The details of many privileges granted to early modern books survive only as summaries, which by official legislation printers were required to include in their books.¹³ How reliably do these summaries reflect the actual nature of the privilege granted, however? Could publishers in the early modern era rely on the information offered in printed summaries? And to what extent can researchers today rely on the content of privilege summaries? In 2021, the Flemish Community acquired a design drawing by Peter Paul Rubens for a book illustration from the Plantin Press.¹⁴ This acquisition prompted investigation of the privilege pertaining to the book for which the draft was ordered. Comparison of the privilege summary printed in Franciscus Aguilonius’s book on optics with the original privilege for this edition issued by the Council of Brabant has proved that Balthasar Moretus i printed what he wished to be true rather than what was true.¹⁵ In the summary, he boldly extended the territorial scope of the privilege from the Duchy of Brabant to the entire Habsburg Netherlands. In addition, he added his mother as a patentee.¹⁶ Was Balthasar’s alteration an isolated case or a regular practice at the Plantin Press? What does this case say about the reliability of the other privilege summaries compiled by Balthasar Moretus i? And does this knowledge allow us to make deductions regarding those privilege summaries published by Balthasar’s competitors in the Habsburg Netherlands?

For publishers, the deployment of the privilege system as a weapon against the Reformation was of little import; the role of the privilege was to protect them from illicit competition.¹⁷ But a printer can only be expected to observe privileges granted to their competitors as they understand them to obtain, and the records of those granted by either the Council of Brabant or the Privy Council were not open to contemporary printers. In any case, it is not as if these records were either exhaustive or accurate. The privileges issued by the Council of Brabant were recorded by the Audit Office in their account books. Prosper Verheyden published transcriptions of entries in these account books relating to sixteenth-century printers, which were considerably supplemented by Lode Van den Branden.¹⁸ Largely based on the Archives of the Privy Council, Michel Baelde compiled a chronological list of the printing privileges granted by this government body in the sixteenth century.¹⁹ For contemporary printers, these data were not available since the administrations of the two Councils kept these records purely for internal use. The Audit Office of the Council of Brabant charged fees for making the seal. The entries in the account books often failed to mention for which book or books a privilege was granted but merely the exact amount of seal duty received.²⁰ Van den Branden has also observed that Christophe Plantin reported on three printer’s patents which are absent from the account books, casting no little doubt on the completeness of these account books.²¹ In addition, Verheyden, Van den Branden, and Baelde only collected data relating to sixteenth-century privileges. Their efforts have not yet been undertaken with regard to the privileges granted by governments in the Southern Netherlands in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.

While modern researchers have these resources at their fingertips, early modern printers did not. Having a bailiff serve the privilege on fellow printers was one option to let competitors known they could not print a certain work. Yet, research on Antwerp printers indicates that the bailiff procedure was rarely used in the seventeenth century.²² Balthasar Moretus i sent a bailiff to a persistent competitor only once, when he learned that his former associate Jan van Meurs was preparing a new edition of the Missale Romanum. This competing edition infringed on the privilege for all liturgical editions enjoyed by the Officina Plantiniana since the time of their founder Christophe Plantin. His successor Jan Moretus i managed to have his father-in-law’s privileges regarding the most common liturgical editions and Bible editions in various languages combined into a general privilege for the duration of his life. Subsequent generations succeeded in having the general privilege reaffirmed at each generational hand-over.²³ Since liturgical editions were an increasingly important part of the Officina’s publisher’s list, Balthasar Moretus used all possible means to block his competitor.²⁴ Hence, bailiff Guilielmus Leys showed the general privilege Moretus had held since 1610 to Van Meurs on 17 March 1639.²⁵ Research by Stijn van Rossem has revealed that the Antwerp printing family Verdussen also used the bailiff procedure only exceptionally for important cases. After Hieronymus Verdussen ii obtained a ten-year privilege on chronicles from the Council of Brabant in 1632, he ordered the same bailiff Leys to show the privilege to a selection of competitors. The targeted competitors were major producers of almanacs, of which chronicles were an integral part. When his son Hieronymus iii gradually took over his father’s business in 1643, he had bailiff Leys serve a set of five privileges covering twenty-six editions to all Antwerp printers. In addition, he ordered a bailiff in 1644 and again in 1672 to show his privilege on mint ordinances to a few well-chosen competitors.²⁶ In the cases of Moretus and Verdussen, the bailiff procedure was mostly used in a very targeted way to deter the major competitors. Neither the Moretuses nor the Verdussens sent a bailiff to every competitor for every edition.

The average printer, however, did not learn of the existence of most printing privileges from bailiffs. The simplest way to gain knowledge of what privileges might obtain to a book was (and still is) to consult the edition concerned. The obligation to indicate author, printer, place, and year of publication somewhere in the edition dates back to the 1529 heresy edict.²⁷ On 11 March 1616, in the first proper ordinance regulating the book trade, the archdukes imposed the additional obligation to include data relating to approbation and privilege on the first or last page of each edition.²⁸ However, publishers hardly ever provided the full text of a privilege in their books, printing in its place a mere summary, often in the language of the publication. For publishers in the Habsburg Netherlands, these printed summaries represented the most accessible source of information about their competitors’ privileges. That this was in most part accepted as the only accessible source of such information is clear from the case of the Cambrai printer Jean de La Rivière, who successfully defended himself against accusations of infringing Balthasar Bellere’s privilege by arguing that the information on the privilege was lacking in his competitor’s book and that he therefore could not reasonably be expected to have known about it.²⁹

Early modern printers struggled with the reliability of privilege summaries which they encountered in their competitors’ books. An intriguing case revealed that even the renowned printer Christophe Plantin (c. 1520-1589) believed a false claim made in a competitor’s printed summary.³⁰ The original privilege for the Dutch Bible translation issued by the Privy Council quoted Plantin’s petition, in which Plantin referred to the privilege previously granted to his fellow Antwerp printer Hans de Laet: ‘Also, a Bible in Dutch previously printed with privilege in Antwerp by Hans de Laet, which the applicant has recently improved with numeration of concordances in the margin.’³¹ The privilege issued by the Council of Brabant contains the same quote.³² Plantin was clearly convinced that De Laet had obtained the privilege before, but did he? In three Dutch Bible editions published by Hans De Laet between 1556 and 1565, he printed the same brief compilation of a privilege issued by secretary De la Torre on 22 November 1551 and some unspecified approbations: ‘This Bible has been inspected and approved by certain learned men who have been approved for that purpose by His Imperial Majesty, and has been authorised for printing on the twenty-second day of November 1551. Signed i. de la Torre.’³³

De Laet reinforced the impression that he held the privilege by the claim ‘with patronage and privilege’ at the bottom of the imprint on the title page.³⁴ Crucial information – namely the grantee and the duration of the privilege – is lacking. Perhaps most telling is that Hans De Laet did not claim to hold the privilege himself. But who did? Details concerning this privilege can be found in a Bible edition printed in Louvain in 1553 by Anthoni Maria Bergaigne for Bartholomeus Gravius.³⁵ In the front matter, Bergaigne included the full text of the privilege, which was dated 20 November 1551 – apparently, De Laet was mistaken in referring to November 22. This privilege extended Gravius’s existing privilege, which was still valid until 9 November 1552 by three more years, to 9 November 1555.³⁶ When Hans De Laet published his first Bible edition in 1556, Gravius’s extended privilege had expired for one year. Apparently, Hans de Laet never applied for a privilege himself, and referred briefly to an already expired privilege granted to a competitor.³⁷ In this, he was copied by the heirs of Arnold Birckman i, who included virtually the same reference to Bergaigne’s privilege in their 1565 Bible edition.³⁸

While Plantin was plainly deceived by De Laet’s obfuscation, he quite possibly learnt from his mistake, and applied similar tactics when summarising his privileges in his third edition of the Dutch-language Bible of 1577. The six-year privileges granted by the Privy Council and the Council of Brabant in 1565 had expired some time previously. Plantin shortened the summary of the privilege and cleverly omitted the (expired) period of validity.³⁹

The intriguing cases at the Plantin Press demonstrate the need for a thorough investigation of printed privilege summaries. Scholars have previously focused on publishing sources related to the Council of Brabant and the Privy Council, or both.⁴⁰ Jerome Machiels undertook a near-systematic survey of printing privileges, relying on these source publications but also on the information in Nijhoff-Kronenberg, the inventory of books printed in the Netherlands in the years 1500-1540.⁴¹ Stijn van Rossem has explored the privilege strategy of the Antwerp printing dynasty Verdussen in the seventeenth century. In the process, he also compared 82 original, handwritten privileges preserved in the Plantin-Moretus archives with 376 printed summaries in the books. These printed summaries published by four generations Verdussen throughout the seventeenth century refer to 269 unique manuscript privileges, of which only about 30 percent have been preserved.⁴²

For this article, I examined every privilege preserved in the Plantin-Moretus archives granted either by the Council of Brabant or the Privy Council to the Officina Plantinia or its authors during Balthasar Moretus i’s period of management (23 September 1610-8 July 1641). Ninety-three manuscript privileges granted to the Officina Plantiniana or its authors during the suzerainty of Balthasar Moretus i survive in the archives, each of which served to protect one or more Plantin editions (see the appendix). The set reveals that the Officina Plantiniana mainly requested privileges from the Council of Brabant, which was named in ninety privileges, with the remaining three being granted by the Privy Council. The territorial scope of the former was limited to the Duchy of Brabant and the Habsburg territories across the river Meuse.⁴³ A similar story is told in the privileges requested by the Verdussens.⁴⁴ This is quite possibly a result of all three of the major printing centres – Antwerp, Brussels, and Louvain – being within Brabant. Without a Brabant privilege, then, printers were cut off from the principal market in the Habsburg Netherlands and struggled to make a profit on their editions.⁴⁵ The general privileges for the liturgical editions and Bibles issued by the two Councils were excluded in the survey in order to focus on those works for which the Officina Plantiniana had to apply for privilege with each and every edition.⁴⁶

Even though Balthasar Moretus i’s printed summaries invariably related to one specific work (the work they were printed with), the privileges themselves often applied to multiple works.⁴⁷ A total of 147 printed privilege summaries were consulted, ranging from first editions to reissues, both online and in physical copies. Unfortunately, there is no complete bibliography of Balthasar Moretus i’s editions as there are for the works of his father and grandfather, which means that the printed editions mentioned in the privileges were retrieved primarily from the Short Title Catalogue Vlaanderen (stcv).⁴⁸ The stcv often includes images of the privilege summaries, which greatly facilitated my research. This core corpus was supplemented by copies of Moretus imprints from the Museum Plantin-Moretus, copies which Google Books has recently digitised to a significant extent. In the case of twenty-six editions for which no images of privilege summaries were available, I consulted the physical copies preserved at the Museum Plantin-Moretus and the Ruusbroec Institute at the University of Antwerp.

The 93 privileges given to Balthasar Moretus i protected a total of 152 works, of which 128 first editions and another 20 reissues are still extant.⁴⁹ The difference between the number of print editions (148) and the number of works mentioned in the 93 privileges (152) has three causes. Firstly, in the case of three of these books, privileges were granted by both the Council of Brabant and the Privy Council.⁵⁰ The reason is that printers occasionally applied for a privilege for the same work from both institutions.⁵¹ Secondly, in the case of another title Balthasar Moretus i by mistake twice requested a privilege from the Council of Brabant.⁵² Thirdly, it is possible that some untraced works are lost books, as the rate of survival for early modern books is very low.⁵³ Because Balthasar ran two internal production lists, however, the dark number of lost books is extremely limited for the Officina Plantiniana during his management.⁵⁴ The two production lists provide details on (nearly) every edition issued by Balthasar Moretus. Finally, not every work reached the printing stage. The Plantin-Moretus archives keep a few examples of printer’s copies that were never actually printed.⁵⁵

The text of both privilege and summary followed a set pattern with some recurring elements. Privileges kept to a rigorous request and decision pattern, while summaries only represented the decision that resulted. The privilege issued in 1612 by the Council of Brabant for Franciscus Aguilonius’s book on optics (fig. 2) will serve to make these distinctions clear.⁵⁶ The opening words of the privilege refer to the request addressed to the archdukes’ Council of Brabant. The reference to the sovereigns is cleverly exploited in the summary (fig. 3). After the announcement Summa privilegii, the summary starts with the names and condensed titles of the archdukes. The Duchy of Brabant is always mentioned in the privilege. The summaries make it seem that the privilege was granted personally by the sovereigns and not by the Council of Brabant. After Albert’s death in 1621, Balthasar Moretus i replaced the names of Archdukes Albert and Isabella with King Philip iv of Spain. The Aguilonius privilege continued by naming the petitioners as ‘Baltasar and Jan Mourentorff, printers and booksellers residing in the city of Antwerp’.⁵⁷ As summaries do not mention petitioners but grantees, their names were mentioned further in the text. Both privilege and summary mention the title and author of the work for which the privilege was applied or granted. Privileges often also mention the name of the censor. In summaries, the work is usually highlighted in italics, but in the Aguilonius case set in small caps.

Next, the Aguilonius summary mentioned the grantee, in this case Martina Plantin and her sons Balthasar and Jan Moretus. The duration period followed in both privilege and summary; in this case ten years. While the privilege defined the territorial scope to ‘anywhere within the lands of Brabant and the lands across the river Meuse’, the summary extended the scope to ‘these Netherlands’.⁵⁸ The privilege stated the penalty for violators in detail – confiscation of the books and a fine of one hundred golden reales – whereas the summary only vaguely referred to unspecified severe fines for violating the privilege. Both privilege and summary end with the place and date of issuing and the name of the signing secretary.

Apart from the content components, language also represents a key difference. The printed summaries were drafted consistently in Latin, which was in almost all instances the language of publication. Conversely, the original privileges were drafted in the vernacular, the vast majority in Dutch, with only twelve examples in French. The Officina Plantiniana produced not only a summary of the privileges but also a translation. The printer’s copy of the privilege summary as published in Aguilonius’s book on optics has been preserved (fig. 4).⁵⁹ The draft summary is in Balthasar Moretus i’s hand, and he most likely translated and truncated the Dutch text of the privilege into Latin personally. It is commonly acknowledged that Balthasar Moretus i was intellectually gifted and a very talented Latinist.⁶⁰ In the draft summary of the Aguilonius privilege, Balthasar underlined the words to be put into small caps. Under his management, the Officina Plantiniana also issued one Italian and two Spanish editions. Only one of the Spanish editions had the summary translated into Spanish – the other Spanish edition and the Italian one merely included a brief statement on the privilege in Latin, mentioning only the sovereign and the secretary.

A comparison of the grantees mentioned in the printed summaries with the petitioners mentioned in the original privileges reveals two issues. Firstly, the printed summaries, with one exception, always mention the Moretuses as the beneficiary of the privilege.⁶¹ However, seventeen of the original privileges were granted to the author, translator, or editor on his petition.⁶² One of these privileges was even granted to a third party whose relation to the work remains unclear.⁶³ In thirteen cases, the petitioner was allowed to have the work printed by a sworn printer of his choice in the Duchy of Brabant, and in one case was limited to any Antwerp printer.⁶⁴ In the remaining four privileges, the petitioner was given permission to have the work printed by Balthasar Moretus i.⁶⁵

Secondly, in case the Moretuses were the petitioners, Balthasar Moretus i tended to match the names of the grantees with the imprint on the title page. The persons included on the imprint generally reflected the current shareholder structure of the Officina Plantiniana (see tab. 1 above). Until her death in 1616, their mother Martina Plantin (1550-1616) continued to be mentioned on the imprint of their editions as a partner. During Martina Plantin’s lifetime, she was listed in twenty-four out of twenty-eight printed summaries as a grantee alongside her sons Balthasar and Jan. In reality, she was listed as petitioner in only one privilege, which in turn did not include her sons.⁶⁶ From 1616 until Jan ii’s sudden death on 11 March 1618, both brothers are mentioned in the imprint.⁶⁷ Jan ii’s widow Maria de Sweert inherited his share while her brother-in-law Jan van Meurs joined the business and took over the late Jan ii’s duties. From 1618 to 1629, the names of the three partners were mentioned in the imprints: ‘Antwerp, at the Plantin Press, by Balthasar Moretus, the widow of Jan Moretus, and Jan van Meurs.’⁶⁸ During the association with Van Meurs, the grantees in the privilege summary no longer matched the imprint. Balthasar Moretus was the only grantee mentioned in thirty-five out of forty-six summaries. In eight summaries, the grantee’s name is absent. Two privileges were issued during his brother’s lifetime, but since the editions were printed a few years after Jan’s death, the summaries only mentioned Balthasar Moretus as the grantee and not his brother.⁶⁹ Another summary mentioned that the author, as grantee of the privilege, had granted the permission to print to Balthasar Moretus.⁷⁰ After the association with Van Meurs ended abruptly in argument, Balthasar Moretus i continued the Officina Plantiniana alone with his sister-in-law, Maria de Sweert, though she was no longer involved in the day-to-day operations. From 1629, she was also no longer mentioned on the imprints.⁷¹ Presumably, the alignment of the grantees in the privilege summary with the imprint on the title page that had occurred up to 1618 was the result of a consistent branding policy. This policy was abandoned as soon as Jan van Meurs took the place of the deceased Jan Moretus in 1618.

The summaries also implicitly rectified lapses in the privileges. Secretary Steenhuyse of the Council of Brabant granted two privileges consecutively to Jan Moretus in 1628, even though both father Jan and son Jan had by then been deceased for many years.⁷² In one summary, Balthasar replaced his father’s or brother’s name with his own.⁷³ The other summary in this instance was so brief that it only mentions the name of the monarch and the secretary.⁷⁴ Jan van Meurs’s name was not mentioned in any privilege or summary. Presumably, this was a precautionary measure, as it prevented Van Meurs from claiming any rights to the privileges of the Officina Plantiniana should the association be broken. In hindsight, this turned out to be a wise decision. Following his exit from the business, Van Meurs convinced the Jesuit author Othon van Zyll (1588-1656) to switch from the Plantin Press and allow Van Meurs to publish his next work.⁷⁵ Van Meurs subsequently became the Moretuses’s main competitor in the liturgical book market.⁷⁶

The statement of duration is a crucial element of a privilege, as it specifies the period for which the privilege is valid from the date of issue. These two dates therefore combine to determine a privilege’s expiry date. Fully 23 percent of the printed privilege summaries failed to include the statement of duration, and in those summaries that did include such a statement, it was incorrect in 6 percent of the cases. In five of the cases, the validity given in the print summary was longer than in the actual privilege, and it was shorter in two of them. Such errors could result from careless copying of a previous summary, or from privilege merging.⁷⁷ If Balthasar Moretus had obtained privileges from both the Privy Council and the Council of Brabant, he merged the two privileges into a single summary that referred to two secretaries, as had been the case since the days of Christophe Plantin.⁷⁸ When privileges were merged, Balthasar Moretus always adopted the longest validity regardless of origin. For instance, both the Council of Brabant and the Privy Council granted a privilege to Frederik van Marselaer for his work Legatvs libri dvo.⁷⁹ With a ten-year duration, the Brabant privilege exceeded the six-year privilege issued by the Privy Council by four years. When Balthasar Moretus merged these privileges, he quoted the longest duration.⁸⁰

Surprisingly, even original privileges sometimes lack the period of validity. Secretary Alexander Boudewijns granted two privileges to the Moretuses in 1613 and 1614, both of which lacked any mention of their duration.⁸¹ Of the thirty-four privileges signed by secretary Steven van Steenhuyse, only one lacks a duration statement.⁸² These outliers notwithstanding, in the main, original privileges have a much higher degree of reliability than printed summaries. Analysis of the ninety privileges granted by the Council of Brabant provides insight into their actual duration. Privileges as granted were not entirely consistent when it came to duration. Privileges granted to the Moretuses between 1610 and 1641 had durations that ranged between three and twelve years, with a mean of seven years and a mode of six.⁸³ Individual secretaries differed in the durations they authorised. Secretary Van Steenhuyse set the duration of the privileges that he signed between 1614 and 1631 at six years with only one exception of eight years. From 1631, the duration fluctuated between six and twelve years with an average of 8.5 years. Secretary De Witte on the other hand, with twenty-three privileges the second most prolific issuer to the Moretuses, set the duration for the first four privileges he signed at ten years. In 1617, he suddenly reduced the duration of the privileges he signed to six years, keeping to this number until the last privilege he signed in 1626.

The date of issue was also important information because the duration started running from that day.⁸⁴ Despite its importance, this date is missing from 8 percent of the summaries (substantially less than for the duration period), while 19 percent of the printed summaries mention an incorrect date. Consequently, only 75 percent of the summaries contain a reliable date. Taking a closer look at the incorrect dates, I observed that nineteen dates had a deviation of several days, four involved several months, and in three cases the date published deviated from that granted by more than a year. The greatest difference was in De mathematicis disciplinis libri dvodecim by Hugo Sempilius. The Council of Brabant granted a nine-year privilege on 29 March 1632.⁸⁵ However, the work was not published until 1635, and the privilege summary gave the date of granting as 29 March 1635.⁸⁶ It is not clear whether the mistake was made inadvertently or deliberately. In any case, the Officina Plantiniana wrongfully claimed an additional three years of validity to the detriment of their competitors. Several smaller date errors were clearly caused by carelessness. In some cases, the summaries stated the date of another privilege. For instance, the privilege for Sempilius included four more works. Two of them erroneously cited the date of a privilege issued half a year later, on 16 September 1632.⁸⁷ Such errors are indicative of copy-paste practices. A previous summary served as a template, and the editor simply forgot to adjust one or more variables.

The expiry date of a privilege was critical information, especially in the case of reissues. While the main text may have been a reprint, the privilege summary would not necessarily be so. When referring to reissues, both reprints and translations covered by the original privilege are included in the survey. In the case of reissues, the details on date of issuing and validity are of great importance to competitors, as the privilege could have already expired – in the case of the Moretus corpus, the privilege had indeed expired in eight out of the twenty reissues. Not a single summary amongst these eight books mentioned the duration of their privilege. The same applies to a history of the Holy Land by Franciscus Quaresmius, where the Officina Plantiniana was not able to publish the work within the granted term of six years.⁸⁸ One more summary printed in a reissue did not mention the duration of a still valid privilege.⁸⁹ By way of comparison, the validity information was lacking only twice in the summaries published in twenty-one first editions – neither the 1615 first edition nor the 1628 edition of Heribert Rosweyde’s Vitæ patrvm mentioned the six-year validity granted in the privilege.⁹⁰ The 1634 first edition of Ludovicus de Palma’s Praxis et brevis declaratio did not include a privilege summary at all, probably an oversight on the part of Balthasar Moretus.⁹¹ The second edition of 1637, on the other hand, contained a summary of the privilege (which still had three years left to run) that concealed the period of validity.⁹² When the validity period is concealed, the date of issuing loses importance. The competition could only guess the privilege’s expiry date. This probably explains why six out of eight summaries printed in reissues whose privilege had expired did not contain the period of validity yet contained the date of issuing. The remaining two summaries are related to the 1626 and 1630 reissues of Thomas a Kempis’s De imitatione Christi whose six-year privilege had been granted in 1617.⁹³ These summaries were limited to the bare minimum: ‘With the privilege of the most august [Habsburg] Netherlandish princes, signed de Witte.’⁹⁴

In addition to their time limit, privileges were also spatially constrained. Privileges addressed those officials whose remit included their enforcement. That is why the Council of Brabant is explicitly mentioned in the opening sentences of privileges, and the decision constrained to the territorial scope of Brabant. The grantee was ‘allowed to print, sell, and distribute [the aforementioned work] anywhere within our aforementioned Lands of Brabant and across the river Meuse’.⁹⁵ Notwithstanding this clear specification, not a single summary mentioned the Council of Brabant. Moreover, the summaries stated consistently that the Netherlands were the territorial scope. In his Latin summaries, Balthasar Moretus i used the geographical reference in has Inferioris Germaniæ (in these lands of Lower Germany).⁹⁶ Moretus even translated this Latin geographical reference for the Dutch translation of Leonardus Lessius’s De antichristo.⁹⁷ The same applied to the Dutch summary of Joannes Malderus’s Catholiick ondervviis.⁹⁸ As these two summaries were drafted in the same language as the original privilege, translation was superfluous.⁹⁹ The only Spanish summary Balthasar Moretus published even suggested a scope far beyond the Netherlands, namely the territories ruled by ‘Philip iv, Catholic King of Spain and the Indies, and Mighty Lord of the Low Countries’.¹⁰⁰ In thirteen summaries, the territorial scope is absent. These usually succinct summaries did refer to the sovereigns who ruled the Habsburg Netherlands (the Archdukes Albert and Isabella until June 1621, and thereafter King Philip iv of Spain). By referring to these sovereigns, they indirectly claimed the Habsburg Netherlands as a territorial scope. Even though Balthasar Moretus i mentioned neither the Council of Brabant nor the Privy Council in any of his privilege summaries, the granting body and associated scope claimed can be inferred from the secretary responsible: all summaries, without exception, cited the secretary who had signed the privilege by name. The secretary’s name was by far the most reliable element in Balthasar Moretus’s summaries as he reproduced these with an outstanding 100 percent accuracy. The Officina Plantiniana’s competitors in the main printing centres of the Habsburg Netherlands most likely knew which Council a particular secretary worked at because they themselves applied for privileges at the same councils. Presumably, they were able to deduce from the specified secretary the granting body and territorial scope from this.

Privileges ended by stipulating the penalty for offenders, usually confiscation of all copies together with a fine per copy confiscated. The fine ranged between twelve and thirty Carolus guilders. The printed summaries of Balthasar Moretus i always mentioned confiscation but never the amount of the fine. After referring to confiscation, he added a standard clause stipulating that ‘in addition the offender will face a severe fine’.¹⁰¹ Apparently, Balthasar Moretus did not judge it necessary to state the amount of the fine and used a standard clause in his template.

Balthasar Moretus i’s printed privilege summaries were not innocently edited shortenings of the handwritten original privileges. Moretus used two templates for his summaries, the first relatively comprehensive, the second somewhat more condensed, in which he adjusted only the variables. Whichever template he used, he always cited the issuer as the reigning sovereigns of the Habsburg Netherlands. This allowed Balthasar Moretus to silently extend the actual territorial scope of his privileges, which were usually issued by the Duchy of Brabant and thus restricted to Brabant, to the whole of the Habsburg Netherlands. For consistency of branding the Officina Plantiniana, he consequently aligned the grantee(s) with the imprint on the title pages. Even when the privilege was granted to authors or third parties, their names as grantee were usually substituted by the current shareholders of the Officina Plantiniana. Apart from the deliberate modification of these important pieces of information, Balthasar Moretus i strategically omitted certain data from his summaries. Not a single summary mentioned the duration period of an expired or nearly expired privilege. While the privilege summary printed in the 1616 ordinance on the book trade seems to confirm suspicions that other publishers used similarly adapted templates – the Brussels printer Huybrecht Anthoon i claimed the archdukes had issued the privilege and omitted the validity period, for example – further research on this subject is necessary.¹⁰²

Most discrepancies that arose between summary and privilege were not the result of deliberate tweaking, however, as errors often crept into the printed summaries because of careless copy-pasting. The only truly reliable piece of information in the privilege summaries was the name of secretary who signed the original privilege. Altogether, the printed summaries cannot be considered to be reliable reflections of the original privileges at work – the probability that one or more variables is incorrect is relatively high. Even if crucial elements of the privilege were not strategically omitted, contemporary competitors could not be sure that the elements present in the summaries were accurate representations of the privileges at hand. If they could not obtain information through other means, it appears that many, like Christophe Plantin, who waited to apply for privilege until Hans de Laet’s non-existent privilege expired, chose to exercise caution. As with Balthasar’s contemporaries, modern researchers cannot assume that the information in printed summaries is reliable; the error rate is also too large to apply statistical research.

This observation leads to a final reflection. Apparently, the authorities did not check the content of privilege summaries. Balthasar Moretus i does not appear to have been reprimanded for including incorrect information in the privileges summaries. There would, therefore, be no reason why he would include reliable information in them, instead erring on the side of what was most fruitful for his business.