Custom Clothes: Biblia Sacra

Biblia Sacra

In 1555 Christophe Plantin (ca 1520-1589) established in Antwerp one of the most successful printing and publishing businesses of all time. Still in family hands, the Plantin Press continued operating until 1867. Still standing, the company's former premises now comprise the Museum Plantin-Moretus.Although he professed himself a devout Catholic, Plantin came under the suspicion of heresy during his lifetime and it is now thought that he was probably a member of a heretical sect known as the Family of Love. Born near the city of Tours, he worked in his younger years as a bookbinder in Paris. In the first half of the sixteenth century the French capital was a dangerous place for anyone in the book trade suspected of disseminating literature tinged with Reformation ideas. This might have prompted Plantin to move to the more liberal atmosphere of Antwerp in 1549.