The Renegade and the Refugee: Two Psalters by Peter Quentel and Thomas Vautrollier

※ Introduction to the Texts ※

Who were the personalities behind the controversial texts that fuelled the unrest and upheaval of the Reformation? The two psalters on this page demonstrate how printers’ professional principles and religious commitments (or lack thereof) shaped debates about orthodoxy and reform in the Renaissance.

Promoting opposing sides of the bitter Reformation debates that raged on in Europe and Britain in the sixteenth century, the two psalters share many of the same aims: in accessible vernacular, both provide the masses with a “correct” reading of the psalms, arguably the most familiar and accessible Biblical texts.

For the printers who undertook and partly financed the printing of these psalters, however, the two printing jobs in this exhibit were the result of widely divergent publishing careers and  principles.

Peter Quentel, the affluent and well-connected printer of the Psalter latein und teutsch, is famous for being the printer behind Tyndale’s first failed attempt at printing his English Bible. He had no qualms about printing books for both sides of the religious debate: his shop would even print Catholic and Protestant works simultaneously. Thomas Vautrollier, on the other hand, was a Huguenot refugee who fled to England from France, and sought to print and promote Protestant texts under the religious protection of Elizabeth’s regime throughout his long and productive career.

Comparing these two psalters highlights both the labour and agency of the printers of religious texts, an often overlooked aspect of Reformation print culture. It demonstrates that professional networks and religious commitments (or lack thereof) of Renaissance printers, though mostly invisible in the body of the texts they printed, played a central role in shaping the work they produced.   

※ Historical Contexts ※

Peter Quentel (d. 1546)

The son of Heinrich Quentel, a prominent printer with shops in Cologne and Antwerp, Peter Quentel was already an experienced printer when he overtook the family business and started to publish under his own name in 1520.[1] Like his father, Quentel carefully navigated his place in the conservative city of Cologne by maintaining his reputation through strong professional ties. One of his closest collaborators was Anton von Worms, an illustrator and woodcutter who illustrated the Psalter latein und teutsch.

Woodcut illustration of the Five Wounds of Christ
in Der Psalter Latein und Teutsch, by Anton von Worms

Quentel’s connections did not only bolster his status with the orthodox citizens of Cologne. They also paved the way for his most infamous undertaking: the failed printing of Tyndale’s New Testament, a central text of the English Reformation. Tyndale likely learned about Quentel from Anton von Worms, and chose him specifically because his partners, the Byrckniaus, were booksellers in London.[2] The project was halted when Johann Cochlaus, a Catholic music theorist, discovered that his monograph was being printed in the same workshop as an illegal English Bible and alerted the authorities.[3] Although no complete copies of the Quentel/Tyndale Bible survive, the project is a testament to Quentel’s pragmatism and ideological flexibility.

  First page of the Gospel of John(coloured in by hand),

Tyndale Bible

Thomas Vautrollier (d. 1587)

Originally from Paris or Rouen, Vautrollier was a learned Huguenot refugee who fled France in 1558 and sought an escape from persecution in Elizabeth I’s Protestant-friendly England.

It would take twelve years for Vautrollier to obtain a license to print under his own name in London (1570). Even then, he did not enjoy complete political and professional security: in 1578 and 1579 alone, Vautrollier was charged twice for printing Lutheran texts without a license. Vautrollier’s experience demonstrated that, even in a Protestant nation, the terms of reform were carefully dictated and strictly enforced. His search for stability, security, and reliable patronage took him to Edinburgh for seven relatively unproductive years, and he returned to London in 1586, a year before his death.

Despite these obstacles, Vautrollier and his work were held in high regard by his contemporaries. A long list of early modern English books bear his printing mark of the anchora spei (the Anchor of Hope), which passed on to Richard Fields, Vautrollier’s apprentice, after his death.[4] 

Anchora Spei (Anchor of Hope), Vautrollier’s Printer’s Mark

※ The Renegade and the Refugee: The Personalities that Shaped the Reformation ※

Studying Der Psalter latein und teutsch as the physical product of Quentel’s printing practice allows for a better understanding of his professional standing and principles. Quentel’s printer’s mark, inherited from his father, is the arms of the city of Cologne. This hereditary privilege to print in the name of the whole city of Cologne demonstrates the prominence of the Quentel name and highlights his good reputation and standing with his community and with his partners outside of Cologne, despite taking on the occasional dubious print job.

The printer’s mark is also one of the few woodcut illustrations in the psalter, all of which are designed by Anton von Worms. The woodcuts are a testament to the strength of the professional relationship between Quentel and the artist. That Quentel would ask the same illustrator who not only illustrated the Tyndale Bible, but was the reason why Tyndale commissioned Quentel in the first place, to also illustrate this orthodox anti-Reformation text demonstrates the importance of stable partnerships and collaborative networks for Renaissance printers, which allowed them to navigate the fraught religious and ideological climate of their time. By maintaining their reputation as accurate and well-connected printers, successful printers like Quentel could not only survive, but receive steady commissions from both sides of the Reformation debates.
Quentel’s printer’s mark, with arms of the city of Cologne.
Illustrated by Anton von Worms.

Thomas Vautrollier never enjoyed the same prominence and professional security as Peter Quentel. Though he arrived in London in 1558, his first publication under his own name was only in 1570, and he continued to face censorship and fines from an English state anxious about overzealous or “incorrect” Protestant propaganda.

<span">Instead, it was his unique position as a learned French Huguenot refugee which informed his professional practice, and is behind the publication of the <span">Commentarie Upon the Fiftene Psalms. The professional relationships Vautrollier was able to establish were also made possible and firmly rooted in his religious principles – like this collaborations with John Foxe, Henry Bull, and Arthur Golding, another Protestant translator whose editions of John Calvin’s writings were central texts for the English Reformation.

In the preface to Commentarie on the Psalmes, John Foxe writes about Luther as a man who is “of many hitherto either hath not been read, and so not thoroughly known, or of a great number hated and maligned, or of some lightly regarded, or peradventure misjudged.” The project of Bull’s English translation of the psalms is, in other words, the dissemination of Luther’s works and ideas in an accessible and clarifying manner in England. When Vautrollier decided, despite his dubious professional standing and political security, and having already been fined for publishing Luther’s previous works, to undertake the printing of this psalter, his professional, political, and religious aims were considerably more in line with those of the other collaborators (Luther the author, Bull the translator, and Foxe the editor) than Quentel’s would have been with the monasteries, reformists, and humanists whose work he printed with little discernment.

A work of Protestant collaboration (from left to right: John Foxe’s Preface, Martin Luther’s Preface, and Henry Bull’s translation from Latin in A Commentarie upon the Fiftene Psalms). Vautrollier’s collaborative labour, while mostly absent from the body of the text, is evidenced in the material artefact of the book.  

 ※ Conclusion ※

The newly-established print culture of the Renaissance is widely associated with a new reproducibility and fixity of texts. The motivations of the printers behind early printed books, however, were far from homogenous or fixed. The two psalters in this exhibition only succeeded as projects of religious clarification for the masses because of the particular (and divergent) ways in which Quentel and Vautrollier navigated the 16th century print business, their professional practices, and their ideological commitments and flexibilities. They would not have existed as important texts for Renaissance religious discourse, and would not exist today as valuable objects of material and intellectual history, had it not been for the professional, political, and religious positioning and principles of their printers. For this reason alone, their lives and labours deserve more scholarly attention and historical credit.

 Endnotes

[1] Deutsche Biographie, “Quentel (Quentell), Heinrich (Henricus, Hinricus),” accessed at https://www.deutsche-biographie.de/gnd102359229.html, March 27, 2019.

[2] Thomas Spencer Baynes (ed.), The Encyclopaedia Britannica: A Dictionary of Arts, Sciences, and General Literature, Volume 8, A. and C. Black (1878), 384.

[3] Ralph S. Werrell, "William Tyndale," The Expository Times, vol. 126 no. 5 (2015), 212.

[4] Andrew Pettegree, "Vautrollier, Thomas (d. 1587)," Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, accessed at https://doi.org/10.1093/ref:odnb/28158, March 29, 2019.