A Reliability Check of Privilege Summaries Printed by Balthasar Moretus I (1610-1641)

Balthasar Moretus I's printed privilege summaries, intended to inform competitors and modern scholars about his publishing privileges, were found to be unreliable. These summaries often misrepresented the original privileges by expanding their territorial scope and even falsely including family members as grantees, aligning with the Officina Plantiniana's branding policy. Additionally, errors in copy-pasting earlier summaries introduced further inaccuracies. The study systematically compared printed summaries against handwritten originals from the Plantin-Moretus archives, revealing a pattern of intentional manipulation combined with sloppiness, which undermined the credibility of these historical documents.

Selleslach, K. (2024). A Reliability Check of Privilege Summaries Printed by Balthasar Moretus I (1610-1641). Early Modern Low Countries, 8(2), 206–228. https://doi.org/10.51750/emlc20858