Lecturer is David Shaw, on "Poelman and Plantin. Publishing the Classics in Sixteenth-Century Antwerp".
The biggest studies written so far on printer Christophe Plantin are those by Leon Voet and Jenny Voet-Grisolle, the two-volume The Golden Compasses, A History and Evaluation of the Printing and Publishing Activities of the Officina Plantiniana (1969), and the classic 6-volume The Plantin Press (155-1589). A Bibliography of the works printed and published by Christopher Plantin at Antwerp and Leiden.
Another couple is walking in the footsteps of the Voets for Plantin with two studies on the use of printed illustration in Plantin editions, namely Karen L. Bowen's Christopher Plantin's Book of Hours: Illustration and Production (1997) and Karen L. Bowen and Dirk Imhof's Christopher Plantin and Engraved Book Illustrations in Sixteenth-Centry Europe (2008).
But all is not said and done yet on the Plantin-Moretus printing press, particularly because the business archive still awaits excavation and thorough examination from scholars. The museum has started a piecemeal digitization project - the Flemish government should actually turn this into its third prestigious project after ILE (the edition of the letters by Justus Lipsius in 20 volumes) and the STCV (the online Short Title Catalogus Vlaanderen).
So what are we to expect from David Shaw's talk? Antwerp in the sixteenth century was what Amsterdam became in the next: a vibrant, intensely international commercial hub experiencing its Golden Age. In that century it took the lead from Deventer with the hightest number of printing houses in the Old Netherlands. As the city did not house a university, school masters' schools -like that of Gabriel Meurier- or printing houses were the next best venues for languages and learning.
Greek had been introduced in the Old Netherlands by Dirk Martens and Joannes van Westfalen, and Leuven after 1517 with its Collegium Trilingue became an important center for the study of Greek, Latin and Hebrew. In his former assistant Rutger Rescius Dirk Martens would find a worthy successor to print many Greek and Latin college textbooks.
Decades later, Plantin easily was the richest owner of fonts and printing workshop material out of Antwerp. His abodes were often crowded with scholars pouring over the material to see it appear in print, on many topics. His crowning achievement in scholarship collaboration no doubt was the Polyglot Bible or Biblia Regia.
As to the classics, works in Greek and Latin, a great number of local scholars worked with him: Willem and Dirk Canter from Utrecht and Leuven on Aeschylos (1580), Janus Dousa on Catullus, Mekerkius on Greek pronunciation, the perennial Lipsius on Tacitus, Steewechius on Vegetius, Bonaventura Vulcanius on Callimachus, and so on.
Or Plantin selected from the book fairs at Paris and Frankfurt works first seen abroad, such as the emblemata editions by Joannes Sambucus, French and Italian endeavors on Virgil by Fulvius Ursinus, the cantankerous Joseph Scaliger and Marc Antoine Muret, and the often reprinted Catullus, Tibullus et Propertius that was first published by Aldus in 1511.
In his Annales de l'imprimerie des Alde (1834), Auguste Renouard wrote of the famous Aldus Manutius and his son Paul, who operated from Venice in the late 15th and at the cusp of the 16th century: Remplis d'une admiration enthousiaste pour les chefs-d'oeuvre littéraires de la Grèce et Rome, ils sacrifièrent les avantages de réputation et de fortune (..) et dévouèrent leur vie entière à tirer les écrivains anciens du chaos où huit siècles de barbarie les avaient plongés.
Although Renouard's admiration for the trendsetters the Alduses were for Greek and Latin texts is more than justified, his Winckelmannish hyperbole on how these works came to us somewhat obscures the work of editors and the many sources –in manuscript or printed form and often from earlier centuries- that lay at the basis of a new edition.
As an editor, Theodorus Pulmannus or Dirk Poelman (1512-1581) is expected to particularly stand out for the Plantin house, as his archives are presently part of the Plantin-Moretus Archives. He edited many authors: Avianus, Horatius, Lucanus, and Terentius Afer, to name a few. We eagerly await David Shaw's talk to zero in on some more detail.
Venue: Miraeus Lecture, Museum Plantin-Moretus, Vrijdagmarkt 22, 2000 Antwerpen, Wednesday 6 April, 2011, 6-7.30 p.m.
Illustration: woodcut initial and page from Novum Iesu Christi D.N. Testamentum, ascribed to Christophe Plantin (1566). Cultura Fonds Collection.
