Tuesday 8 July 2025: Arrival – City & Museum tours – Evensong – Keynote
Venue: University of Antwerp, Stadscampus, Prinsstraat 13, room S.B.003
- 9.00-10.00 Registration. Tea & coffee available.
- 10.00-10.40 Introductory lecture by Guido Latré (University of Louvain) on ‘Tyndale and Antwerp.’
- 10.40-12.00 Guided walk with Guido Latré exploring Tyndale’s Antwerp.
- 12.00-14.00 Lunch at participants’ own discretion.
- 14.00-16.00 Guided visit to Museum Plantin-Moretus and its temporary display of Dangerous Books with curator Zanna Van Loon
- 17.30-18.30 Evensong in the Cathedral of Our Lady, with the Reverend Stephen Graham (Chaplain, Anglican Parish of St Boniface, Antwerp) officiating. Guy Protheroe directs the choir including former and current members of The English Chamber Choir.
Venue: Klooster Grauwzusters (University of Antwerp), Lange Sint-Annastraat 7, Antwerp
- 20.00-21.00 Lecture by Andrew Pettegree (University of St Andrews): Bookselling in Early Modern Europe: reconstructing a restless trade.
- 21.00-21.40 Reception
Wednesday 9 July 2025: English Bibles in 16th-century Antwerp
Conference venue: Hof van Liere, Prinsstraat 13 (Frederik de Tassis lecture room - 2nd floor)
- 9.00-9.30 Registration (tea & coffee available).
- 9.30-9.40 Introduction by Guido Latré (University of Louvain) and Mary Clow (Chair, Tyndale Society).
- 09.40-10.00 Christian Herrmann (Württembergische Landesbibliothek), From Worms to Stuttgart: provenance and itinerary of the only complete surviving copy of Tyndale’s 1526 New Testament translation.
- 10.00-10.40 Lecture by Chris Warner (Le Moyne College): In Antwerp, ‘We printe not with suche ease as doe oure aduersaries.’
- 10.40-11.00 Tea & coffee.
- 11.00-12.15 Session 1: Printers, their causes and their obstacles
- Thomas Fulton (Rutgers University): Tyndale, persecution, and the printing houses, 1525–1530.
- John Craig (Simon Fraser University), Bible censorship in 1543: the case of the ‘Matthew Bible’ in the parish of All Saints, Bristol.
- Andrew Hope (former lecturer, Universities of Oxford and Reading), The missing piece of the jig-saw: William Tyndale, the Aragonese cause, and the Antwerp trade in prohibited books.
- Plenary question round for the three speakers on Printers, their causes and their obstacles.
- 12.15-13.15 Sandwich lunch.
- 13.15-13.55 Lecture by Mark Rankin (James Madison University): John Bale, John Foxe, and the influence of William Tyndale’s political ideas.
- 13.55-14.45 Session 2: Prefaces, prologues and annotations in Tyndale editions
- Harry Spillane (University of Cambridge), Printing Tyndale’s prefaces and prologues, 1525–c.1560.
- Ian Russell Christie Miller (Independent Post-Doc researcher), The annotations in British Library C.53.b.1: Tyndale’s 1528 Antwerp ‘The obedience of a christen man.’
- Plenary question round for the two speakers on Prefaces, prologues and annotations.
- 14.45-14.55 Short break.
- 14.55-15.20 Session 3: Antwerp’s English Psalter
- David Manning (University of Leicester), Antwerp’s English Psalter and transnational faith communities: towards an Anglo-Protestant theology of trust (followed by discussion).
- 15.20-15.40 Session 4: Digital editions
- Neil Rees (Bible Society UK and Tyndale Society), The Tyndale Society digitisation project: some Tyndale translations in digital format (followed by discussion).
- 15.40-16.00 Tea & coffee.
- 16.00-17.00 Lecture by Diarmaid MacCulloch (University of Oxford): William Tyndale and Thomas Cromwell: recovering one nexus within the early English Reformation.
Venue: AMUZ concert hall, Church of Saint Augustine, Kammenstraat 81, Antwerp
- 20.00-21.30 Concert: Music of the Tudor Age in England and the Low Countries. Guy Protheroe directs a choir including former and current members of The English Chamber Choir.
Thursday 10 July 2025: Low Countries Books for Tudor Readers
Conference venue: Hof van Liere, Prinsstraat 13 (Frederik de Tassis lecture room - 2nd floor)
- 9.00-9.30 Registration (tea & coffee available).
- 9.30-9.40 Introduction by Pierre Delsaerdt (University of Antwerp) and Zanna Van Loon (Museum Plantin-Moretus).
- 9.40-11.00 Session 1: The Plantin Press
- Fred Schurink (University of Manchester), The Plantin-Moretus Press and foreign books in Early Modern England before 1640: a bibliographic data analysis.
- Julianne Simpson (Chetham’s Library, Manchester), ‘Vostre ami et serviteur a commandement’: book trade networks, crisis and continuity between London and Antwerp in the 1570s.
- Elise Watson (University of Edinburgh), Intermediation in Middelburg: the Dutch trade of confessional books between Antwerp and Tudor England.
- Plenary questions round for the three speakers on The Plantin Press.
- 11.00-11.20 Tea & coffee
- 11.20-12.00 Lecture by Brian Cummings (University of York): Erasmus and the Low Countries printer Dirk Martens.
- 12.00-13.30 Sandwich lunch.
- 13.30-14.00 Session 2: Music books
- Louisa Hunter-Bradley (King’s College, University of London), Agents and movement of music from the Low Countries to England in the early modern period.
- 14.00-14.10 Short break
- 14.10-15.30 Session 3 Catholic books for English readers
- Maddy C. Keightley-Philipps (University of Durham), ‘She trades much to Saint Omers’: Early modern English Catholic women and the illicit transnational distribution of Catholic books.
- Chelsea Reutcke (University of Utah), For the cause of England: Antwerp and the production of continental Catholic propaganda against Elizabeth I.
- Karen Nelson (University of Maryland), Polyglot emblems and counter-reformation politics.
- Plenary question round for the three speakers on Catholic books for English readers.
- 15.30-16.00 Tea & coffee.
- 16.00-17.00 Lecture by Cristina Dondi (Sapienza University of Rome & CERL), Tracking the distribution and use of European books: provenance research, good technology, and international collaboration – the CERL ecosystem.
Venue: Universiteitsclub, De Mayerzaal, 13 b Prinsstraat, Antwerp
19.00-21.30 End of conference meal, partly sponsored by the Tyndale Society and the University of Antwerp.
Friday 11 July 2025: Excursion to the old university town of Leuven (Louvain)
- Visit to Erasmus’ Collegium Trilingue, St Peter’s Church, 15th-century Town Hall, Papal College and Beguinage
Access Museum Plantin-Moretus
For the entire duration of the conference, all participants will have access to a small-scale curated display in the Museum Plantin-Moretus showing books from the museum’s own collection, with two loans from institutions outside Antwerp: (1) the Worms copy of Tyndale’s New Testament (the only complete copy, probably from 1526) and (2) the letter Tyndale wrote while imprisoned in Vilvoorde Castle in 1535 (loan from the General State Archive in Brussels to be confirmed).