{"id":7082,"date":"2016-06-27T16:15:22","date_gmt":"2016-06-27T16:15:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.culturesofknowledge.org\/?p=7082"},"modified":"2016-06-27T20:57:25","modified_gmt":"2016-06-27T20:57:25","slug":"labore-et-constantia-christophe-plantin","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.culturesofknowledge.org\/?p=7082","title":{"rendered":"‘Labore et Constantia’: Christophe Plantin"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Plantin_(after_Goltzius)\"

‘Christophe Plantin’, by Hendrik Goltzius. 1580s, engraving. (Source of image, Wikimedia Commons)<\/p><\/div>\n

The catalogue published in EMLO this week \u2014 a\u00a0calendar of the correspondence of the late-sixteenth century printer Christophe Plantin<\/a>\u00a0\u2014 is symbolic on a number of\u00a0levels. Self educated and with little by way of privilege or influential contacts behind him, Plantin made his way from France to Antwerp, where he set up his printing press and worked to develop a business, the Officina Plantiniana<\/a><\/em>, that expanded to become the largest typographical firm in Europe. Plantin was talented. In\u00a0decades that experienced\u00a0exceptional political and religious turmoil in the Spanish Netherlands, he negotiated successfully to publish works by both Protestants and Catholics alike. With judicious foresight, he opened and maintained (alongside his headquarters in Antwerp) offices in Leiden and Paris, and he developed a publishing empire that was able to\u00a0continue seamlessly under the direction of\u00a0his sons-in-law after his death. Indeed, the descendants of Jan Moretus<\/a>, who ran\u00a0the Antwerp branch, continued in business\u00a0until the second half of the nineteenth century.<\/p>\n

This calendar of his correspondence has been created from the invaluable nine volumes edited by Max Rooses<\/a>\u00a0(of\u00a0Corpus Diplomaticus Rubenianum<\/em> fame, on which EMLO\u2019s Rubens catalogue<\/a> is based) and Jan Denuc\u00e9. These two editors were\u00a0consecutive curators at the Museum Plantin-Moretus<\/a>,\u00a0in Antwerp, where\u00a0the family\u2019s and firm\u2019s archive is housed. The catalogue in EMLO is a collaborative work, and I’m proud to say that a large number of Digital Fellows (amongst whom number postgraduate and undergraduate students, librarians, editors, translators, and interns), as well as scholars\u00a0visiting the Cultures of Knowledge project and work experience students, have rolled up their collective sleeves\u00a0to enter this metadata as part of their initial training with the union catalogue. It has been a joy to be involved with Plantin’s\u00a0catalogue and to see this\u00a0calendar of his letters come into being, and all involved deserve tremendous credit.<\/p>\n

Plantin\u2019s letters afford\u00a0an extraordinarily detailed insight into the workings of an early modern printing house, including its day-to-day business and pan-European negotiations. They provide, furthermore, an example of a man who found a way\u00a0to succeed against the backdrop of military intervention\u00a0and the religious and political struggles\u00a0that became\u00a0the hallmark of his age. Antwerp was an important centre of humanism, and Plantin corresponded with many leading individuals, including the renowned scholar Justus Lipsius, whose oeuvre\u00a0<\/em>the press printed. The two men were close friends, and\u00a0Plantin\u00a0kept a room\u00a0where Lipsius\u00a0could\u00a0live as he worked to correct his proofs. Known now as the \u2018Justus Lipsiuskame<\/em>r\u2019 or ‘chambre Lipsius<\/em>‘,\u00a0this\u00a0may be visited at the Museum Plantin-Moretus.<\/p>\n

In today’s\u00a0times\u00a0of trouble, Plantin\u2019s letters provide reassurance that it is possible for scholars, publishers, editors, technicians, and librarians from across Europe to come together, just as we do at present through the COST Action\u00a0\u2018Reassembling the Republic of Letters<\/a>\u2019 to study\u00a0and discuss\u00a0the intricate\u00a0networks of our early modern individuals whose correspondences transcended many\u00a0boundaries. This\u00a0twenty-first century community is emerging as\u00a0an electronic republic in its own right, and there is a satisfying\u00a0symmetry to be found in the\u00a0echo of the principles that underpin the correspondences of those whose lives and interconnections we work with such painstaking care to reassemble. This week’s publication\u00a0in the union catalogue\u00a0contains at its heart\u00a0a glimmer of\u00a0hope that we are able to draw together as partners, as well as proof that we work to share our developments, our workflows, and our standards. It demonstrates how we are able to\u00a0unite and, here at EMLO, we\u00a0are truly delighted to announce\u00a0that thanks to a collaboration with, and the generosity of, the scholar and editor Dr Jeanine de Landtsheer<\/a>\u00a0Christophe Plantin’s catalogue\u00a0is to be followed very shortly by one for\u00a0his valued\u00a0friend, none other than the humanist Justus Lipsius.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The catalogue published in EMLO this week \u2014 a\u00a0calendar of the correspondence of the late-sixteenth century printer Christophe Plantin\u00a0\u2014 is symbolic on a number of\u00a0levels. Self educated and with little by way of privilege or influential contacts behind him, Plantin made his way from France to Antwerp, where he set up his printing press and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7082","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.culturesofknowledge.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7082","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.culturesofknowledge.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.culturesofknowledge.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.culturesofknowledge.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.culturesofknowledge.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7082"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.culturesofknowledge.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7082\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.culturesofknowledge.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7082"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.culturesofknowledge.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7082"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.culturesofknowledge.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7082"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}