Christophe Plantin was trained as a bookbinder, by 1555 he owned his own printing shop, the ‘Officina Plantiniana’. 

It became the largest printing business of sixteenth Century Europe. This was because of Plantin’s business acumen and his fluid approach to the prevailing political and religious climate. 

Although Plantin was Catholic, he published works that appealed to Protestants and Catholics and was prepared to move the business when things became volatile. From 1558, Plantin began associating with the cartographer, 

. By 1575 he had over seventy-three employees working at the press. After many years in Leiden, in 1585, Plantin returned to Antwerp. Thereafter he attempted to integrate with Catholic Spain by printing a Spanish edition of 