Biblia: ad vetustissima exemplaria castigata: quid in horum bibliorum castigatione praestitum sit, subsequens praefatio latius indicabit. Antwerp: Christophe Plantin, 1565.
It is around the mid-sixteenth century that the Netherlands emerges as a force in European printing. The golden age of Netherlandish book production was initiated by the name of Plantin which became a dominant firm into the seventeenth century, especially in the southern Roman Catholic part of the country.
Christophe Plantin (ca. 1520-89) was a Frenchman who learnt to print in Paris but settled in Antwerp from 1549. He soon became the foremost publisher of the northern European trade, and employed 22 presses by 1576, thus equalling Koberger’s establishment three generations earlier.
In his own lifetime, Plantin printed nearly 2,000 books, employed quality type-cutters and placed much store in good and copious illustration. His main interest however lay in publishing rather than printing, and the diversity of his publications is imposing; it includes liturgical and religious texts, Greek and Latin authors, scientific and medical works, and modern French writers. His eight-volume Polyglot Bible of 1568-73 is considered his greatest work.
The Reed Collection includes a copy of Plantin’s 1565 Latin Bible. The text is that of the 1547 Louvain Bible, the first printed Bible issued after the Council of Trent declared the Latin Vulgate the official Bible of the Roman Catholic Church in 1546.
Biblia: ad vetustissima exemplaria castigata: quid in horum bibliorum castigatione praestitum sit, subsequens praefatio latius indicabit. Antwerp: Christophe Plantin, 1565.
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