From the middle of the sixteenth century and until the time of the great disasters brought on during the revolt of the Netherlands, the “Spanish fury” of 1576, and the great siege of 1585, Antwerp was at the height of its prosperity, and in the extent and varied character of its commercial relations, it was, possibly, the leading city of Europe. While the enterprise and the genius for commerce of the Netherlanders had brought into their hands so large a proportion of the trade of the world, the people were very far from being mere traders. Their active-mindedness and incisive energy caused them to be keenly interested in intellectual pursuits and in all pending issues in religion, politics, and literature, while their sturdiness of character gave them a respect for their own opinions and made them ready to support these not only with arguments, but, when the time came, with the devotion of their lives. It is probable that, except in Florence, Venice, and a few other communities in Italy, there was no country in the world in which during the sixteenth century intelligence and cultivation were so widely diffused as in the Netherlands. Before the life and death struggle with Spain, the differences between Flanders and Brabant in the South and Holland and its sister provinces to the North were much less strongly marked than was the case after the division of the Netherlands had left one part Catholic and one part Protestant, and had brought about, through exiling over both borders, the concentration of the Protestants in the free provinces of the North, and of the Catholics in the provinces which remained under Spanish rule in the South. At the time of Plantin’s settlement in Antwerp, Flanders (using this term to cover roughly the modern Belgium) contained a large Protestant population, and the relations of the city with the towns of the Northern provinces were active and intimate. The neighbouring University of Louvain supplied the scholarly coöperation which was so essential for all the publishing undertakings of the age, while not a few scholars who, a few years later, found themselves with the exiles in Leyden or in Amsterdam, were at that time resident in Antwerp, and were already largely associated with the work of the printing-press. It will be recognised, therefore, that Antwerp possessed exceptional advantages as a centre of book-production, advantages so great that they could not be entirely destroyed even by “the Spanish fury,” the disastrous siege, and the confirmation of the Spanish domination. In fact, before the close of the fifteenth century, out of the sixty-five printers who were at work in the Netherlands, no less than thirteen were in Antwerp. At the time of Plantin’s arrival, an entire quarter of the city was devoted to the making of books, a circumstance at the time without a parallel among the cities of Europe.