A Brill Calendar: May 1

Plantijn: Printer to Leiden Academy

Few lines of poetry come closer to wisdom than T.S. Eliot’s ‘in my end is my beginning’.

An apt quotation for May 1st 1583, when Christoffel Plantijn, then some 63 years old, was appointed Printer to the Leyden Academy. The Master returned to the Antwerp head-quarters of his ‘multinational’ soon afterwards; in 1585.

The eighth lustrum of the 16th century is a true hinge in time. Some seven months before Plantijn’s appointment, the Western calendar was reformed by authority of Pope Gregory XIII. In the year just mentioned, (1583) the great scholar Scaliger – eventually, in 1593, a Leyden Professor – published ‘Opus de emendatione temporum’, the foundation of modern chronology. In 1584 in Lucca (Papal States), the ‘Academia dei Scienze Lettere ed Arti’ began its existence. 1584 AD, also saw the assassination of William the Silent, Count of Nassau, Prince of Orange, in Leyden’s neighbour-city, Delft. The news, shocking Europe, must have reached Plantijn the same day; July 10.

When Plantijn died, on July 1 1589, back in Antwerp, his Printing and Publishing Empire, then past its twelfth decade, had weathered political storms and religious strife; a strategically prudent Paris branch-office opened well before the one at Leyden... Plantijn’s reputation and professional stature was already second to none since his ‘Biblia polyglotta’, (appearing in eight splendid volumes between 1569 and 1572). In his era, scholarly publishing could hardly enjoy luxuries associated with peace.

In appreciating Plantijn’s greatness it is seldom stressed – without taking refuge in apology – that an astute insight in the politics of both regular and secular leaders also provides a corner-stone for a printer's output, unsurpassed in cultural significance in the Western tradition.