Table of Plantin's direct descendants

Chapter 2
Plantin's Descendants

The 28- or 29-year-old bookbinder who settled in Antwerp in 1548 or 1549 was accompanied by his wife and his small daughter of one or two. When he died forty years later, his son-in-law Jan Moretus summarized the state of the family in his letter of 27th September 1589 to de Çayas: ‘Las hijas son cinco todas casadas, y estas tienen entre ellas trenta y dos ninnos maschios y feminos.’ [His five daughters are all married and together have thirty-two male and female children.]1. This represents only the surviving children and grandchildren and of course it does not include the ten or so grandchildren born after Plantin's death. An impressive total, yet Plantin was denied the joy of raising a son: the name of Plantin died out with him.

The Plantin family2.

Plantin was married two or three years before his arrival in Antwerp, probably at Caen. At all events it was there, in the house of his employer Robert II Macé, that the young bookbinder met Jeanne Rivière, the girl who became his loyal helpmate.3. Her somewhat care-worn appearance is

recorded in two paintings: the triptych over the family tomb in Antwerp Cathedral and Rubens's portrait in the Plantin-Moretus Museum which was possibly modelled after it. Justus Lipsius, who was a friend of the family, outlined her character thus: ‘She was a virtuous wife, without vanity and not given to finely; she loved her husband and was fully conversant with all matters appertaining to the management of the family and gave all the necessary attention to the housekeeping.’ He finished his sketch with the anti-feminist remark: ‘That ought to be sufficient for a woman... The woman is not wise who is more learned than is fitting.’1. Jeanne Rivière was certainly not learned. Max Rooses already doubted whether she could read and write. The author believes that he has found a piece of evidence that settles this question: the will which the Plantins made at Leiden on 19th November 1584 was ‘signed’ by Jeanne with a cross.2. Plantin's wife must have been a good and obliging person for all that, as can be seen from the way in which she gave up her claims to the estate after her husband's death in order to keep the peace among her children.

Plantin's otherwise so copious correspondence does not permit any amplification of the few known facts or any deeper sounding of his spouse's heart and mind. Jeanne Rivière is only occasionally mentioned in letters addressed to Plantin, and then only in impersonal and uninformative phrases: a short salutation to ‘mademoiselle votre compagne’ or ‘madamoselle, syn beminde huysvrou’ [Madame, his dear wife]. Plantin on his side was just as silent about her in his letters. Even when corresponding with such close family friends as Arias Montanus he contented himself with short remarks to the effect that ‘my wife is well and sends her greetings’. Only one letter is addressed personally to Jeanne Rivière. This was written

by Pierre Gassen on 13th May 1568 and repeats a request to her during one of her husband's absences. Gassen makes it clear, however, that he expects an answer from Jan Moretus.1. Only once in the correspondence is a more intimate note struck, but little can be learnt of the personality of Jeanne Rivière from Martina's request to her husband, Jan Moretus, who was then in Frankfurt, to bring a chain and rings belonging to her mother with him when he returned. The jewellery was at Cologne, ‘au coffret que saves’ [in the box which you know], where it had probably been stored for safekeeping during hostilities in the Netherlands, ‘si d'avanture elle en avoit afferre’ [if by chance she needs them].2.

It would appear that Jeanne Rivière was not able to keep pace with her husband's success. She lacked the ability to become a great lady, able to receive her guests with courtly grace and to engage them in brilliant conversation. She must have remained essentially plebeian, caught up in her husband's social ascent, but viewing it with mixed feelings and staying in the background as far as possible, a silent, reserved, self-effacing, and perhaps even rather pathetic presence.

The couple had seven children. A son, named Christophe after the proud father, was born in March 1566 and baptized on the 21st of that month in the cathedral. He did not live long, however, and is known to have died before 4th November 1570.3. The little boy is portrayed with his father in the triptych in the cathedral. On the opposite panel, showing Plantin's wife and daughters, one of the girls, aged about ten, also has a cross painted above her head to indicate that she had died. As Plantin makes no mention of her in the letter of 4th November 1570 - to which further reference will be made - it may be assumed that she had died before that date, possibly a considerable time before. The other five daughters, who are depicted praying beside or behind their mother, all survived their parents: Margareta, born in Caen or Paris in 1547; Martina, born in Antwerp in 1550; Catharina, born in 1553; Magdalena, born in 1557; Henrica,

born in 1561 or 1562. Their personalities emerge much more clearly from the past than that of their mother. Even their childhood and training is well documented, thanks to the detailed letter that Plantin wrote on 4th November 1570 to an inquisitive de Çayas, who had been asking for information about his family.1.

Plantin's ideas of bringing up his offspring bore little resemblance to modern educational theories. His ideas were markedly utilitarian, designed to obtain competent help for hard-working parents and far removed from what could be regarded as suitable training for rich young ladies: ‘[the five daughters] ... I have, in as much as it has pleased God to grant grace and strength, as much to them as to myself, before all else taught to fear, honour and love God, our King, all our Magistrates and superiors and likewise to assist their mother, helping her about the house in domestic tasks as far as their age and strength allow. And since in early childhood one is too fragile and weak to do manual household work or to serve in the shop, I taught them to read and write well so that from the age of four or five until the age of twelve, each of the four eldest, according to age and seniority, has helped us to read the proofs in the printing-shop in whatever script or language they may have been submitted for printing. And, during their unoccupied hours, according to the leisure time at their disposal, I also took the trouble to have them instructed in sewing linen, both for making shirts, collars and handkerchiefs as well as for other such linen articles. Meanwhile I was always observing, little by little, what task each of them would be most fitted to perform in the future.’2.

The eldest daughter, Margareta, who was twenty-three when this letter was written, had in her childhood ‘outre l'habilité de bien lire, trouvée

dextre à escrire, se fust enfin monstrée l'une des milleurs plumes de tous les pais de par deça pour son sexe’. Her father had sent her to Paris to have lessons from a famous calligrapher - possibly the renowned Pierre Hamon himself - but her eyesight had grown weak: ‘une débilité de veue telle qu'impossible luy eust esté de voir escrire deux ou trois lignes continuelles.’ Plantin had been obliged to fetch his twelve-year-old daughter back from Paris: ‘et depuis n'a esté propre à chose ou fust requis bonne veue.’ Presumably this is why not a single letter or other piece of handwriting by this talented daughter has been preserved in the family archives.1.

The second daughter, Martina, then twenty years old, ‘s'estant outre les premiers exercices susdicts [montrée], dès sa jeunesse, propre à faire le train de lingerie, je l'ay entretenue audict train, depuis l'aage de treze ans jusqu'au mois de may dernier’. At which point Jan Moretus asked her hand in marriage and she founded a family of her own.

The third daughter, the seventeen-year-old Catharina, ‘s'estant, outre les susdictes occupations premières de l'enfance, trouvée idoine à manier affaires et comptes de merchandises’ had become a useful business-woman, who from her thirteenth year had acted as intermediary between the Parisian linen and lace-merchant, Pierre Gassen, ‘linen draper to their Highnesses the King's brothers’, and the laceworkers of Antwerp, Malines, and Brussels, handling trade worth more than 12,000 ducats a year.

The fourth daughter, Magdalena, aged thirteen in 1570, ‘still keeps to the rule that the others have kept to until the same age: that is to say helping her mother with the housework and principally with her own special task of carrying all the proofs of the great Royal Bibles to the house of Monsgr. Doctor B. Arias Montanus and reading from the originals in Hebrew, Chaldean, Syriac. Greek and Latin, the contents of the said proofs, while Monsignor diligently observes whether our sheets are in a fit state to be printed. And the said Royal Bibles being completed by the grace of God, I intend (from such time as her age no longer permits me to leave her

in the company of the proof-readers) to employ her in helping and assisting me in looking after the work that is being printed here and in paying the workmen their weekly wages on Saturdays, and in seeing that every member of the firm does the task expected of him.’1.

The fifth and the youngest daughter, called ‘Henrie’ (Henrica or Henriette), was then eight or nine years old and was rather backward: ‘is still (because of the late development of her slow mind that is otherwise sweet and modest) busy reading, writing and sewing linen with the needle and helping her mother with small household duties, a task to which I deem her to be more fitted than to some other things.’

On the strength of this letter, Plantin's eldest four daughters have been made into scholarly prodigies, of whom Magdalena at least had a perfect command of a number of Oriental languages as well as Latin and Greek. Plantin should not, however, be attributed with a claim he did not make. All he said was that his daughters read proofs, not that they understood them. Theodoor Poelman, who was a friend of the family, stated quite explicitly that this was not the case. In 1576 Brother Joannes Elstius of Nijmegen asked the scholar in a letter: ‘I remember that I heard you say at Nijmegen that Plantin's daughters could not only read and write Latin, but also Greek and Hebrew; write and tell me if this is true, if you have the time.’ Poelman's answer was short and to the point: ‘It is true that Plantin's daughter [Magdalena] was able to read Hebrew, Greek and Latin quickly, but she understood none of it.’2. The girls' reading and correcting of proofs thus consisted simply of comparing the characters, and implied no understanding of the texts.3.

The education of Plantin's daughters must actually have been fairly rudimentary and restricted to learning to read and write French (and probably also Dutch).1. Some of them did not become very proficient even at this elementary level. Magdalena wrote reasonable French, but some examples of Martina's phonetic and ungrammatical written attempts at this language have already been noted. She was no better at writing Latin.2. Whether her sisters' efforts in this particular direction were of the same standard is not known.

Plantin was not exaggerating, however, when he wrote that his daughters were involved in business activities at a tender age.3. From the age of fifteen - and possibly even earlier - Martina played an important part in the trade in linen and lace with Pierre Gassen, negotiating with the producers and paying them, and collecting and dispatching the finished products. In 1565 Plantin rented a shop in the Exchange (where also certain commodities were sold) for the sale of lace and linen.

It cannot be ascertained who managed this shop in the beginning - it may have been Jeanne Rivière - but in 1567 the seventeen-year-old Martina took it over and on 1st September of that year she entered up her first sale, probably with a certain amount of emotion: ‘vendu argent content fait le premier jour que je suis venu au pandt de la bource ½ aune et un saisième de brainat, 4½ patars’ [sold for cash on the first day that I came to the building of the Exchange, half an ell and a sixth of binding, 4½ patars]. Her marriage in 1570 greatly reduced her activities in the lacetrade but did not stop them altogether. She was still at work in 1573.

In his letter to de Çayas, Plantin rather minimized Martina's efforts in

order to extol her younger sister Catharina as a business genius. Catharina's accounts are less completely preserved than those of Martina, so that the word of the proud father has to be taken in this matter. Nevertheless there is ample evidence that Catharina was indeed a precocious business woman. She was scarcely twelve years old when Pierre Gassen named her as his chief agent (‘gouvernante’) in the Netherlands, and at fourteen she travelled alone to Malines to ‘soliciter les ouvrières’ [recruit workwomen] and to pay them.

It can be seen that Plantin's daughters did not grow up tied to their mother's apron-strings. At an early age they were set to work in the adult world of affairs - like so many of their sisters in the Netherlands, for the Plantin girls were not an isolated case: sixteenth-century Italian and Spanish travellers, accustomed to a world where women were barred from public life, repeatedly expressed amazement - and often indignation - in their accounts of the Netherlands at the extensive participation of women and girls in economic activities and their free and easy bearing in public. The Italian view of this matter is admirably, but carefully expressed in Descrittione di tutti i Paesi Bassi, where Ludovico Guicciardini gives a vivid picture of the active, self-assured women of the Netherlands, the type to which Plantin's daughters belonged: ‘The women, apart from the fact that they are (as I have said above) of comely and excellent form, carry themselves well, and are graceful: for they begin from earliest childhood, after the custom of the country, to converse freely with any and everybody: for this reason they become quick and adept in their habits and speech and in all other things: and yet with such great liberty and freedom they nevertheless maintain an honesty and seemliness that are most commendable, often going about their business unaccompanied, not only within the town but also frequently across country from one town to another with very little company and yet without incurring blame. They are assuredly most serious and most active: dealing not only with domestic matters, with which very few men have to do, but concerning themselves with buying and selling goods, and property, and turning both hand and voice to all the other masculine concerns: they accomplish everything with such skill and diligence that in several places in the province, as in Holland and Zealand, the men leave them to do almost everything: such a way of doing things added

to the natural feminine desire to dominate, undoubtedly makes them too imperious by far and sometimes too disagreeable and proud. But let us pass on.’1.

Willing and not so willing sons-in-law

The daughters of Christophe Plantin were precociously wise in the way of the world. It is not surprising that all five of them married quite early: Margareta in 1565, at the age of 18; Martina in 1570 when she was 20; Catharina in 1571, aged 18; Magdalena in 1572, aged 15; and Henrica in 1578 when she was 16 or 17 years old. Catharina and Magdalena were later to marry again. Plantin therefore had altogether seven sons-in-law, one of whom - Magdalena's second husband - he never knew. Some of this number played an important part in the life of the firm; with others there was just the family connection. One of them caused Plantin a great deal of trouble.

Margareta Plantin and Frans Raphelengius2. - On 23rd June 1565 the wedding of Plantin's eldest daughter Margareta was concluded with a banquet in the printer's house, where there were between thirty and fifty guests at table. The actual bill of fare has not been preserved, but it is known what was served and how much the bride's father paid for it: three sucking-pigs at 17 st. each, six capons at 22 st. each, twelve pigeons at 6 st.

each, twelve quails at 4 st. each, five legs of mutton at 1 fl. each, 16 fl. 7½ st. worth of wine, and so on.1.

The twenty-six-year-old bridegroom was born in Lannoy, near Lille, on 27th February 1539. Frans Ravelingen,2. better known by the latinized form Raphelengius, was no stranger to Plantin's house. About two years before he had offered the printer his services as a proof-reader, and on 12th March 1564 he had entered into a contract binding him to the firm in that capacity for two years.3. He had received what would now be termed secondary education at Ghent, and had studied Greek and Hebrew at the University of Paris. According to Sweertius, writing in his Athenae Belgicae (1628), he afterwards taught Greek at Cambridge, but Raphelengius's youth at the time, and the fact that his name is nowhere listed among teachers of that university, make it difficult to accept this assertion.

Frans Raphelengius was very erudite. In his letter of 19th December 1566 to de Çayas, Plantin described him as ‘un jeune homme fort docte ès langues Hébraique, Chaldéenne, Grecque et Latine’.4. In a letter of 22nd November 1572, also to de Çayas, this catalogue of the proof-reader's linguistic abilities was extended: ‘Quant à mes gendres le premier n'a oncques rien prins à cueur que la cognoisance des langues latine, grecque, hébraicque, chaldée, syrienne, arabe (èsquelles chaicun qui familièrement confère avec luy afferme qu'il n'y est pas mal versé) et des lectres humaines.’5. In the certificate that Plantin, as royal chief printer, granted his son-in-law in 1576, Raphelengius was styled as ‘sçavant ès langues latine, grecque, hébraicque, chaldée, siricque, arabe, françoise, flamenghe et autres vulgaires’.6.

If Plantin is to be believed, it was to retain the services of this scholarly reader that the printer gave him his daughter in marriage: ‘auquel pour mieux l'entretenir et l'avoir à commodité, sous l'espoir que j'ay eu d'aider

avec le temps au bien public, et en la faveur des lectres et de telles vertus rares qui sont en iceluy, j'ay baillé ma fille aisnée en mariage.’1. Raphelengius was not ambitious. He was a retiring scholar, completely absorbed in his studies: ‘[il n'a oncques rien prins à cueur que la cognoisance des langues...] et à bien, léalement, soigneusement et fidèlement corriger ce qui luy est enchargé sans mesmes se vouloir ostenter, monstrer ou venir en cognoissance de plusieurs car il est fort solitaire et assidu aux labeurs qui luy sont commis.’2. Thus he remained in his father-in-law's employ as a proof-reader. As such he had an important share in the realization of the Polyglot Bible. As well as correcting the proofs of this work he himself contributed Variae lectiones et annotatiunculae in Chaldaicam paraphrasim, and an adaptation of Sante Pagnino's Hebrew grammar and glossary. He was probably also responsible for the Greek glossary. In the preface to the Polyglot Bible, Arias Montanus did not stint his praise of his capable and scholarly collaborator: ‘He is a man of great diligence, incredible zeal, unfailing precision, lucid mind and excellent judgment. None excels him in knowledge of the ancient languages: it is thanks to his knowledge and labour that this great work, this treasure of science and languages, has been able to appear with such admirable accuracy.’

For many years the couple lived with Margareta's parents. In 1575 the Raphelengius family's only accommodation still consisted of a small, low room, 12 feet wide and 15 or 16 feet long, in the house called De Daelder in the Valkstraat (next to the Gulden Passer in the Kammenstraat) which served as a storage place for books3. ‘in which there are two beds taking up almost the whole of the small room in which my son-in-law named Frans Raphelengius and his wife sleep at night together with three of their children and their chamber-maid, for the rest of the time the said Raphelengius stays and works at the correction of proofs in the press while living at his own expense in my house’.4.

In 1576, at Plantin's instigation, Raphelengius was certified as a printer and admitted in this capacity to the Guild of St. Luke, given possession on 1st February of a shop (‘bouticle’) that had been specially set up for him near the north door of the cathedral1. and on 10th February was made a citizen of Antwerp. By this means Raphelengius was - in theory - installed as an independent bookseller and printer. In fact he remained Plantin's chief reader and principal manager in the officina;2. it was Margareta who kept shop3. while her husband continued with his accustomed activities. The intention had simply been to provide the Raphelengius family with additional income so that it should not be at any financial disadvantage compared with the second son-in-law, Jan Moretus, who that same year had been entrusted with the management of Plantin's own bookshop.4.

During Plantin's stay in Leiden and the siege of Antwerp by Farnese, Frans Raphelengius and Jan Moretus together kept the Officina Plantiniana going as best they could. What happened after the surrender of Antwerp and the return of Plantin has already been described in some detail:5. Raphelengius, having been converted to the reformed religion during the Calvinist regime, and having put - or lent - his name to a number of violently anti-Spanish publications, had become greatly compromised in Spanish eyes. Reconciliation with the new Spanish government of Antwerp might still have been possible for him, but he chose the other course open to him and went to Leiden. There the well-equipped northern branch was in some danger of being confiscated by the Dutch authorities and it was vital that a member of the family should be on the spot to assert their rights. At the same time the scholarly Raphelengius had a good chance of being offered a professorship at the newly founded University of Leiden. On 26th November 1585 Plantin ‘sold’ all his Leiden property to his son-in-law.6. At the beginning of 1586 Raphelengius arrived in Leiden with

his family; on 3rd March of that year he was appointed university printer with the same salary (200 fl. a year) as his father-in-law before him; on 20th June he started to lecture in Hebrew at the university at 300 fl. a year, and on 8th February 1587 he became professor.1. He was working in this dual capacity at Leiden when Plantin died in 1589.

Martina Plantin and Jan Moretus2. - In 1570 it was the turn of Plantin's second daughter, Martina, to embark on marriage. The bridegroom recorded the glad occasion in a brief entry in the diary he kept of important family events:3. ‘L'an 1570 ad 30 Aprilis ie fus fiancé avec ma compagne Martine Plantin, fille de C. Plantin, imprimeur en Anvers et espouse le 4 Juin ensuivant en la grande Eglise de Nostre Dame et furent tenues nos nopces ledit iour en la Cammerstraete au Compas d'Or aupachuys derrière.’

Jan Mourentorf or Moerentorft4. too latinized his name, into Moretus, the form by which he is usually known. Like his brother-in-law he was no stranger to the Plantin family. In fact, he had worked for Plantin longer than Raphelengius had.

Jan Moretus was born in Antwerp on 22nd May 1543 ‘ung mardi entre dix et onze devant disner, decrescente luna.’ He was the third of a family of eleven children. His father was the satin-weaver Jacob Mourentorf, son of Jacob, born in Lille. His mother was Adriana Gras, a daughter of the Milanese silk-weaver Pieter Gras, alias Marin, and of Elizabeth Borrewater. In about 1557, when he was scarcely fourteen years old, Jan Moretus came to work for Plantin. The interruption of the printer's activities in 1562-63 obliged Moretus to seek a living elsewhere, a quest diat took him to Venice.5. By the beginning of 1565, however, he was back in Antwerp,

working in Plantin's shop once more. Pierre Gassen, in a letter of 1st April 1565, congratulated his business friend on the return of his young assistant: ‘Je suis bien ayse de la venue de vostre Jehan pour vostre soulagement.’1. In the letter to de Çayas of 4th November 1570 already quoted, Plantin's eulogy of his new son-in-law sounds much warmer and more enthusiastic than the passage devoted to Raphelengius:2. ‘A young man quite expert in and with a good understanding of Greek, Latin, Spanish, Italian, French, German, and Flemish who from the time that your Highness was in this country with His Majesty until now, has always served me in both good and bad times, without abandoning me because of any ill-fortune which overtook me or because of the promises or inducements that others were able to make him, even offering him the richest marriages and rewards such as were not within my power to grant him. For which reason I give her [i.e. Martina] to him, to the great pleasure of all my good Lords, relations and friends who have known this young man while he has been conducting the business of my shop.’3.

In Frans Raphelengius the ‘principal correcteur et coadjuteur au faict de mon imprimerie’ and in Jan Moretus ‘perpetuellement occupé aux affaires de la Boutique et aultres choses necessaires à l'entretien de ladite Imprimerie’4.

Plantin had two sons-in-law who rendered him sterling assistance in the business. It would be no exaggeration to say that, without this hardworking and reliable pair, the Officina Plantiniana would never have grown into one of the largest capitalist enterprises of the sixteenth century. Plantin himself effectively emphasized the part his sons-in-law played in the success of his press in his informative letter to de Çayas: ‘And thus I have (by the grace of God who has granted me this favour) two other persons similar to myself in the two chief positions in my business: the first in the press to correct what is printed, and the second in the shop for our accounts and sales. To which matters, for the present, it would not be possible for me to attend, seeing the burdens and tasks that are daily given to me.’1. With an easy mind, Plantin could permit himself to be away for weeks and months at a time on his numerous business journeys in France and Germany while his two sons-in-law looked after the business, Raphelengius in the printing-press, Moretus in the shop.

The main function of the latter was not, of course, to sell books over the counter to the customers. After 1563 the retailing of books had become a less important side-line for Plantin and was probably left to young counter-hands.2. Moretus's duties in the bookshop were more managerial. He dispatched orders to the many customers outside Antwerp, checked incoming deliveries, kept the accounts and conducted the correspondence. If Plantin was prevented from going abroad it was always Moretus, never Raphelengius, who undertook the journey in his stead.

Like the Raphelengius family, Moretus and his wife and children lived in Plantin's house until 1576. In that year the bookshop and the printing-press were separated, the latter being installed in the building between the Hoogstraat and the Vrijdagmarkt. Plantin went to live there while

Raphelengius moved into the small bookshop that had been purchased for him near the north door of the cathedral. The original bookshop remained in the Kammenstraat and so did Moretus. Now fully responsible for this ‘sales department’, he was paid the considerable salary of 1,100 fl. a year. This was raised to 1,200 fl. in 1586.1. Mention has already been made of the fact that Moretus and Raphelengius remained behind to look after the Officina Plantiniana while Plantin was in Leiden and Antwerp was being besieged by Spanish troops. After Plantin's return in 1585 and the subsequent departure of Raphelengius for the north, Moretus stayed in Antwerp, his aged and ailing father-in-law's sole support in the business. Plantin remained in control of the press right to the end, but Moretus, in addition to his own responsibilities in the shop, was increasingly obliged to come to his assistance.

Plantin had his son-in-law entered in the Guild of St. Luke as a master-printer on 6th August 1586 and obtained a royal patent for him. It was granted on 27th February 1587.2. Jan Moretus was thus equipped to succeed Plantin as head of the Antwerp officina immediately on the latter's decease.

Catharina Piantin and her two husbands: Jehan Gassen and Hans Spierinck - Catharina, Plantin's third daughter, went into trade at an early age and was still young when she married a business associate. As has already been stated, she was the ‘gouvernante’ in the Netherlands for the Parisian draper Pierre Gassen. She made the acquaintance of this merchant's nephew, Jehan Gassen, who was also in the linen and lace trade. The young couple were married in Paris in the middle of June 1571.3. They began their married life in Pierre Gassen's house; the honeymoon proved stormy. Pierre's daughters had charge of the housekeeping and they must have tried to make Catharina do the more menial chores, but this spirited young woman was not going to submit meekly to such treatment. Her husband sided with his cousins. There was plain speaking and mutual

recrimination on both sides of the family. Echoes of these marital squabbles reached Plantin by way of Pierre Porret. On 23rd November 1571 the printer wrote his daughter and his son-in-law a long letter each in moving words which, he said, ‘procèdent de l'interieur de cueur, comme une flamme de feu qui y brusle’. Catharina was admonished not to be ‘rogue, despite, dédagneuse, paresseuse, et fière’; Jehan Gassen also received a number of wise exhortations suffused with Plantin's characteristic mysticism.1.

This paternal intervention may have helped matters: there is no record of any further domestic wrangles. The marriage, however, was soon to end in tragedy. In March or April 1574 Jehan Gassen died after being attacked by robbers during a journey in the Netherlands. Precise details are lacking, but the unfortunate victim was probably not dispatched at the scene of the crime: on 28th April 1574 Martina Moretus wrote in the memorandum book for transactions with Gassen: ‘Mon Père doit avoir encores pour aultant paie aus medesins, sirurgiens et apotiqueres et funerailles de feu nostre feu frere Gassen, 79 florins 5 patars.’2.

Catharina carried on her husband's business for a few months, until July or August 1575, when Plantin and Jeanne Rivière went to Paris to fetch their daughter and her child home to Antwerp.3. Various young Parisian suitors had already asked for the young widow's hand,4. but Catharina did not intend returning to the French capital. On 26th November 1575 she was married in Antwerp Cathedral to a spice merchant, Hans Arents, called Spierinck (and nearly always referred to as Spierinck in the sources which the author has used).

Political events did not permit Catharina and her new husband to stay very long in Antwerp. In September 1576 Spierinck, together with Jan Moretus, went to the annual fair at Frankfurt, where the young spice merchant had a ‘taberna’ (shop). Catharina accompanied her husband

to assist him during this busy period.1. Alarming rumours about the disturbances in the Southern Netherlands made Spierinck decide to leave his wife in Cologne on the homeward journey.2. In this way Catharina escaped the terrors of the Spanish Fury (4th November 1576). It cannot be ascertained whether her husband was still in Antwerp when this took place, but it seems that he too was resident in Cologne at the beginning of 1577.3.

From Cologne Spierinck took his family to Hamburg, where he acted as Plantin's agent.4. Business was anything but brisk there, however, and in a letter of 18th March 1585 the spice merchant had to ask Jan Moretus for more time in which to repay the money his brother-in-law had advanced him.5. This letter was written from Leiden. Presumably Plantin's presence in the Dutch university town prompted Spierinck and his wife to make their way there.6. With his father-in-law's help he would certainly be in a position to do good business: ‘Father who does much for me wherefore I can never thank him enough bids me take fresh courage and that I should consider that I am starting anew and God be praised we are now doing quite a good trade here and it gets better every day so that I hope we shall earn a livelihood.’

The couple stayed on in Leiden when Plantin set off for the South in August 1585. Whether it was because trade fell off again after Plantin's departure, or whether homesickness got the better of them, it appears that Plantin approached the Spanish authorities in March 1588 with a view to making it possible for his daughter and son-in-law to return to Antwerp.7.

Either in 1588, or not later than the beginning of 1589, and in any case before the death of Christophe Plantin, Catharina and her family were back in Antwerp.

Magdalena Plantin and Egidius Beys1. - Like Raphelengius and Moretus, Plantin's fourth son-in-law, Egidius or Gilles Beys, played an active part in the life of the officina, but he proved a much more difficult character and caused his father-in-law considerable trouble. Nevertheless it seems to the author that the reputation Beys has acquired in the literature is much worse than he really deserves.

Egidius Beys was born on the seigniory of Princenhage near Breda into a family of some means. His father, Cornelis Gielisz. was for many years an alderman and also responsible for the administration of poor relief.2. Egidius entered Plantin's service as a shop-boy in July 1564. The printer must have been quite satisfied with his new assistant, for three years later, when he opened his bookshop in Pierre Porret's house in Paris, it was Beys who was placed in charge, although it was nominally under the management of Porret. Egidius Beys left for the French capital in the first days of January 1567.3.

In 1572 Magdalena Plantin visited Paris, staying with her sister Catharina. She was scarcely fifteen years old, but Plantin found it necessary to warn her against the dangers of the flesh and of the perils of over-hasty marriage.4. Names were not mentioned in the relevant letter, but it seems probable that Beys had made overtures, to which Magdalena had not remained altogether insensitive, and that Plantin, having been informed by Porret, attempted to damp this too youthful ardour. Circumstances were to compel Plantin to give his consent much sooner than he had anticipated or wished.

The peregrinations attendant on Magdalena Plantin's wedding have already been described in detail and placed in their historical perspective.1. For present purposes a brief summary of these events will suffice. The sudden explosion of political and religious passion in France (the St. Bartholomew's Eve massacre, 24th August 1572) made Plantin fear for the lives of his kinsfolk in Paris and for the safety of his Gulden Passer there. As soon as he possibly could, he hurried to Paris, finding to his relief that all was well with both family and shop. Plantin's precipitate journey appeared rather suspicious to his Spanish patrons. To justify himself the printer alleged that he had received news of his daughter's engagement and that this was why he had sped to Paris. This explanation did not quite fit the facts. It is more than likely that Beys only asked Plantin officially for his daughter's hand in marriage after the printer's arrival in Paris.

The political situation in France remained confused, but not more so than in the Netherlands. There was even the possibility that Plantin would be obliged to close down the press at Antwerp. All in all he must have thought it advisable at the time to leave his daughter in Paris and to marry her, in spite of her youth, to someone he knew and trusted. In the shortest possible time Magdalena Plantin and Egidius Beys were engaged and married: on Saturday, 27th September 1572, in the late evening, Plantin arrived in Paris; on Monday, 29th September the two young people were betrothed; on the Tuesday of the following week, 7th October, they were man and wife.

Egidius Beys was a fairly educated man. Besides his native Dutch he knew, and wrote, both French and Latin. His marriage spurred him on to improve himself by further study and he asked his brother-in-law Moretus if they might conduct their business correspondence in Italian or Latin, so that he could become more conversant with those languages;2. Beys himself kept this practice up for some time.3.

In those early years no discordant notes were heard. In fact on 21st July 1575 Beys was entrusted with the sole management of the Paris shop.4. By the following year, however, the Southern Netherlands, too,

were aflame and on 22nd August 1577 Plantin was obliged to sell his shop in the French capital to the bookseller Michel Sonnius in order to keep himself solvent. Egidius Beys had to leave the concern. He set himself up as an independent bookseller and publisher.1. From 1577 onwards his new address appears on a number of editions: ‘Lutetiae, apud Aegidium Beysium, via Jacobaea, sub insigno Lilii albi’; and in French, ‘A Paris, Chez Gilles Beys, rue S. Jacques, au Lis Blanc’.

Leaving the business that he had managed for more than ten years was naturally a severe setback for Egidius Beys. On 7th February 1577, when it became clear that the negotiations in progress were going to lead to the sale of the shop, Hans Spierinck wrote a compassionate letter to Jan Moretus: ‘I understand further that our brother-in-law Gilles has to leave the shop, for which I am very sorry, though we must be resigned in this matter, as is our father, but it will be a great setback to our brother-in-law, he who is a son having to leave the shop, I think that if I had been in our brother Gilles's place I would have borne with Porret rather more, although if it is as Gilles says, then it was very hard to bear, and we must let father hear of this.’2.

It is clear from this letter that Beys had had differences of opinion with Porret.3. This fact, coupled with Plantin's desire to save the parent house, may have made him pay too little heed to Beys's interests. In his letter of 20th February 1578 to Moretus, Beys accused his father-in-law of having brought about his ruin and wished him the same ‘delights’ that Plantin had caused him.4. However, this did not prevent Beys from greeting Plantin's arrival in Paris with pleasure a few months later: ‘Dont sommes tous joyeulx et beuvons et mangeons souvent ensemble.’5.

Beys's business did not prosper. The situation remained as unsettled in France as in the Netherlands, and without sufficient capital behind him he

could do no more than struggle on accumulating debts. At the end of 1580 he approached his father-in-law concerning ‘son enseigne et des livres de son impression avec leurs affiches’.1. In other words he wanted to trade under the name of the Golden Compasses again and to obtain the monopoly for the sale of Plantinian editions on the French market. This conflicted with Plantin's contract with Michel Sonnius, and Beys's request was categorically refused.2. Beys became angry; Plantin replied with equal acerbity. Moretus attempted to mediate and received a shattering broadside from the enraged Beys for his pains, which in turn provoked a brusque retort from the otherwise equable Moretus.3.

It is the correspondence of these months which has given Beys his bad reputation in Plantin literature and branded him as an impossible son-in-law. Beys, however, had reason to feel bitter. As Plantin's son-in-law he had entertained considerable expectations. These expectations had come to nothing and Beys, the father of a numerous family, found himself obliged to scrape a living in the most adverse circumstances, while his two brothers-in-law were doing rather well in Plantin's protecting shadow. In the author's opinion Plantin did not do all he could have done for Beys, either in 1577 or in 1580-81, but this rather surprising attitude must be ascribed in the first place to Beys's own pig-headedness, which affronted even those who felt sorry for him and did not make it easy to settle the dispute.

Time, however, took the bitterness out of this family quarrel. A letter of 4th December 1583, addressed to Jan Moretus, strikes a more cordial note. It appears that by this time Beys was receiving a regular supply of Plantin editions from Antwerp, while his eldest son, Christophe, had arrived at Plantin's house a few weeks before: ‘Je prie Dieu luy faire la grace de si bien faire que nostre Trescher pere et treshonorée mere y puissent prendre plaisir et contement.’4.

Relations between Plantin and Beys had returned more or less to normal, and presumably remained so in the following years. Then in 1589 another

entreaty arrived in Antwerp, not bitter or sarcastic this time, but a pathetic cry of distress which Magdalena had addressed to her father on 5th June of that year while her husband was away.1. The ‘War of the three Henrys’ was raging in France. Paris was besieged and trade was paralysed: ‘My very dear and most honourable Father. By reason of the great necessity of the times, I am compelled to request bread of you, enough for myself and my eight children, soon to become nine for I am six months with child, and we shall most certainly die of hunger if we do not get help from you very soon. We have nothing here from which we can make money not a single farthing, for there is practically nothing in goods that can be traded, so little do we have that if it pleases you to help us, I beg you that it may be for our bread, every week we require four francs' worth, if it pleases you to have the money set aside for us somewhere I will go and collect it myself, should we fail to obtain this aid we shall remain without anything at all to sustain us.’2.

Plantin was on his death-bed when this letter arrived, but he at once dictated a reply to Jan Moretus in which there was no trace of resentment, simply the will and the desire to help: ‘Ma fille... Vous scavés quel soing j'ay tousjours eu des miens, le mesme ay-je encores et auraij jusques à la fin, pleust a Dieu que j'eusse les moyens que plusieurs pensent que j'aij pour tant mieulx secourir chascun.’ He had already asked Sonnius to help his daughter; now he would repeat his request. When the Parisian bookseller eventually refused, he entreated the aid of Antoine Gassen, a relative of Jehan Gassen.3. Four days later Christophe Plantin was dead.

Henrica Plantin and Pieter Moerentorf1. - Plantin's youngest daughter can be dealt with much more briefly. On 1st June 1578, in Antwerp Cathedral, Henrica Plantin was married to Pieter (Petrus) Moerentorf, brother of Jan Moretus. The bride was sixteen or seventeen years old, the bridegroom (born in Antwerp on 19th July 1544) was thirty-four. From 1570 to 1577 he had been a diamond merchant in Lisbon.2. After his marriage he remained in Antwerp, continuing to practise the same trade.

Christophe Plantin's estate3.

On his death-bed Plantin had implored the members of his family gathered round him: ‘My children, let Peace, Love and Concord be kept always among you.’4. His death was nevertheless followed by a violent family quarrel, and it cannot be denied that Plantin himself was partly to blame for this.

Plantin and Jeanne Rivière had made a will at Leiden on 19th November 1584.5. About a year before the printer's death this was replaced by a new will, drawn up in the presence of the notary Van den Bossche at Antwerp on 14th May 1588. A codicil was added to this on 7th June 1589, when Plantin was already on his death-bed.6. In both wills Plantin and Jeanne Rivière named each other as heir to their respective estates; only after the decease of both could their possessions be divided up among their children or claimants. This was about all that the two wills had in common. In the Leiden will the various daughters and sons-in-law were treated more or less alike; in the Antwerp document one son-in-law was greatly favoured.

That son-in-law was Jan Moretus: ‘Jehan Moereturf, leur gendre et marie

avecq leur fille Martine Plantin’ was to receive, as first legacy, the Antwerp press with all that appertained thereto1. and the house in the Vrijdagmarkt in which the press was situated; further, all the printed works in Antwerp (both in the press and in Moretus's bookshop in the Kammenstraat) and in Frankfurt. The rest of the inheritance was to be divided equally among the five daughters. Annual rents were payable on the ‘great house’ in the Vrijdagmarkt and the codicil of 7th June 1589 was aimed at relieving Moretus of this charge on his share of the inheritance and distributing it among the other dwellings Plantin owned in the Heilig Geeststraat. This meant that after the death of Plantin and Jeanne Rivière, Moretus would collect more than half of the printer's estate, and then on top of this would receive an equal share with the other heirs of the remaining property, i.e. the Leiden holdings, Plantin's other houses in Antwerp, the stocks of unused paper, and the cash.

The reading of the will naturally provoked a storm among the other claimants. Plantin set out in detail his reasons for thus favouring Moretus: ‘In respect and consideration of the fact that the same Jan Moretus has been and still is director of the business of the bookshop, which the said testators possess in this city of Antwerp, and thereby is the author of the profits and emoluments which are made there and proceed therefrom, and because of the great services that the said Jan Moretus has given the said testators for the past thirty years and is still so giving, and further because they hope that he will continue in the said trade and in other matters to their great satisfaction.’2. Quite apart from the great affection he bore this son-in-law

and staunch helper, there was undoubtedly another consideration that influenced Plantin: the perpetuation of his life's work, the continuance of the Officina Plantiniana. If each of the inheritors received an equal share of the estate, Moretus would be left without sufficient equipment, capital, or credit to carry on the business.

Such considerations cut little ice with the other heirs. Even Frans Raphelengius, generally so imperturbable, wrote some sharp letters on the subject.1. The reactions of the other sisters and brothers-in-law are not known, but it may be assumed that, for example, Egidius Beys must have expressed himself even more forcibly.2. Discord prevailed among Plantin's descendants. Friends of the family came forward as mediators.3. Jeanne Rivière did what she could to restore ‘Paix, Amour et Concorde’ among her brood; more important still, Jan Moretus, who probably felt that his father-in-law had rather overdone things, showed himself willing to make considerable financial sacrifices to ensure the return of tranquillity to the house of Plantin.

After an abortive first attempt, Moretus succeeded in working out a compromise which was accepted by all parties on 16th February 1590, signed in the presence of the Antwerp magistrates on 16th March, and ratified by the city aldermen on 19th March 1590. Martina Plantin and Jan Moretus, Catharina Plantin and Hans Spierinck, Egidius Beys (acting for his wife, who had remained in Paris), and Henrietta Plantin and Pieter Moerentorf added their signatures, while Frans, the son of Frans Raphelengius and Margareta Plantin, signed a special declaration on behalf of his parents in which they agreed to this settlement.4.

The agreement stipulated first of all that the estate should be divided up

immediately. Jeanne Rivière relinquished all her claims apart from an annuity of 1,000 fl.1. The second stipulation was that the inheritance was to be shared out in such a way that Moretus would retain the Antwerp press and bookshop on conditions which would ensure their continuing viability. The third important point in the settlement was that the Antwerp and Leiden properties were to be kept separate; Raphelengius retained the latter, which corresponded roughly to his share in Plantin's estate, but he was not included in the apportioning of the Antwerp properties.

By dealing with the distribution of Plantin's estate in some detail it will be possible to obtain an idea of what the rise from poor journeyman bookbinder to the greatest typographer of the sixteenth century meant in material terms. The value of the printing-press was assessed by experts. The typographic materials were valued by the printers Daniel Vervliet and Andries Backx and the type-founder Herman Gruter, the stock of copperplates by the engravers Pieter van der Borcht and Filips Galle and the cartographer Abraham Ortelius. They arrived at a total of 18,224 fl. 19 st.2. It was agreed that for practical purposes a total of 18,000 fl. should be adopted, and that in this sum should be included ‘toutes les casses, bacqs, mandes, tretëaux, formats, 9 platines... et toute telle menute d'imprinierie’ together with the ‘proof-readers' library’.

Jan Moretus received a two-fifths share of the estate (7,200 fl.) on account of the claims that he had renounced, while the three other ‘Antwerp’ heirs had to be content with one fifth each (3,600 fl.), to be paid out in cash instalments by Jan Moretus. The matrices, which were still at Frankfurt and had not been included in the valuation, were to be returned to Antwerp and divided up on the same basis. It was found that they were worth 1,384 fl. 10 st., which brought Moretus's share to 7,753 fl. 16 st., and that of the three other heirs to 3,876 fl. 18 st.

Moretus accepted responsibility for the liquidation of the officina's

liabilities, amounting to 25,445 fl., which he effected out of the assets of the estate.1. The distribution of the houses Plantin owned in Antwerp formed a second important operation.2. Concerning the third operation - the distribution of the stocks of books, paper and whatever other stores there may have been - no details are recorded.3. The total value of Plantin's estate could never have been calculated but for the fact that the missing details can be inferred from the arrangements that were made with the fifth party to the will, namely Raphelengius and Margareta Plantin. In principle this couple had Plantin's Leiden property as their share, representing a total value of 15,038 fl. 1½ st.4. Unpaid debts amounting to 3,942 fl. 14 st. had to be

deducted from this sum: ‘Reste que Raphelengien a eu en compte d'argent’; the total sum being 11,095 fl. 7½ st.

According to the relevant memorandum, however, the other heirs at Antwerp had received only 7,971 fl. 14 st. each ‘in money’.1. Raphelengius had thus received an extra 3,123 fl. 13½ st. On the other hand his share of the stocks of printed books amounted to only 23,617 fl. 11 st.,2. while each of the other claimants had been given books to the value of 29,295 fl. 18½ st. Thus the extra 3,123 fl. 13½ st. in cash that Raphelengius collected was considered to be balanced by the 5,678 fl. 7½ st. less that he received in books.

It may be assumed that Moretus also received two shares of the books. Thus one sixth of Plantin's estate was considered to amount to 37,267 fl. 12½ st., comprising 7,971 fl. 14 st. in cash (or its equivalent) and 29,295 fl. 18½ st. in books. Moretus's share was worth 64,535 fl. 5 st. Plantin's estate therefore amounted to 47,830 fl. 4 st. in cash, or its equivalent, and 175.775 fl. 11 st. in books, giving a total of 223,605 fl. 15 st. However, the actual value of the books was as a rule considerably less than their nominal value: it can be seen from the figures quoted in the case of Jan Moretus and Frans Raphelengius that it was estimated at approximately one half of the nominal value. This would make Plantin's estate worth 136,000 fl. in round figures; more precisely, 47,830 fl. 4 st. in cash and 87,887 fl. 12½ st. in books, a total of 135,717 fl. 16½ st.

It would be presumptious in the absence of reliable conversion-tables to attempt to express this sum in present-day values.3. One thing is certain,

however: Plantin left behind a fortune that would make him a multi-millionaire by modern standards. The poor son of a gentleman's valet, the modest journeyman bookbinder, had not only won world fame, but at the same time had built up a fortune that was to ensure the future material prosperity of his family. Labore et Constantia!

To the estate that was shared out in 1590 should be added the personal belongings of Jeanne Rivière. They did not amount to a great deal. Plantin's widow continued to live in the Gulden Passer in the Vrijdagmarkt. Catharina Plantin and Hans Spierinck probably either went to live there with her, or at least settled in her immediate vicinity.1. At all events it was this couple who, after Jeanne's death on 17th August 1596, saw to the funeral and the settlement of the estate. They found 228 fl. 14½ st. in cash. The sale of the furniture brought in 2,718 fl. 8¾ st., and Moretus had to make up three months' pension, i.e. 200 fl.

The total value of Jeanne Rivière's estate consequently was 3,147 fl. 3¼ tt. An amount of 774 fl. 11¼ st. had to be deducted from this for the funeral, the small legacies and other expenses, leaving 2,372 fl. 12 st. This sum was divided not in five but in four parts, as it was agreed that Raphelengius should find his portion in the excess he had received in the Leiden estate, while at the same time the furniture left behind there by the Plantins in 1585/86 was also at his disposal.

The Raphelengius family - the sarcastic Frans Raphelengius the Younger in particular - felt that they had been discriminated against and repeatedly chided their Antwerp relatives on this account in their letters, but they seem to have resigned themselves to the settlement all the same. Thus Plantin's four other daughters, with their husbands, each received a final bequest of 593 fl. 3 st. from the printer's estate.2.

Those who disappeared from view

The Officina Plantiniana passed into the possession of Martina Plantin and Jan Moretus, and of their descendants, and it is with the story of this branch

of the family that the present work is mainly concerned. However, it would be doing less than justice to Christophe Plantin's other daughters and sons-in-law if they were dismissed from the narrative before a brief outline of their subsequent fortunes, and those of their families, had been given.

Margareta Plantin and the Raphelengius family1. - Frans Raphelengius (27th February 1539 - 20th July 1597) married Margareta Plantin (1547 - before 27th April 1594) on 23rd June 1565. They had six children:

The Raphelengius family remained established in Holland. Plantin's death ended the formal connection between the officinae in Antwerp and Leiden. Henceforth the Officina Plantiniana apud Franciscum Raphelengium went its own way, but this did not mean that all contact between the two houses ceased. Once the storm caused by Plantin's will had blown over, thanks to the accommodating spirit of Jan Moretus, the two families maintained the most cordial relations. They continually rendered each other all manner of services, great and small, although they never hesitated to call their respective kinsfolk over the coals or to quibble over a stuiver.

Four of the children of Frans and Margareta survived: three sons, Christoffel, Frans, and Joost, and one daughter, Elizabeth. Religious differences created a singular atmosphere within the family. It has already been seen that Frans Raphelengius became a Calvinist in the years 1579 to 1585, his wife remaining Catholic. This parental split extended to the children. Christoffel and Elizabeth became convinced Protestants,1. while Frans and Joost adhered to their mother's religion with equal tenacity. Concord seems to have prevailed within the family nonetheless, and the children collaborated - and to some extent even lived together - most harmoniously after their parents' death.

The Catholic members of the family do not seem to have felt very much at home in their Dutch Protestant milieu at first. In a letter of 27th September 1590 Frans junior wrote in the most unflattering terms of ‘ces pais barbares’, concluding with the words ‘En la melancolique ville de Leiden.’2. Later he must have grown reconciled to gloomy Leiden. At all events he never left the town and its environs again and when, many years later, Antwerp relatives were about to journey abroad for their pleasure, he was to write mockingly: ‘I commend your brother that he is going to amuse himself a little. It is a comfort to my brother and me that we are not the only ones to be so foolish as to waste our money (if I am to own the truth) just to see that there are no countries which surpass the Netherlands.’3.

Although the younger generation was soon completely integrated in the life of the North, Margareta Plantin was apparently never fully reconciled to her new surroundings. She was allergic to Holland, and this probably

had a psychological basis. Once when she returned from visiting her relatives in Antwerp her husband wrote to tell them of her safe arrival, concluding ‘Il n'y a seulement ce mal que ma femme s'est ressentie de l'air de Hollande approchant du pais, lequel n'est pas si propre à sa nature que cestuy de Brabant.’1. A few months later, in April 1594, Margareta died. Judging from his correspondence this must have been a grievous blow for Raphelengius. His own health was not at all good and on 20th July 1597, not yet fifty-nine years old, he followed his wife to the grave.

All his life Frans Raphelengius did a great deal of work, yet published very little. It has already been seen that, as a specialist in Oriental languages, he was one of Arias Montanus's foremost collaborators in the realization of the Polyglot Bible. In the Appendices of this work there appeared his Variae lectiones et annotatiunculae in Chaldaicam paraphrasim and his revision of Sante Pagnino's Hebrew grammar and glossary, while he was probably also responsible for the Greek dictionary.

At his own press in Leiden he published: Cl. Galenus de clysteribus et colica, interprete Francisco Raphelengio, 1591; Epitome thesauri linguae sanctae auctore Sancto Pagnino Lucensi. Fr. Raphelengius compluribus locis auxit et emendavit et appendicem dictionum Chaldaearum addidit, 1596 - an abridged but revised edition of the treatise that he had written for the Polyglot Bible, in 1572.

From 1570 at least he had shown enthusiasm for another Semitic language, little practised in the West, namely Arabic. With grim determination he laboured at a great dictionary of that language. He had Arabic characters cut at Leiden, illustrating them in 1595 in the Specimen characterum arabicorum Officinae Plantinianae Raphelengii. But he never had the satisfaction of seeing his great work in print, Francisci Raphelengii Lexicon Arabicum being published by his sons in 1613. His Tabulae in grammaticam arabicam, Lexicon persicum vocabulorum quae in Pentateucho and Observationes linguae hebraicae remained in manuscript.2.

Raphelengius is usually represented as having managed the printing-press at Leiden until his death in 1597. Nominally he was the head of the firm, which continued to publish in his name: ‘Ex Officina Plantiniana,

apud Franciscum Raphelengium.’ But by 1589 at the latest he had left the conduct of affairs in the hands of his eldest two sons: Christoffel, then twenty-three, was responsible for sales (‘trafique’) and the twenty-one-year-old Frans for the press.

Frans junior has already been encountered in this narrative. A pupil of Justus Lipsius, he showed himself to be by no means without merit as a humanist in his youth. In 1589 he edited the Decem tragoediae qiiae Lucio Annaeo Senecae tribuuntur which was published by Plantin. His poem on the death of his grandfather was honoured by being included among the products of the most eminent humanists of the day in the Plantin memorial album of 1590.1. After 1589 he gave up Latin letters for good in order to devote himself to business, but he continued to lard his correspondence with Latin tags and phrases. In these letters he also appears as an incorrigible jester, the family wit.

After their father's death in 1597 the two brothers carried on the business together, although to all outward appearances only Christoffel acted as what might be termed ‘responsible editor’. This position was, in part, forced upon them. When the ‘children and heirs of Raphelengius’ applied to be appointed to their father's old office of university printer, the Leiden senate retained only the Protestant Christoffel (9th November 1597).

The sudden death of Christoffel on 17th December 1600 made Frans the sole manager. In books about the Raphelengius family, the younger Frans is represented as having allowed the officina to decline until, after a protracted death-struggle, it came to an inglorious end in 1619. This is far from, correct. Christoffel's sudden death did throw Frans into some confusion. The Leiden senate passed him over when choosing a successor to Christoffel - probably because of his Catholicism, although it could also have been because of his personal conduct, which does not seem to have been exactly blameless;2. they appointed the more ‘reliable’ Jan Paedts Jacobszoon as university printer. Frans himself thought seriously of closing down the press, expressing this intention in many of the letters that he wrote to his Antwerp kin in the years 1601 and 1602. As late as 16th November 1602 he wrote ‘Moreover I am half resolved to sever myself once and for all from

most of the troubles of the printing-press’.1. What has so far been overlooked, however, is the fact that after 1602 Frans's letters to the Moretuses contained no more complaints about these troubles and that production, which had dwindled alarmingly in 1601 and 1602, rose again in 1603. Frans had pulled himself together.2.

In those years, as in Plantin's time, publishers and booksellers still did an important amount of their trade at the Frankfurt Fairs. Frans, and more particularly Christoffel, visited the fairs regularly. When after his brother's death, Frans complained about the cares of the business, this was undoubtedly because he found himself having to bear a threefold burden - keeping the press at Leiden in operation, selling his books, and spending a number of months in Germany each year.

In 1603 he must have found a satisfactory solution to this problem. What this solution was is a matter for conjecture, but in 1602 Joost Raphelengius, his younger brother, a physician, botanist and a Dutch author of some merit,3. returned to Holland after a long period of study and travel in Italy and the Turkish empire. He settled permanently in Leiden near his brother and appears to have been of great assistance to Frans on many occasions. It may be assumed with a considerable degree of confidence

that it was Joost's intermittent or continuing support which encouraged Frans to go on facing the vicissitudes of the trade.1.

Frans kept the Officina Plantiniana in Leiden going for another sixteen years. Then in 1619 he found that financially he was home and dry and so he and his brother liquidated the press.2. The stocks of books were publicly auctioned on 14th October 1619.3. The Moretuses had already purchased some of the typographical material - punches, matrices, woodblocks, copperplates - from their relatives. The liquidation gave them the opportunity of obtaining much of the rest. In this way a large part of the typographical stores which Plantin had taken to Leiden in 1583 or that had passed to Frans Raphelengius in 1589-90 returned to the main house in Antwerp.4.

Plantin's son-in-law was primarily a scholar and had entertained no great ambitions as a printer. On 18th July 1595 he wrote to his brother-in-law

Jan Moretus:1. ‘And believe me it is not honour that constrains us to print this kind of book [an edition of Clusius], for we content ourselves with our lesser sorts without undertaking weightier tasks which are more useful to others more powerful than ourselves, for it is better to be content with mediocrity than to aspire too high and incur harm in so doing.’2. These ‘lesser sorts’ were for the most part, as the younger Frans put it in a letter of 17th November 1590, ‘aucteurs bonarum literarum’3. - that is, editions of classical authors and scholarly commentaries on such works.

While in Antwerp - which had become a stronghold of militant Catholicism - Moretus was specializing in liturgical books and Catholic editions, the Leiden officina remained much closer to the Plantinian tradition. Frans Raphelengius and his sons may not have embarked on venturesome projects, but their ‘petites sortes’ meant more for the scientific and intellectual life of their time than the purely theological and liturgical works of their more productive kinsman in Antwerp.

At the end of the sixteenth and the beginning of the seventeenth century, the Leiden Officina Plantiniana had an international influence in the world of humanism through its publication of handy ‘pocket’ editions of classical authors. An example of this influence can be seen in the ‘travelling libraries’ of Sir Julius Caesar, the eminent English intellectual of the time of James I. More than half of these books are Leiden editions. Of the forty-three volumes in the set now in the British Museum, no less than twenty-three bear the Raphelengian mark; only one has Moretus's compasses.4. Of the forty-three books in the set at Leeds, twenty-seven were published at Leiden.5.

The Leiden officina influenced the intellectual life of the Northern Netherlands in another way. The fact that Frans Raphelengius was an eminent Orientalist, had Plantin's Hebrew types in his possession, and as a printer could easily have other more exotic characters cut, such as Arabic, Ethiopian, and Samaritan, enabled the University of Leiden to become the great European centre for the study of Oriental languages that it still is. It is true that most of the punches and matrices found their way to Antwerp, and that those for the Arabic characters were sold to an Englishman, but quite large quantities of type for the oriental languages mentioned remained in circulation in Holland. In 1621 the publisher Jan Maire printed the words Typis Raphelengianis on the title-pages of two Hebrew works so as to convince prospective buyers of the sound quality of the materials he had used, thereby underlining the significance of the Raphelengius family in this specialized branch of Dutch printing.1.

When he arrived in Leiden Frans Raphelengius - probably on his father-in-law's insistence - had stipulated that he should not be compelled to print works of political or religious import. He seems initially to have kept to this policy, but Christoffel, the ardent Calvinist, deviated from it. Between 1593 and 1600 he made use of his managerial position to publish a number of Protestant pamphlets and Orangist panegyrics.2. This displeased Jan Moretus, who took a poor view of the fact that while the Antwerp Officina Plantiniana had become a symbol of Catholic militancy, that at Leiden was beginning to perform an exactly similar function in the Calvinist ranks. He repeatedly made his displeasure known, although, as Frans junior was to write after his brother's death: ‘Mais c'estoit peine perdue d'en escrire à feu mon frère, car estant d'autre religion, il estimoit. faire honneur à Plantin, mettant son nom sur les livres de son opinione Dieu luy pardonne; errore peccavit, non malignitate.’3. Once Frans was

in charge he put an immediate stop to these publications, but without reversing the process and venturing to bring out works which favoured his own religion. Henceforth the Leiden press was strictly neutral once more, contenting itself with its ‘aucteurs bonarum literarum’.

The younger Frans Raphelengius also published a number of illustrated editions, utilizing wood-blocks and copperplates which had formed part of his family's share of the Plantin estate. They are among the most important products of the Leiden firm, and were certainly its most extensive. They included a new edition in 1603 of Sambucus's Icones medicorum, first printed by Plantin in 1574, and Dutch editions of Dodoens's Herbal in 1608 and 1618.1.

Joost Raphelengius died on 26th May 1628 of haemoptysis.2. Frans probably died in 1643.3. Elizabeth departed this life on 24th June 1648. In her will she remembered her Antwerp relative Balthasar II (grandson of Jan I Moretus), leaving him a few trifles:4. ‘[a picture of] her late brother Frans on a scroll, her brother Christoffel on a small round panel, her brother Joost, also on a small round panel, both done in Italy, with her grandmother the wife of Plantin, and as many prints on paper of her father as shall be found.’5. Probably these small paintings and engravings were never sent, or were lost, for no trace of them has been found in the Plantin-Moretus Museum.

Of the four surviving children of Frans Raphelengius and Margareta Plantin, only Christoffel married. The only child of this marriage, a daughter, Maeyke (1594 - 19th January 1664), was married in 1612 to Adriaan Joost van Musschenbroeck (died 1663). They had twelve children.

Their eldest son, Joost van Musschenbroeck (1613-1691), was the father of thirteen children. One of the girls, Sara (1647-1710), was married in 1683 to the Leiden bookseller Jordaen Luchtmans (1652-1709), becoming the ancestress of another prominent publishing family. There are people alive today who trace their descent from her.

In her will of 1648 Elizabeth also left something (‘the drawing of her brother Christoffel’) to a certain Christoffel Ravelingh. This was very probably an illegitimate son of brother Christoffel. The behaviour of the eldest son of Frans Raphelengius and Margareta Plantin seems, indeed, to have left much to be desired. In the same letter which reveals this - it was written on 30th September 1602 to Jan Moretus by no less a person than Justus Lipsius1. - his brother Frans also comes in for criticism: ‘La messaigière me diet, qu'il semble que F. Raphelengius veult vendre sa maison, et qu'il est au train du frere defunct, tient au logis une garce etc. Bels actes!’

Magdalena Plantin and the Beys and Périer families2. - It has been seen that Magdalena Plantin and Egidius Beys were in desperate straits in 1580.3. The bequest he received from Plantin's estate gave Beys a new chance. Immediately after his father-in-law's death he hurried to Antwerp, where he arrived looking like a beggar.4. Jan Moretus lent him money to buy clothes and shoes, and paid - out of the estate - a number of bills and demands for payment that had followed Egidius from Paris.5.

Magdalena Plantin (born 1557; died 27 Dec. 1599) married twice: first, on 27 Oct. 1572, Egidius Beys, who died 19 April 1595; then, in August 1596, Adrien Périer († before February 1629).1.

Magdalena Plantin and Egidius Beys had eleven children:2.

Acting on his wife's behalf Beys took part with the other heirs in the negotiations which led eventually to the division of Plantin's property. Meanwhile his wife and children had arrived from Paris, and with the money he had received from the estate he installed himself, with his family, as a publisher and bookseller in Antwerp, next door but one to Moretus in the Kammenstraat; he expressed his intention of competing as hard as he could with his brother-in-law.

Proudly he announced his relationship with Plantin in the books he printed, named his house the Gulden Passer and adopted as his printer's mark the compasses and the motto Labore et Constantia, combined with his own white lily and the motto Casta placent superis. The Psalmi Davidis, by G. Genebrardus, which Beys published in 1592, carried the pompously styled address ‘Antverpiae. Apud Aegidium Beysium, generum, et cohaeredem Christophori Plantini, sub signo Lilii albi, in Circino aureo’. The Petit pourmain devotieux par Damoiselle Barbe de Porquin, published in the same year, had the terser but equally pregnant ‘A Anvers. Chez Gilles Beys en la petite Imprimerie de Plantin.’

Moretus resented this taking of liberties with the name of Plantin. He maintained, justly, that according to the terms under which the estate had been divided up, only he had the right to call his firm the Officina Plantiniana and to use the compasses. Egidius refused to relinquish his claims in the matter, and the dispute was taken to court. Beys took the opportunity of filing a counter-claim: he demanded a share of the typographical privileges that Plantin had enjoyed and winch had been transferred en bloc to his brother-in-law. The court found against him in both instances - in the matter of the printer's mark as well as the privileges. But Moretus had just won his case, when, acting in his usual tolerant way, he came to an agreement with the contentious Beys whereby the latter received the right to print a number of quite profitable editions, on the express condition that he no longer used the Plantinian printer's mark.

Beys made no use of these privileges. In 1594 he chose to return to Paris. There can be no doubt that Moretus was greatly relieved to see him go. He may even have influenced his turbulent relative in this direction. Anyway, he promised Beys the monopoly of sales of his publications in France. The two brothers-in-law parted on comparatively good terms. The letter

of 16th October 1594, in which Egidius Beys told Jan Moretus that he had arrived safely in Paris, and had succeeded in renting his former premises in the rue Saint-Jacques again for a period of four years, ended with the cordial words: ‘Vostre frere et mellieur ami.’1.

In Paris Egidius set to work at once. A number of books appeared with his name - and the Plantin compasses, for the agreement with Moretus only applied to Antwerp. Then, very suddenly, on 19th April 1595, he died.

At the time of her husband's death, Magdalena and her family were in Leiden visiting the Raphelengii. She was recovering from an illness and so it was decided not to break the sad news to her for the moment. Her eldest son Christophe, who was then twenty years old, travelled to Paris alone to settle his father's affairs. He reached the French capital five weeks after his father's death to find that the house had been placed under seal, and three parties were disputing the ‘alien's’ estate. Christophe Beys had to move heaven and earth before they would relinquish their prize. Not until he had given documentary proof of his father's naturalization and his own French birth were the seals removed.2.

In September 1595 Magdalena arrived in Paris with the other children. In January of the following year her eldest daughter Madeleine married Jérémie Périer, a bookseller who also lived in the rue Saint-Jacques. In August 1596 she herself married Adrien Périer, brother of Jérémie and also a bookseller. Adrien moved into his wife's house, which continued to be called ‘Au Compas d'Or, à la Boutique de Plantin’. Some complicated family relationships ensued. Madeleine Beys became her mother's sister-in-law, Jérémie Périer the brother-in-law of his mother-in-law, while Adrien Périer became both stepfather and brother-in-law to Madeleine.

Two factors probably prompted Magdalena into this second marriage: her desire to provide those of her children, who were not yet of age, with a bread-winner, and her wish to carry on her first husband's business.

But Magdalena's second spell of married life did not last long. She died on 27th December 1599, scarcely forty-two years old, ‘du mal de poulmou’, which was probably either pneumonia or consumption.3. There were no

children from her marriage with Adrien Périer, in contrast with her fruitful first marriage. In the pathetic letter which she wrote to her father on 5th June 1589, she had implored his help for her ‘huict enfans et tantost neuf car je suis grosse de six mois’.1. She gave birth to at least two children in Antwerp, where she had gone after Plantin's death. In the case of three of the children born in Paris only the names are known and it may be assumed that they died in infancy. Her daughter Jeanne, born in Antwerp in 1592, only lived to the age of four. Thus Magdalena left seven children, of whom two were married and three were still minors.

Normally the second husband, Adrien Périer, should have become the legal guardian of these three minors. This meant, however, that he would also have had control over their share of their parents' estate. This did not greatly please the eldest son and one of his brothers-in-law, who were also in the book trade.2. The result was as squalid family quarrel, with all the inevitable recriminations, insinuations, and lawsuits. Matters were hardly improved when, three years after Magdalena's death, Adrien Périer married again, this time to a Dutchwoman by whom he had already two children.3.

At first, members of the family in Antwerp were kept quite regularly informed of how the quarrel was proceeding in letters in which each correspondent strove to monopolize this contact with the original Officina Plantiniana for his own benefit, or tried to gain at least some advantage over his rivals.4. After a few years this correspondence decreased and then finally petered out, save for a few letters from Christophe and Gilles Beys which will be discussed below. However, the family ties were never wholly severed, at least not while Jan Moretus and Martina Plantin were alive. In her will of 1616 Martina Plantin left fairly substantial sums of money to her relatives in France - although in some instances these simply represented remissions of debt.5.

The subsequent careers of the sons, daughters and sons-in-law of Magdalena Plantin and Egidius Beys must now be outlined. Of the four

surviving daughters, three married within the book trade. It has been seen that the eldest, Madeleine, married the bookseller Jérémie Périer in January 1596. He was active until 1623 in Paris, trading in the rue Saint-Jacques under die sign of Bellerophon. Their two sons, Christophe and Michel, were also registered as booksellers, in 1623 and 1624 respectively.

Marie Beys was married in 1598 to Olivier de Varennes, also a bookseller. When he died, in August 1623, Marie continued to run the shop herself. The de Varennes had eight children, one of whom, their son Olivier, was registered as a bookseller in 1625.

In August 1601 Marguerite Beys married Pierre Pautonnier, printer, bookseller and bookbinder - and possibly ‘the king's printer for Greek’ as well. He was active in Paris until 1608, but in 1606 a contagious disease had decimated his household and rendered his financial situation precarious. In 1614 he turned up in Antwerp, where he was entered on the citizens' roll on 17th January of that year as ‘Petrus Pottonier, innkeeper’. This new calling seems to have brought him no more profit than the old one. In her will of 1616 Martina Plantin, as well as remitting a debt owed her by ‘Pierre Pautonnier and the late Marguerite Beys’ (the latter must have died between 1614 and 1616), left a small sum of money ‘to the six children’ together with the rather considerable sum of 600 fl. stipulating that ‘les cinq enfans [presumably meaning the five who were still minors, and excluding the one who was already of age] doibvent estre assistez au moindre despens’.

In 1616 Pierre Pautonnier moved from Antwerp to Brussels where he launched out as a pastry-cook ‘in the new fashion’. This did not last long either, and on 2nd July 1618 he sent a letter to Balthasar Moretus from Prague in which he expressed the hope that his son Pierre had conveyed his ‘humbles recommendations’. At this point all trace of him is lost. A Balthasar and a Petrus Pautonnier are recorded in 1638 in the Cathedral register at Antwerp, in connection with the marriage of the former, but that is all that is known of these two Pautonniers.1.

Of the four Beys girls only Catherine married outside the book trade. It is recorded that she became the wife of Pierre Danton, a tinsmith, in the summer of 1602, but nothing else is known of her or her husband.

The three boys followed their father's profession. Jean Beys died in a

Paris hospital in 1606, scarcely twenty-two years old. Gilles, Egidius Beys's youngest offspring, learned the trade with his relatives in Antwerp and Leiden, and his stepfather Adrien Périer in Paris. In 1618 he was in Bordeaux but, as he wrote in a letter of 18th November to Balthasar Moretus: ‘c'est une ville ou il ne se fait grand traficq, je ne desire point y demeurer.’ Humbly he entreated Balthasar to take him into his service, ending with a pathetic, thrice repeated ‘cito’ (soon).1. This is the last record of him; at all events he seems never to have reached Antwerp again.

The eldest son of Egidius Beys and Margareta Plantin has been left until last because he was longest in contact with the Moretuses, and led the most eventful life. Christophe Beys must have been the image of his father: proud, self-willed and contentious. His stepfather testified: ‘Ce n'est pas qu'il ait faute d'esprit, mais il a trop d'ambition; il ne veust conseil de personne et se mocque de tout le monde.’ His life's course was even more turbulent than that of his father, and ended in greater poverty.2.

Christophe left home after his mother's second marriage and opened his own bookshop, but he made more debts than profit. What he inherited from his mother gave only a momentary respite. His shop was attached and sold by public auction and he himself was obliged to leave Paris. In 1608 he was established as a printer in Rennes, where he soon succeeded in making himself impossible. He brought a charge of witchcraft against a member of an important family, and thereby incurred the enmity of the influential relations of the person he had accused. Only by a hasty flight was Beys able to escape imprisonment and torture. After wandering for two years through Northern France, he finally settled in Lille, where he set up as a bookseller and printer in 1610. ‘Prototypographus Insulensis’ [first printer of Lille] was the grandiloquent title he adopted. For several years he prospered. He printed a relatively large number of works, and from time to time wrote topical or eulogistic poems that earned him a gratuity from the town authorities.

On 20th August 1628, however, he gave his daughter Georgina, his only child, in marriage to Simon Le Francq, the son of a well-to-do Lille family, who had learnt the trade of printing from Christophe Beys. Simon Le Francq set up his own printing-press which was later continued by his son Balthasar. It is open to question whether, as Beys alleged, the young printer offered his father-in-law ruthless competition. From that date, however, Beys's business began to decline. He bombarded his Antwerp relatives with letters in which vituperation of his daughter and son-in-law, lamentations over his piteous circumstances, glorification of his own virtues and entreaties for money and old clothes were all intermingled.

His wife, whose name is not known, died on 18th February 1638. ‘Now I am free and relieved of my wife and God grant that I may live out my days soberly, now that I am released from all that she has inflicted upon me during thirty years’ was what he wrote to Antwerp by way of obituary. Three months later he informed the Moretuses that he was contemplating matrimony again. On 6th May 1638, at the age of sixty-three, he married the thirty-year-old Isabella Robelet. Naturally this alienated him still further from his family and led to many absurd incidents which he discoursed upon at great length in his letters to Antwerp.1. In the end Christophe Beys lived almost exclusively on the small sums of money which the Moretuses regularly sent him. In 1647, at the age of seventy-two, he departed this life, mourned by no one.

In the history of the Beys family there is also an Adrien Beys who is often described as being a son of Egidius Beys and Magdalena Plantin. He was in fact a nephew of Egidius, his brother's son.2. He worked in Leiden with the Raphelengius family,3. and in 1602 he set up as a bookseller in Paris. He died in 1611 or 1612. Following the approved custom, his widow remarried a man from the trade, her second husband being the book-

seller Abraham Pacart.1. Adrien Beys had two sons: Denis became a bookseller (in 1640), while Adrien made something of a name for himself as a poet.

Catharina Plantin and the family of Arents, called Spierinck2. - We may be brief concerning Plantin's other two daughters: in fact, as details are lacking, brevity is obligatory. Being settled in Antwerp, they wrote no letters to the Moretuses, so that the most important source of information about the family is not available in their case.

Hans Arents died in 1611, so that Catharina Plantin outlived her second husband by eleven years. They had at least seven children, but only their eldest daughter, Anna, is known to have married and produced children.

Catharina Plantin had a son, called Pierre, by her first marriage who must have been born in Paris in 1572. In 1601 ‘cousin Pierre Gazan’ arrived in Paris from Antwerp, according to a letter from Olivier de Varennes to Jan Moretus, dated 17th June of that year.3. He was mentioned again among the beneficiaries in Martina Plantin's will of 1616, which states ‘Pierre Gassan debte quitte 337 fl. 6 st.’.4. From a note in the ledger in which this ‘bequest’ was entered it appears that ‘Pierre Gassan, dict Plantin’ was then a doctor at Saint-Gaudens.5.

Catharina Plantin (born 1553; died ...ber 1622)6. married 26 Nov. 1575 Hans Arents called Spierinck (died 13 Aug. 1611). They had seven children:

Henrica Plantin and the Moerentorf family1. - Pieter Moerentorf died in 1616. Henrica Plantin, who from 1620 at least had lived in the IJzeren Passer (Iron Compasses) in the Heilig Geeststraat,2. followed her husband in 1640. She was, in the words of the letter of condolence addressed to her heirs by the journeymen in the Officina Plantiniana,3. the ‘last scion and fruit of the great and world-renowned stem of Christophe Plantin’.4. The letter ended with a request to commemorate the occasion in a fitting manner: ‘We humbly request that we may be permitted to enjoy the blessing of the Requiem eternam as did our forerunners from the first Planter and founder of this Press, hoping that in the last branch of this fruitful vine there will yet be some sap wherewith the Mourning journeymen may comfort their sad hearts.’5.

Henrica Plantin (born 1561/62; died 29 November 1640) married 1 June 1578 Pieter Moerentorf (born 19 June 1544; died 16 March 1616). They had seven sons and two daughters; only one of the sons is recorded as having had children. Four of their offspring, two sons and two daughters, went into the church.

The most remarkable figure in this branch of the Plantin family was undoubtedly Theodorus, who became a Jesuit in 1618 at Malines, later teaching philosophy, theology and mathematics at Prague and Breslau [Wroclaw]. He published a number of treatises on these three subjects and also on physics, some of them being of considerable merit. Two of his religious discourses were printed in the Officina Plantiniana by his Antwerp relatives. They were the Soliloquia ad obtestationes Davidicas et Psalmorum allegoria, 1656 and De principatu B. Virginis, 1670. His achievements in mathematics were particularly laudable.1.

His sister Joanna made a by no means unimportant contribution to ecclesiastical life in Antwerp.1. She became a nun in the convent of the Annonciades at Louvain in 1604, at the age of twenty. In 1608 she accompanied the group of nuns who went to Antwerp to found a new house of the Order there. She spent the rest of her life in that convent, holding important positions. To quote the obituary written by the mother house at Louvain: ‘In the year 1663 on the 7th April our beloved Sister Joanna Moerentorf Jubilarie departed this life... and who has served most laudably in various offices, being for some years chronicler (?) and for ten years Novices Mistress, and after that Sub-Prioress for twelve years and for eighteen years Mother Superior. May her soul rest in peace. Amen.’ Van der Straelen, who gives this quotation, adds: ‘She was a zealous and intelligent Nun, who wrote various books concerning her convent, among others an in quarto “Briefly recording in what manner, for what reasons, when and by whom this Convent of the Annonciades here in Antwerp had its beginning and continuation.” She described the whole foundation of this new convent and church etc. most concisely and wondrously therein.’

Sister Joanna collected many gifts and alms for the new foundation, not least from her own relatives. It was through her that her cousin, Balthasar I Moretus, whose career as master of the Gulden Passer is described later in this book, became the great benefactor of the new convent.

When the first stone of the Antwerp Church of the Annonciades was laid on 10th April 1614, Balthasar allowed himself to be persuaded to become the nuns' patron. In the following years he fulfilled this function in a very concrete and generous manner. He lent the sisters considerable sums of money - forgoing repayment in some instances, donated numerous books, and in 1620 embellished the convent church with a large stained-glass window showing Mary with the Apostles receiving the Holy Ghost.

When a precious relic was entrusted to the Annonciades in 1628 - the head of the martyr St. Just, saved from the flames of the Franciscan friary at Zutphen that had been set on fire by the Protestants - it was Balthasar

who furnished a chapel to the saint on the north side of the choir in the convent church. He also donated a suitable altarpiece, showing the martyred St. Just with his severed head under his arm, painted by the great Rubens himself. The picture is now one of the treasures of the Bordeaux Musée des Beaux-Arts. The grateful sisters commissioned in 1639 J. Witdoeck to make an engraving of the painting, with a dedication to their benefactor ‘Clarissimo V.D. Balthasari Moreto, Architypographo Regio’.1.