I. Jacob van Liesvelt Beheaded as a Consequence of an Annotation in his 1542 Bible: Between Myth and Fact

Jacob van Liesvelt (1489–1545) was active as a printer in Antwerp from 1520 until 1544 and is renowned for not having limited himself to orthodox publications but for having brought, in addition, heterodox Protestant materials onto the market in a period when such acts were liable to severe punishments by the imperial edicts in the Low Countries.Footnote ² Most famous are his editions of the New Testament and the Bible (nineteen in total) that, since 1526, can be traced to the Luther Bible and that the Dutch Protestants cherish as being at the heroic beginning of their important tradition of Bible printing and reading. These editions have been subject to elaborate research, thus I will not enter into detailed analysis on them.Footnote ³ In the context of this contribution, however, it is not insignificant that Van Liesvelt adapted some of the confessionally sensitive passages in his complete Bible editions (not in his New Testament editions) to the Vulgate text.

When we look at Matthew 3:2, we notice that John the Baptist's words are rendered in both the Jacob van Liesvelt Bible of 1532 and the Hansken (I) van Liesvelt edition of 1538 as “Mend thy ways.”Footnote ⁴ The same words spoken by Jesus according to Matthew 4:17 are still rendered as “Mend thy ways” in the 1532 Liesvelt Bible, whereas the 1538 Hansken (I) van Liesvelt Bible has the vulgatized version “Do penance.”Footnote ⁵

Matthew 16:18 has in the 1532 Jacob van Liesvelt Bible the “protestantizing” rendering: “Thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build my congregation,” —the last word, however, being vulgatized in the 1538 Hansken (I) van Liesvelt Bible as “Church.”Footnote ⁶

In the same vein, Romans 3:28 in the 1532 Jacob van Liesvelt Bible reads, “Therefore we hold that a man is justified without the works of the law, by faith alone,” whereas the 1538 Hansken (I) van Liesvelt edition has vulgatized the sentence by dropping the Lutheran “alone.”Footnote ⁷

Finally, James 5:14 has in the 1532 Jacob van Liesvelt Bible, “Is any man sick among you? Let him bring in the elders of the congregation,” while the 1538 Hansken (I) van Liesvelt edition only substituted “congregation” for “assembly.”Footnote ⁸ In this case, none has the outspoken vulgatized or Catholic rendering: “priests of the Church.”

These “vulgatizations,” as well as the recourse to the pseudonym of “Hansken” (this may be the name of an actual relative), might be in response to the problems Liesvelt had experienced for having published forbidden books in general and Bibles in particular. Specific reference should be made to the annual accounts of the margrave from 1535 to 1536 showing that the executioner of the town of Antwerp had received compensation of twenty-two sixpences (“schellingen”) and six deniers for having publicly burned Bibles and other books from Van Liesvelt's workshop.Footnote ⁹ This is one of the rare pieces of evidence we have of genuine burnings of copies of the Bible in the Low Countries. Also, on other occasions, Van Liesvelt ran into troubles as a result of having published “forbidden books.”Footnote ¹⁰

Notwithstanding the “vulgatization” of some of the confessionally sensitive passages in the complete Bibles since 1538 (albeit not in the separate New Testament editions), Van Liesvelt did not shy away from including, with every new edition, an increasing amount of paratextual elements exhibiting sympathies with the Protestant Reformation. The apogee of Van Liesvelt's Bible publications was his 1542 Bible, which used the vulgatized text from 1538 but included a register and marginal glosses—next to other paratextual elements—bulging with ideas typical for the Reformation movement.

In May 1545, Van Liesvelt was arrested once again and eventually brought before the local tribunal (Vierschaar).Footnote ¹¹ The arrest took place less than half a year after the imperial edict of December 18, 1544, had been released, which, as an update to the major anti-heresy legislation of 1540, listed all the points concerning preventive and repressive book censorship, toughening them where necessary.Footnote ¹² The Antwerp sheriff had initiated this new prosecution of Van Liesvelt because the latter was said to have again printed several books evidently without having gained the required permissions. At that particular phase in the (religious) history of the Low Countries, continuous non-compliance with book regulations was considered to be irrefutable proof of heterodoxy; the fight against heresy was largely a fight against forbidden religious books, which can be seen in the elaborate regulations regarding the printing press contained in the anti-heresy edicts. In light of the later account of the events, it is important to stress that the accusation against Van Liesvelt, as it is recorded in the archival documents relating to the 1545 trial, contains no specific reference to any of his contested books, let alone to one of his Bible editions. In his defence, which the Antwerpian printer prepared with the assistance of two lawyers, Van Liesvelt also did not refer to the publication of any prohibited Bibles, which raises the question as to whether an accusation of this kind could have played a major role in the trial. Moreover, Van Liesvelt used the same defence as he had done during another trial three years earlier. He declared that the books contested by the sheriff had been printed by various printers long before the edicts were issued. Since these books had not been forbidden by any official regulation, and some even had been printed “cum gratia et privilegio,” Van Liesvelt had assumed that he could reprint them without any repercussions. Moreover, Van Liesvelt stated that he had reprinted these books before the date of the last edict. In any case, he argued his behaviour had been bona fide. In light of all these reasons, Van Liesvelt was of the opinion that there was nothing with which he could be charged.Footnote ¹³ The verdict of the trial was continuously adjourned, with different reasons being evoked for this each time. At first, the aldermen-judges had not been in sufficient number; then the burgomaster had been absent; and in the final phase of the trial, Van Liesvelt was ill, meaning that on several occasions he was not able to appear before the judges. This gives the impression that the judges in Antwerp kept postponing the trial and that there was not much inclination to deal with the printer harshly, which may have been detrimental to the economically important printing industry. This situation continued until the end of November 1545. All at once, the case was hastily accelerated, which the Antwerp town archivist Floris Prims attributed to the intervention of the Brussels attorney general, who may have overruled the Antwerp jurisdiction over the case—a hypothesis that Prims does not substantiate with references to any archival materials but that is not unreasonable to deduce.Footnote ¹⁴ In any event, Jacob van Liesvelt was sentenced to death on November 27, 1545, and was beheaded the next day.Footnote ¹⁵ In the books from the local tribunal, the margin of the page contains the notorious words: “executio facta.”Footnote ¹⁶

Again, Van Liesvelt was not executed for failing to observe a mere administrative requirement, namely, not asking for the necessary permissions prior to the publication of (some of) his books. The reason for his execution was his (repeated) non-compliance with book censorship measures contained in the anti-heresy edicts, which, as we have seen, was considered irrefutable proof of being involved in spreading forbidden heterodox literature. By the 1540s, the central government was determined to show its commitment to the issue by implementing a repressive policy that effectively persecuted printers, such as Van Liesvelt, who did not shy away from publishing all kinds of heterodox books (not merely Bibles). As a consequence of this increased repression, Protestants started to leave the Low Countries, mainly for London; but after the accession to the throne of the Catholic Queen Mary in 1553, they sought refuge in the East Friesian town of Emden as well as Wesel, Frankenthal, and other German territories. In the diaspora, the Protestants took with them the Liesvelt Bible and used it as a basis for further editions and revisions, especially in Emden at the end of the 1550s and in the 1560s. The Liesvelt Bible was held in great esteem by these refugees and received a quasi-mythical status, since it was linked to the heroic and difficult beginnings of Dutch Protestantism.Footnote ¹⁷

Of interest to this topic is that, two decades after Van Liesvelt's execution, a connection was made between his being sentenced to death and the Reformation-oriented Bibles that had been produced by his printing office. Crucial is this regard was the booklet De beschriivinge van den gheschiedenissen in der religien saken toeghedragen in den Nederlanden (Description of the History in the Matter of Religion as Happened in the Netherlands), written by Jacob van Wesenbeke and published in 1569. In this work, a short note is included, according to which Van Liesvelt was accused before the tribunal as a result of a marginal note in a Bible that read that “man's salvation was brought about by Christ alone.”Footnote ¹⁸ The short passage does not contain a reference to the 1542 Bible nor to any other concrete edition. Most striking, however, is the contrast between Van Wesenbeke's note and the records of the 1545 trial in the Antwerp archives, which include no reference at all to Van Liesvelt's Bible, let alone to any of its explicit Reformation-inspired marginal notes. Instead, they only contain the general charge of Van Liesvelt having printed several books evidently without gaining the required permissions. Therefore, the central question is whether Van Wesenbeke's note gives us additional factual information with regard to the trial or represents the birth of a myth that would surround the Antwerpian printer in the decades and even centuries after his execution. An assessment of the role of Van Wesenbeke in the history of the Dutch Revolt in the mid-sixteenth century should be taken into consideration in order to answer this question.

Jacob van Wesenbeke (1523–1575)Footnote ¹⁹ trained as a jurist and became Antwerp's town secretary in May 1546, succeeding his father, who was in office at the time of Van Liesvelt's trial and who may, for that reason, be considered a firsthand witness.Footnote ²⁰ In 1556, Van Wesenbeke was appointed pensionary of the town and, in this way, the most important legal officer in the town. In the famous Wonder Year 1566, when William of Orange was appointed governor of Antwerp, with the aim of restoring peace in the city after the iconoclastic riots, Jacob van Wesenbeke—who was himself a member of the Lutheran community—was asked to act as a mediator between the magistrate, the different politico-religious factions of the town, and the governor.Footnote ²¹ In April 1567, however, on the eve of the restoration of the king's authority over the city, William of Orange sent Van Wesenbeke ahead to Dillenburg not only with an eye to his collaborator's safety but also because the latter had at his disposal much inside information that needed, at all costs, to be kept out of the adversary's hands. In May 1568, the Council of Troubles, installed by the Duke of Alba, sentenced Van Wesenbeke by default to banishment and ordered forfeiture of his goods. Meanwhile, in Dillenburg, Van Wesenbeke turned out to be the ghostwriter and first propagandist of William of Orange and his movement, and he was officially appointed the prince's counsellor.Footnote ²² In several apologetic works and pamphlets, published mainly around the years 1568–1569, it was emphasised that the government's edicts against heresy violated the privileges and liberties of the Low Countries and, consequently, threatened the country's economic prosperity. For these reasons, so the pamphlets stressed, the Prince of Orange had rightly taken the lead in the Revolt against the Spanish king, and all his compatriots ought to join the movement with the aim of liberating their country.Footnote ²³

It was in August 1569 that Van Wesenbeke published the aforementioned Description of the History in the Matter of Religion as Happened in the Netherlands. Van Wesenbeke had possibly already finished the book in the Wonder Year 1566 and had written the work, according to a note of his, at the request of the higher authorities, which likely meant the Prince of Orange himself.Footnote ²⁴ The book, however, could not be published immediately due to a lack of means, which the prince possibly resolved.Footnote ²⁵ In addition to the Dutch text, a French version of the edition was published.Footnote ²⁶ Poignant to note, however, is that the work is said to be founded on a large number of records and letters, which Van Wesenbeke would have taken with him when he left Antwerp (next to the seals of the town).Footnote ²⁷ Van Wesenbeke's work for the Prince of Orange was not only limited to publication activities: he also travelled around in order to help establish the coalition against the Duke of Alba, to hatch plots, and to collect money for the Revolt.Footnote ²⁸

We now return to the short note included in Van Wesenbeke's Description of the History in the Matter of Religion as Happened in the Netherlands, according to which Van Liesvelt was accused before the tribunal as a result of a marginal annotation in a (Dutch) Bible stating that “man's salvation was brought about by Christ alone.” Notwithstanding the fact that the Bible of 1542 is stuffed with marginal glosses, an annotation which literally contains the words in question is not to be found. The content of Van Wesenbeke's note, however, is more or less represented by a gloss to Colossians 1:3: “Grace that is forgiveness of sins by Christ, peace that is the internal assurance that we believe for sure to be saved by Christ.”Footnote ²⁹ In a gloss to Matthew 4:22, we read: “Gospel, that is the proclamation of the grace and salvation received and given by Christ, which has been long waited for.”Footnote ³⁰ Also to be considered is the summary of Romans 10, which includes the words: “the justice that makes [man] worthy of eternal life, is solely to be found in the law and the Faith of Jesus Christ.”Footnote ³¹ To this should be added the reference to the passage in question, included in the register to the New Testament in the preliminary pages of the Bible, which reads: “The grace of Jesus Christ is our salvation, and not the works.”Footnote ³²

The fact that none of the biblical glosses contain the exact words quoted by Van Wesenbeke, however, must be considered together with the aforementioned finding that the archival records of the Van Liesvelt trial do not make mention of any of Van Liesvelt's Bibles, let alone of the Reformation-oriented glosses it includes. And although Van Wesenbeke may have had firsthand information on Van Liesvelt's execution at his disposal and was to become Antwerp's town secretary shortly thereafter—making him one of the best informed people in the town—he was also a clever propagandist in the service of the Prince of Orange in the period between the latter's first and second campaign in the Low Countries. In the confessional era, history writing was considered an important polemical tool to advance the cause of the Reformation. For these reasons, it must be critically assessed whether a gloss of the kind cited by Van Wesenbeke was actually an element of consideration in the 1545 trial or whether Van Wesenbeke's note marked the beginning of the creation of a myth representing Van Liesvelt as a martyr of God's Word.

II. Jacob van Liesvelt and his 1542 Bible: A Myth Spreads

Whatever the case may be, Van Wesenbeke's note was picked up from the beginning by the Dutch Protestants and included in the story or myth that was built up, piece by piece, about Van Liesvelt. The construction of such narratives or myths typically belongs to the sixteenth-century “confessionalisation process,” whereby the various confessions or denominations built up their own identity, often in confrontation with or in denigration of the “other.” Whereas some elements already belonged to the story at an early stage, others were later added, only finding their origins in the nineteenth century. For between the 1850s and the 1970s, a so-called “second confessionalisation process” is identified to have taken place. This opposed not only Protestants (of several denominations) and Catholics but also liberals, socialists, and other ideological groups. Accordingly, I will give the elements that were added to the Van Liesvelt story or myth a number from one (1) to five (5). Already in Boek-Zaal der Nederduytsche Bybels (The Library of Dutch Bibles), published by Isaac Le Long in 1732,Footnote ³³ we find three elements of this scenario playing out. (1) The first is the immense popularity of the Liesvelt Bible, which Le Long emphasized was reprinted several times and was read and honored by the Dutch Protestants (of different denominations). It was the privileged Dutch edition “until a few years before the New Reformed Translation was made.”Footnote ³⁴ (2) Van Liesvelt had been beheaded “during the most severe persecution of the supporters of God's Word,” and this because of the famous marginal annotation in one of his Bibles, as was recorded by “Sir Jacob van Wesenbeek, Counselor and Pensionary of the town of Antwerp who himself witnessed it.”Footnote ³⁵ (3) The Protestants’ self-identification as partisans of God's Word was further confirmed through the process of contrasting themselves with their Catholic opponents. The latter were depicted as grim opponents of vernacular Bible reading who, for this reason, prohibited Van Liesvelt's Bibles (as well as other publications) and put them on the Index of Forbidden Books. Furthermore, Le Long refers to Nicholas van Winghe, who issued a Catholic Bible translation on the basis of the Vulgate in 1548, and adduced as a reason for the prohibition of other Bibles, such as those of Van Liesvelt, that “the false Bibles should be neutralized, and not that it should be prohibited necessarily to read the Holy Scriptures in the vernacular.” However, Isaac Le Long corrects Van Winghe, saying that it was not the adherents of the Protestant Reformation but the Roman Catholics who had falsified the Bible.Footnote ³⁶

A milestone in the creation of the myth regarding Jacob van Liesvelt was the work Schetsen uit de lijdensgeschiedenis der Protestantsche Apostolisch-Katholieke Kerk (Sketches from the History of the Persecutions of the Protestant Apostolic-Catholic Church), published by Albert van Toorenenbergen in 1854.Footnote ³⁷ As is suggested by the title, this work trod the middle ground between a martyrology, in the strict sense of the word, and a (polemical) history of Protestantism. The book fitted in with the campaign organized by the Dutch Protestants against the restoration of the Catholic hierarchy in the Netherlands in 1853 and therefore assumed a bitterly anti-Catholic tone. In his paragraph on Van Liesvelt, Van Toorenenbergen noticed that “the last edition, from 1542, had hardly been completed, an edition in which Liesveldt had added various marginal annotations . . . but, especially, the clergy had hardly read that ‘man's salvation was brought about by Christ alone’, and the fate of the publisher was decided.”Footnote ³⁸ In the notice, no explicit mention was made about Van Wesenbeke. More important, however, was that Van Toorenenbergen added to the established portrayal of Van Liesvelt another element, namely, (4) some quite explicit references concerning his status as a martyr for spreading the true Word of God. Van Toorenenbergen obviously wanted to compensate for the fact that the Bible publisher had never been included in the official martyrologies of the Reformed Church in the Netherlands, underscoring the idea that he “has sacrificed everything for the Bible” and had “died for the Bible, which he had revised himself, printed, published, and bloodily sealed.”Footnote ³⁹

But also to the south in Belgium, a “pillarization” took place in nineteenth-century society, one that pitted anticlerical “free-thinking” liberals against Catholics. Over the course of the eight-volume Geschiedenis van Antwerpen (History of Antwerp) (1845–1853), the liberal historians Frans Hendrik Mertens and Karel Lodewijk Torfs give Jacob van Liesvelt a place within their ideological framework. With regards to possible causes of Van Liesvelt's execution, they do not only refer to the famous annotation recorded by Van Wesenbeke but also to (5) a new and surprising element, namely, the image printed for Matthew 4:3 depicting the devil who tempts Jesus in the desert and who has the shape of a bearded monk, with frock and cap and a rosary hanging from his belt. Under the habit, the goat's paws are still visible, and the horns still stick out above the cap. Mertens and Torfs suggest that this anticlerical image “was considered as an unforgivable villainy,” giving credence to their conviction that this insult toward the Catholic clergy must have played a role—even a crucial one—in Van Liesvelt's ultimate condemnation,Footnote ⁴⁰ although this viewpoint is not supported by the sources at all. Earlier in this passage on the history of Antwerp, Mertens and Torfs had already praised Van Liesvelt and other printers—who had refused to exercise their profession within the Saint-Lucas guild—for having “defended the freedom of the printing press, which some aimed, already by then, to curb.”Footnote ⁴¹ In other words, the nineteenth-century liberal Antwerp historians Mertens and Torfs depict Van Liesvelt as a hero for the liberal freedom of the printing press, who was eventually condemned and executed by the Catholic clergy and their allies, who, in their turn, were blinded by dogmatism and fanaticism and were unable to tolerate any critical voices.

The suggestion that the anticlerical image inserted in the Gospel story about the temptations in the desert (Matthew 4:3) may have played a role in Van Liesvelt's condemnation did, in turn, find its way to the North, where it was grist to the mill for Protestant polemists. Hendrik van Druten, in his still valuable Geschiedenis der Nederlandsche Bijbelvertaling (History of the Dutch Bible Translation) (1895–1905),Footnote ⁴² was quite prudent when he referred to the relevance of the woodcuts and withheld from stating explicitly that they had played a role in the condemnation of Van Liesvelt.Footnote ⁴³ In addition, Van Druten included elements of Van Liesvelt's established reputation. Remarkably, the author stressed only in general terms that it was not so much because of his text but particularly because of his notes that Van Liesvelt's 1542 edition had been outlawed and the printer himself found guilty and sentenced to death. Thus, the author does not mention specifically the famous gloss quoted by Van Wesenbeke, which the scholar was evidently not able to find in the 1542 edition.Footnote ⁴⁴ A somewhat popularizing and polemic Protestant booklet was De herkomst van den Bijbel (The Origin of the Bible) (1925) by Jan Frederik Beerens.Footnote ⁴⁵ The section about the Dutch Bible translations was in content inspired by the works of Hendrik van Druten, but the discourse had been sharpened in a polemical Protestant fashion. Apart from the clear reference to the annotations in the 1542 Bible, the author also suggests that Van Liesvelt's woodcuts, which were very “provoking,” may have played a role in the condemnation of Van Liesvelt in 1545 to “death by fire” (!). He concludes: “Precisely therefore his edition was held in high esteem among the Protestants. For it was consecrated by martyrs’ blood.”Footnote ⁴⁶

Another viewpoint was clearly defended by Floris Prims, the Catholic priest, historian, and archivist of the town of Antwerp, active from 1925 until his retirement in 1948. Prims had become very renowned because of his twenty-nine-volume history of the town of Antwerp, which he published between 1927 and 1949. In volume 7, which was devoted to Antwerp under the first Habsburg, Prims gives an account of the trial and execution of Van Liesvelt, as best he could reconstruct from the archival materials, with which he was very familiar.Footnote ⁴⁷ He writes that Van Liesvelt was sentenced because he had dared to publish books without the prior consent of the competent authorities while also emphasizing that it was certainly not exclusively nor in particular because of his 1542 Bible, “as can be read everywhere.”Footnote ⁴⁸ And as a conclusion to his passage on Van Liesvelt, he gibes at Jacob van Wesenbeke, “who wrote that Van Liesvelt was condemned because of a marginal note that ‘man's salvation was brought about by Christ alone.’” Prims continues, saying that “this is a tendentious and very incomplete representation,” since he doubts that this element might have played a major role—if any role at all—in the trial.Footnote ⁴⁹ In this sense, Prims distances himself from the authors who had believed and reproduced Van Wesenbeke's representation, not only those Northern Dutch Protestant writers but also his Belgian liberal fellow historians from the past century.

But also in the North, spirits grew more prepared to accept a historical assessment of the events that led to Van Liesvelt's execution. A milestone, as well as a turning point, in this regard was the publication of De Statenbijbel en zijn voorgangers (The Dutch Standard Version and its Predecessors) by Cornelis Cebus de Bruin in 1937.Footnote ⁵⁰ De Bruin has undertaken valuable attempts to offer an objective, scholarly overview of the Dutch Bible translations, not merely accepting the aforementioned five points that I have identified in the Van Liesvelt story or myth. His Dutch Protestant background nevertheless leads him to wax lyrical about the important role the Liesvelt Bible played in the Protestant refugee churches in London and Emden—the first (1) and, indeed, most historically verifiable of the five elements. Of course, De Bruin also mentions the numerous reprints of the Bible, which he self-evidently attributes to the Bible's popularity among the Protestant population.Footnote ⁵¹ The tradition in which De Bruin stands also induces him to accept, without critically questioning, the most notorious element—the second (2) according to this numbering—namely, that the sheriff of Antwerp had prosecuted Van Liesvelt because the marginal notes in his last Bible (meaning the 1542 edition) include the statement that “man's salvation was brought about by Christ alone.” Without referring to Jacob van Wesenbeke as a source, he simply states that the “official administrative pieces” prove this to be the case.Footnote ⁵² De Bruin, however, seriously criticized the viewpoint that the woodcuts accompanying Matthew 4:3 may have played a role in the case against Van Liesvelt, invoking several arguments. He pointed to the simple fact that the archives do not mention a single word about the woodcuts. Besides this, the image in question also appears in other Bibles that were not targeted by the authorities. De Bruin points out that the Catholic Church always tolerated some critique of its authority, to a certain extent, as long as the right doctrine remained untouched. The designer of the woodcut also possibly wanted to demonstrate that the devil can wrap himself up even in the habit of an innocent monk and in this way pass himself off as a wolf in sheep's clothing.Footnote ⁵³ Moreover, De Bruin praises the Catholic translation of the Vulgate by Nicholas van Winghe (1548).Footnote ⁵⁴ He also explicitly puts forward that there were actually some reasons to doubt Van Liesvelt's martyr status.Footnote ⁵⁵ De Bruin's arguments go as follows: the printer-editor had continued to print Catholic works; during the trials, printers such as Van Liesvelt never conducted themselves as fearless supporters of the Protestant faith but instead invoked excuses in order to avert a sentence. Furthermore, De Bruin admits that, as a professional printer, Van Liesvelt aimed at financial gain while at the same time emphasizing that he must have felt some sympathy for the new doctrine, since he would not otherwise have taken such major risks.Footnote ⁵⁶ In this spirit, De Bruin concludes his paragraph about Van Liesvelt: “In this way we remember with respect the brave Antwerp editor, who with his Bibles has been a blessing for innumerable persons without caring for his own life.”Footnote ⁵⁷

Despite Floris Prims's doubts about whether the Reformation-inspired gloss that “man's salvation was brought about by Christ alone” presumed to be in Van Liesvelt's 1542 Bible may have played a major role in the printer's condemnation, and despite the more scholarly approach adopted by De Bruin, the influential Dutch bibliographer Maria Elizabeth Kronenberg stuck, astonishingly, to a very confessional-Protestant approach in her work Verboden boeken en opstandige drukkers in de Hervormingstijd (Forbidden Books and Rebellious Printers in the Time of The Reformation), which was published in 1948.Footnote ⁵⁸ In this book, she proclaims in a general way that “the printing of the so-called Liesvelt Bible of 1542, which remained highly respected by the Protestants, was the immediate cause for the printer's death sentence.”Footnote ⁵⁹ In a militant tone, she exclaims the following statement regarding printers such as Van Liesvelt: “One looks in vain for all their names in Van Haemstede's work on the Dutch martyrs. They did actually deserve to be recorded in it.”Footnote ⁶⁰

Cebus Cornelis de Bruin's groundbreaking overview of the Bible translations in the Low Countries was revised and updated by Frits G. M. Broeyer and published in 1993.Footnote ⁶¹ Only a few years later, in 1997, A. A. (August) den Hollander published his much lauded book, Nederlandse Bijbelvertalingen 1522–1545 (Dutch Translations of the Bible 1522–1545). Den Hollander especially took a bibliographical approach and aimed “to establish the text tradition of the Dutch Bible translations published between 1522 and 1545,”Footnote ⁶² without neglecting the ecclesiastical historical side of the Bible production. More specifically, Den Hollander shows reluctance in evoking the traditional portrayal of Jacob van Liesvelt and his Bible editions.Footnote ⁶³ He avoids the theory that the marginal gloss(es) in the Bible of 1542 were the cause of Van Liesvelt's arrest and death sentence, but he rightly stresses that the printer-editor was apprehended in 1545 due to the printing of books without having requested the necessary permission.Footnote ⁶⁴ Den Hollander also authored the chapter on Van Liesvelt's Bible in the new standard work on Bible translation in the Low Countries, De Bijbel in de Lage Landen: Elf eeuwen van vertalen (The Bible in the Low Countries: Eleven Centuries of Translation) (2015), summarizing the insights of the research regarding Van Liesvelt's Bible.Footnote ⁶⁵

With Den Hollander's approach, we return to where we started this overview: the archives of the Antwerp local tribunal. Indeed, they provide us with the firsthand information about Van Liesvelt's trial, namely, that he was sentenced because he had, once again, printed books without having requested the necessary permission. The crucial issue concerns the significance one is prepared to attribute to Jacob van Wesenbeke's notorious note, namely, that Liesvelt's capital sentence was mainly due to his (1542) Bible and its Reformation-inspired glosses, especially the annotation that “man's salvation was brought about by Christ alone.” Should the note be considered as a trustworthy and faithful report of the historical facts or, conversely, as the onset of the creation of a myth that would dominate the portrayal of the printer-publisher for decades and centuries to come? It is not absurd to maintain that the option to take either the first or the second stance would be inspired by the confessional or ideological adherence of the scholar doing the research.

III. Maria Ancxt, Widow of Van Liesvelt, and the Option for a Catholic Bible Fund

In the second half of this essay, I will take as a point of departure a passage in the book Pragmatic Toleration: The Politics of Religious Heterodoxy in Early Reformation Antwerp, 1515–1555, published by Victoria Christman in 2015,Footnote ⁶⁶ which retraces a position the American scholar has already defended in an article published in The Sixteenth Century Journal in 2011.Footnote ⁶⁷ Both publications directly continue the aforementioned older historiographical tradition and the Van Liesvelt myth developed from there by adding a new and important element (unfoundedly, as I will argue). For Christman claims that Van Liesvelt's widow, Maria Ancxt,Footnote ⁶⁸ in parallel to four other widows discussed in the text, continued to print heterodox Bibles after the execution of her husband in a period in which imperial and papal legislation was growing increasingly stringent toward such “crimes,” but that she nevertheless escaped any form of judicial censure. In reply to this position, it should first be confirmed that in the wake of the imperial edict of 1540, and especially the recapitulative edict of 1544, control of the printing industry did increase in intensity, and repression tightened its grip. It was precisely this that had led to the sentencing and execution of Maria Ancxt's husband, Jacob van Liesvelt. It should be emphasized, however, that vernacular Bibles themselves were never forbidden by the imperial decrees in question, something that even the abovementioned eighteenth-century author Isaac Le Long had to admit. What were forbidden, as had been the case since the early 1520s, were Bible editions that were provided with registers, marginal glosses, summaries above the chapters, and any other paratextual elements that could steer a reader's interpretation in a heterodox direction. It comes as no surprise also that Dutch Bibles based upon the German Luther Bible were increasingly viewed with suspicion, such that editions displaying the said characteristics were eventually included in the Louvain Index of 1546. But astonishingly, none of the Bibles or New Testaments printed by Jacob van Liesvelt prior to 1542 are listed in the Index, nor is mention made of the edition published under the name of Hansken (I) van Liesvelt in 1538—elements that have not been sufficiently taken into consideration in the main analyses of the Louvain Index until now.Footnote ⁶⁹ Whatever the reason may be, within a few weeks after the publication of the Index, the imperial authorities, the Louvain theologians, and the printer-publisher Bartholomew van Grave took the initiative to publish a “trustworthy” Dutch and French Vulgate translation, devoid of all marginal glosses, which was intended to replace all former biblical editions. The Dutch so-called “Louvain Bible” was published in 1548, and its French sister-edition followed suit in 1550, with dozens of reprints in the next quarter of the century, especially of the Dutch New Testament part.Footnote ⁷⁰ Surprisingly, Victoria Christman also argues that Maria Ancxt continued to publish heterodox Bibles in open defiance not only of the imperial decrees but also of the first papal Index of 1559.Footnote ⁷¹ In the Index we read that, among other stipulations, no edition of the Bible in the vernacular, nor any edition of the New Testament, should, in whatsoever way, be printed, purchased, read, or held in possession without the written permission of the Holy Office of the Roman Inquisition. In reply to this argument, we should point to the historical fact that this first Roman Index was so excessively restrictive that it received no application at all in the Catholic Church beyond the Papal States (let alone having been in force in the Low Countries).Footnote ⁷²

My point is that Maria Ancxt was indeed not subjected to any form of judicial censure because of the simple fact that she was one of the Antwerpian printers providing Catholic, or at least “catholicized,” translations, although she explored the limits of what was permissible within the contours of the censorship edicts. All Ancxt's Bible editions bore an official approbation by the competent book censor on either the title page, the colophon, or both. I came to this conclusion after the study of almost twenty editions,Footnote ⁷³ all published in Antwerp and now preserved in libraries across Europe (and beyond) but which are also increasingly available in digitized form.

Ancxt's publication activity started with two vernacular translations in 1547 and 1548, respectively, of the Evangelien ende Epistelen, the Epistle and Gospel readings of Mass—a kind of book that was very popular from the late Middle Ages onward and that enabled the faithful to follow the lessons that were read or sung in Latin at Mass.Footnote ⁷⁴ Even the most strident adversaries of Bible reading in the vernacular were prepared to allow the laity to read such books, and its publication was therefore considered “safe.” Surprisingly, Maria Ancxt used the text of the Bible editions her husband had published (and that are said to have caused him so much trouble) as a basis. But, as I remarked above, some confessionally delicate passages were “vulgatized” or “catholicized” from the Bible edition by Hansken (I) van Liesvelt onward (and the passages with which this was not the case, as for example with James 5:14, were not used as readings in the Mass). An example of this “vulgatization” is to be found in Matthew 16:13–19, the pericope that was read at the feast of the Chair of Saint Peter (sinte Peeters verheffinge dach, February 22) as well as the feast of Saints Peter and Paul (June 29). In this pericope, we find the sentence: “Thou art Peter; and upon this rock I will build my Church.”Footnote ⁷⁵ Here, Protestant Bible editions instead read: “my congregation.” Moreover, books containing the Epistle and Gospel readings—as was also the case with Ancxt's editions—were preceded by a saints’ calendar, traditionally printed in red and black ink. And although such calendars did not disappear immediately from the first generation of reformational Bibles, by the end of the 1540s, they had become a mainly Catholic feature. The corpus containing the Epistle and Gospel readings was followed by a table of contents, which lists all the Sundays and feast days, and for each day indicates the respective page where the readings are to be found. In short, on the basis of a heterodox Bible, a thoroughly Catholic edition was composed. It comes as no surprise then that the book, after control and revision, was approved by Jaspar van Meere, the assigned book censor, as we can read in the colophon of the first edition of the work (1547). In the second edition of the work (1548), this specific mention disappeared, leaving only the words “cum gratia et privilegio” with the imperial consent to publish the edition and saying that it had been inspected or “visited” by learned men.

Aside from the Epistles and Gospels that were read in Mass, the Psalms were the texts par excellence that were used in liturgy and were therefore frequently translated, copied, and printed from the Middle Ages onward. It comes as no surprise then that Maria Ancxt also brought this text onto the market. What is very peculiar, however, is that she used in this instance the text by Joannes Campensis, professor of Hebrew at the Louvain College of the Three Tongues (1519–1531). Campensis had made a Latin paraphrase of the Psalms on the basis of the Hebrew text, which had been published for the first time in 1532 and went through several reprints in the subsequent years.Footnote ⁷⁶ In 1533, the Louvain theologians, replying to a request for advice from the governess of the Low Countries, had pronounced a negative judgment regarding the publication of a Dutch and a French translation of Campensis's Psalter.Footnote ⁷⁷ Notwithstanding the negative advice, several editions containing a Dutch, French, or other vernacular version had been published over the course of the 1530s. Strangely enough, not a single edition had afterward been added to the 1546 Louvain Index.Footnote ⁷⁸ This was obviously the reason that in 1548 Maria Ancxt took the decision to reprint the Dutch text of Den Psalter according to Campensis's version, with three print runs known to have been undertaken in the same year.Footnote ⁷⁹ Moreover, also in this instance, she received the explicit permission for the publication from Jan Goossens, pastor of the church of Saint Jacob in Antwerp (1552–1557) and book censor by imperial mandate. The Psalms text was followed by the Dutch version of the “Letter of Saint Athanasius to Marcellinus,” based upon the Latin translation Johann Reuchlin had made from the Greek original. The material regarding the Psalms was followed by a Dutch paraphrase of the book Ecclesiastes, likewise made by Campensis, as well as a contemplation on the Our Father prayer. The booklet was introduced by a letter from Campensis addressed to Joannes Dantiscus, who had been bishop of Culm since 1530, and was accompanied by an address to the reader from Campensis. In later editions of Campensis's Psalter, Ancxt had a saints’ calendar added immediately following the title page.Footnote ⁸⁰ In 1549 or 1550, Maria Ancxt did publish a Dutch translation of the Wisdom books of Solomon, with the express approbation of the aforementioned Jan Goossens. In 1551, a second edition followed.

After publishing editions of the Epistles and Gospels, as well as the text of the Psalms, Maria Ancxt ventured into the flourishing market for New Testaments, both in Dutch and French. Seven editions of the Dutch Dat gheheel nyeuwe Testament (or variants in spelling of the same title) are known to have left her printing office between 1553 and 1565 (but possibly she published even more editions).Footnote ⁸¹ All editions were provided with a “cum gratia et privilegio.” They are part of the more than forty editions of the (Catholic) New Testament that are known to have been published up until the 1570s, all offering the Catholic Louvain Bible text of 1548 and all following a similar composition.Footnote ⁸² This means that the text is preceded by a calendar of saints and is followed by those passages from the Old Testament that were read as a lesson during Mass as well as by a register indicating which pericopes from the Bible were to be read on each Sunday and feast day, with the respective pages where they were to be found. This particular format of Catholic New Testament editions during the said period made them suitable for use during the official liturgy of the Church. The text Maria Ancxt offered is completely identical to that of the officially authorized Louvain Bible (1548), as becomes apparent on the basis of a comparison of my “test text” of Matthew 16:13–19, which included: “Ende ick segghe u dat ghi Petrus zijt, ende op desen steen sal ick tymmeren mijn kercke” (“Church”). This finding is confirmed by comparing a series of confessionally sensitive passages that all give a Catholic reading: Matthew 3:2 and Matthew 4:17, which read in the Vulgate as “Paenitentiam agite” are translated as “Doet penitentie” (“Do penance,” thus not “Mend thy ways” or “Repent”); James 5:14 reads: “Isser yemandt onder u lieden sieck? die hale die Priesters der kercken” (“Is any man sick among you? Let him bring in the priests of the Church,” and not “the elders of the congregation”); and as a translation of Romans 3:28, we read: “Want wy houden voorwaer dat die mensch gherechtveerdicht wordt door tgheloove, zonder die wercken des wets” (“For we account a man to be justified by faith, without the works of the law”—the Lutheran “alone” as a qualification to “faith” was evidently removed).

Two features of Maria Ancxt's Dutch New Testaments, however, made them somewhat peculiar. First, they bear on the title page a quotation of Mark 16:15–16a: “Go ye into the whole world and preach the gospel to every creature. He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved.” According to August den Hollander, the printing of this quotation on the title page of a New Testament edition induced the Louvain theologians to include such editions in the Index of 1546, since it was considered as a token of Protestant sympathy, although the theologians did not make their motive explicit.Footnote ⁸³ If this is indeed the case, then Maria Ancxt's mentioning of the Bible verse was a daring attempt to explore the limits of what was still possible. Moreover, Maria Ancxt also included summaries above the chapters of the New Testament books that were essentially borrowed from the New Testament and Bible editions that the Liesvelt house had published in the decades before, albeit these summaries were largely catholicized. Inclusion of such summaries was quite a new element, since they were absent from the format of the Louvain Bible of 1548, and they would only be added to the revised version of the Louvain Bible in 1553. The publication of the 1553 Louvain Bible came too late for Ancxt, so she opted for a “catholicized” version of the summaries her late husband had used in his editions. The summary above Matthew 16 according to the Liesvelt New Testament included the words: “How Jesus said that He would build his Church on the confession of the faith.” Since the addition of “on the confession of the faith” and thus the concealment of Peter's ministry was considered a sign of sympathies with the ideas of the Protestant Reformation,Footnote ⁸⁴ Ancxt had it removed from her editions of the New Testament. The catholicization of the summary was completed by the addition of the sentence: “God will reward everybody on the basis of his works”—the emphasis on works as a (co)source of salvation being a genuine Catholic stance.Footnote ⁸⁵ Also, in her later editions of the New Testament, Ancxt retained these summaries, which resulted in the summary above Matthew 16 sounding even more Catholic than the summary included in the 1553 Louvain Bible, which has quite a neutral tone!Footnote ⁸⁶

In 1560, Marie Ancxt printed two editions of the complete Bible for Jacomyne Bars, the widow of Henrick Peetersen van Middelburch. The text (and its summaries) were the same as the 1553 Louvain Bible, as was the case with a (shortened) prologue by its translator, Nicolaus van Winghe. Ancxt's Bibles, as was the case with all her biblical editions, displayed the “cum gratia et privilegio” wording on the title page, whereas on its verso side is printed: “the Bible was checked and approved by learned men who had received a mandate to that aim by the Emperor,” and that it was therefore “admitted to be printed.”Footnote ⁸⁷ A more Catholic format than that was not to be found on the market at the time. More rare is the edition that Maria Ancxt printed for another Antwerp printer, Symon Cock (in the same year, 1560), with the same format as the edition printed for Jacomyne Bars.Footnote ⁸⁸

Maria Ancxt also ventured into the market for French New Testaments. In 1553, the same year she published a Dutch New Testament, she also brought a French Le nouveau Testament onto the market.Footnote ⁸⁹ In the preliminary material, we find a calendar of saints. As regards the text of the New Testament, she used the same text that her Antwerp colleague Johann Gymnich had published a year before. According to Bettye Chambers, it basically offers Jacques Lefèvre's rendering of the New Testament but is clearly revised on the basis of the French text printed by Pierre de Wingle in Neuchâtel in 1534—a “protestantizing translation” possibly edited by Pierre-Robert Olivetan—and also contains elements of the Vulgate version made by Nicolas de Leuze that was included in the 1550 French Louvain Bible.Footnote ⁹⁰ In any case, the text of the series of delicate, confessionally tinted passages is recognizably catholicized. Apart from Matthew 16:18—“tu es Pierre. Et sus ceste pierre, ie edifierai mon eglise”—we read in Matthew 3:2 and 4:17: “Faictes penitence”; in Romans 3:28: “Car nous croyons, que lhome est iustifie par foy sans les oeuures de la loy”; and in James 5:14: “Y a il aucun dentre vous malade, quil appelle les prestres de leglise, et quilz prient pour luy.” (There are no summaries included above the chapters.) The edition concludes with a table indicating the Epistle and Gospel readings for each Sunday and feast day together with the most important saints’ days. Maria Ancxt republished this version in 1561.Footnote ⁹¹ In this new edition, the text of the lessons taken from the Old Testament was actually added (just before the aforementioned table giving the Epistle and Gospel readings for Mass). And whereas Gymnich's 1552 New Testament was eventually included in the Index of 1570, this was not the case with Maria Ancxt's editions.

Aside from at least two complete editions of the French New Testament, Maria Ancxt also published in the period under consideration (more specifically in 1555) a French version of the Euangiles & Epistres, the Epistles and Gospels read at Mass. Consultation of the only copy that is known to be preserved—and is kept in the New York Public LibraryFootnote ⁹²—shows that the text of Matthew 16:13–19 for the feast of the Chair of Saint Peter (Le jour de la chaire S. Pierre) and that of Saints Peter and Paul has the Vulgate reading: “tu es Pierre, et sur ceste pierre iedefieray mon eglise.” And just like in the Dutch editions of the Epistles and Gospels, the preliminary material contains, in black and red, a calendar of saints. In the back of the copy, a table or schedule is added which indicates all the Sundays and feast days, each and every day of the Lenten fast, and the respective pages where the liturgical lessons are to be found.Footnote ⁹³

I think that only one conclusion can be drawn at the end of this section, namely, that the position Christman defended—that Maria Ancxt, in the wake of her husband Jacob van Liesvelt's death, published Protestant biblical material without the consent of the competent book censors and in open defiance of the royal edicts but without being worried by the authorities—cannot be maintained. Close examination of the biblical copies themselves clearly demonstrates that Ancxt brought Catholic or largely catholicized material onto the market and that the editions, without exception, bear the consent of the competent authorities. Ancxt conformed herself largely to the requirements of the censorship measures but tried to be as innovative and creative as she could within the boundaries of what was possible, as is shown most clearly by her publication of Campensis's Psalms or the inclusion of Mark 16:15–16a on the title page. In this regard, it should be stressed that during the period concerned, the Catholic authorities in the Low Countries, be they civil or ecclesiastical, had not issued any all-encompassing prohibitions on Bible translations or Bible reading—as Christman suggested they had—but continued to tolerate Catholic vernacular versions. Since Ancxt herself largely conformed with the prevailing regulations, there was simply no need for a (supposed) “pragmatic” toleration of her by the Antwerp city magistrate. This, of course, does not detract from her merits as a widow of a beheaded printer, in the sense that she courageously continued the family business in unfortunate times, as Christman has, with good reason, emphasized in her publications.

IV. The Enduring Seduction of Confessionally or Ideologically Inspired Deductions in History Writing

The brash statement that the marginal glosses in Jacob van Liesvelt's 1542 Bible, especially the note that “man's salvation was brought about by Christ alone,” was the direct cause of the printer's dramatic beheading continues to pop up in semi-scholarly publications, interviews as well as exhibition catalogues, which are not hindered by any critical qualification of Jacob van Wesenbeke's note that lies at the source of the statement. The story or myth regarding the Van Liesvelt family has even been taken to new heights, owing to Victoria Christman's recent publications, which claim—unfounded, I argued—that Jacob van Liesvelt's widow, Maria Ancxt, continued her husband's Protestant Bible printing in contravention of the severe censorship measures issued by Habsburg authorities and without being troubled by the Antwerp town magistrate. Both elements of the Van Liesvelt family story or myth are manifestations of a broader “paradigm,” or “grand narrative,” that continues to underpin the viewpoints of scholars who are not informed by rigid scholarship and even let themselves be dictated to by old-fashioned Protestant or liberal biases. In recent literature, this “paradigm” has been particularly defined as including the idea that the medieval Catholic Church authorities forbade the laity from reading vernacular Bibles and that the Bible was only opened to the masses following the arrival of Protestant Reformers on the scene—a view that, at least in part, can be traced back to Martin Luther himself. I would like to take the “paradigm” further still to encompass the related generalization that, after the advent of the Reformation, the Catholic authorities, both ecclesiastical and civil, intensified their efforts to keep the vernacular Bible out of the hands of the laity. My definition builds upon the analyses offered by scholars such as Andrew GowFootnote ⁹⁴ and Sabrina Corbellini (including her Groningen research group),Footnote ⁹⁵ whereas the existence of such an underlying “paradigm” is also recognized in publications written by Kenneth G. AppoldFootnote ⁹⁶ and Peter Marshall.Footnote ⁹⁷ The “paradigm,” and the various myths typically surrounding it, contributed to the construction of the Protestant identity beginning in the early modern period, an identity that was reinforced in the second confessional age between the 1850s and the 1970s and that unfortunately continues to hold firm in the minds of scholars today when looking at the materials before them. There should be no doubt that (some) Catholic scholars also had, and even continue to have, certain prejudices and underlying paradigms in their views on the Reformation Era, but these are less pertinent in the context of the present essay.