In the past two decades, students of the early modern press have made great progress in breaking open the national paradigm that has long dominated the field. Recent research by scholars such as Nina Lamal, Rosanne Baars, Andrew Pettegree, and Helmer Helmers have highlighted the ‘international’ outlook of publishers and the often intense cross-pollination of Europe’s printing presses in the age of reformations and confessionalization. Yet despite the burgeoning scholarly interest in cross-border observation and exchange, it has proven difficult to fully shake off national parameters. Inter- or transnational studies often continue to take state borders as their vantage point, implicitly inflating or deflating the relative importance of specific regions in the process.
With De Katholieke Drukpers in de Kerkprovincie Kamerijk Alexander Soetaert offers a valuable revision to this bias by putting the seemingly peripheral Ecclesiastical Province of Cambrai, which roughly comprised the francophone regions of the Habsburg Low Countries, on the map as a significant European publishing centre. The province long stood in the historiographical shadow of the printing hubs that surrounded it, most notably Paris, London, Holland, Cologne, Frankfurt and, within the Southern Netherlands, Antwerp and Leuven. In his book, Soetaert skilfully demonstrates that precisely because of its geographical position between giants, the region could develop into a versatile publishing centre for a transregional Catholic market.
The opening chapter describes that the proximity of Paris and Antwerp initially hampered the development of a printing industry in the ecclesiastical province. Local printers found it hard to compete with the cheap import of books from these publishing powerhouses. The situation changed in the 1580s, when civil war disrupted the book trade in both cities. Supported by Counter-Reformation projects such as the founding of the University of Douai, the pacified Province of Cambrai could capitalise on a growing demand for French and Latin theological and devotional literature within and across its borders, allowing the region’s book trade to flourish until the 1630s. Indeed, as chapters three to five show, printers in the ecclesiastical province managed to turn their fringe position into an advantage. Publishers from border cities like Arras and Cambrai came to produce cheap reprints of French works, unimpeded by a lack of royal privileges.
Much of the success of the province’s transregional book trade, as Soetaert shows, was thanks to the influx of Catholic refugees from various places. French authors facing censorship or prosecution, including members of the defeated Catholic League, found literary safe havens in border cities like Arras and Douai, from where they could disseminate their writings throughout France. Yet by far the most interesting group of exiles, and the one that duly receives most of Soetaert’s attention, were clergy from across the Channel. In the 1570s, the Province of Cambrai emerged as a main sanctuary for English Catholic refugees and a leading training centre for missionary priests. Despite this, the (clandestine) presses in England and Paris initially remained the nuclei of English Catholic publishing. This changed with the 1605 Gunpowder Plot, which ushered in a period of both stricter censorship in the British Isles and a renewed desire among Catholics to engage in religious polemic against the Church of England. Joining hands with local publishers, the English Catholic colleges in Douai and Saint-Omer stepped into the breach and turned the province into a Catholic printing hub. For over two decades, the Ecclesiastical Province of Cambrai served both exiled Catholics on the continent and those remaining in England with confessional polemic, devotional literature, and a steady stream of translations from all over mainland Europe.
As may be inferred from the above synopsis, De Katholieke Drukpers in de Kerkprovincie Kamerijk is a rich study that not only draws attention to a major centre of Catholic refuge, but also sheds new light on the European book trade. Soetaert is an admirable empirical historian with an excellent command of the archives. Drawing on a broad range of sources, including book sales catalogues, general ledgers, and publishing privileges he seemingly effortlessly lays bare a complex European network of authors and publishers. In doing so, the author meticulously uncovers hundreds of editions, reprints, and translations, spanning more than ten countries. This is reflected in the book’s impressive 126-page appendix—listing, among others, the Catholic League’s pamphlets, the reprints from French authors, and the French translations that came off the province’s presses—which will prove to be a helpful reference work for a wide range of early modern book historians.
Some criticisms are nevertheless in order, as the author’s strong focus on publishing networks also comes at a cost. Between the descriptions of a vast number of authors, printers, and titles, readers may at times lose track of the main argument. They may wish for more reflection about the wider implications of the author’s findings for our knowledge of the Counter-Reformation, the early public sphere, and the use of the press in the reconsolidation of Habsburg rule in the Southern Netherlands. Soetaert’s understandable aim for comprehensiveness leaves room for more thorough literary criticism and questions about the cultural impact of transregional exchanges.
A case in point is the discussion of the Netherlandish engraver Martin Baes, who provided dozens of illustrations for English martyrologies. The book minutely reconstructs the process by which Baes was commissioned, but leaves open the extent to which this resulted in the transfer of a Netherlandish print culture to the British Isles. Finally, while the book successfully advances the argument that the Ecclesiastical Province of Cambrai transcended its regional significance, the choice to publish it in Dutch hardly supports this argument. One hopes an English translation will be commissioned soon. All in all, De Katholieke Drukpers in de Kerkprovincie Kamerijk makes a convincing case for the importance of regions in the European book trade and deserves a wide readership among students of the early modern Low Countries, English Catholicism, and the European book trade.
