ABSTRACT
When Maximilien Morillon, the vicar-general of the metropolitan see of Mechelen, wrote on 7 June 1567 to his master and confidant, Cardinal Granvelle, then in Rome, he was in a rather cheerful frame of mind. The past 12 months had truly been an ‘annus horribilis’. But now, after the unnerving explosion of Calvinist field services, the devastation of hundreds of churches and a rash of local insurrections, things seemed at last to be returning to normal. The heretics had fled the country, the Feast of Corpus Christi had just been celebrated in Brussels with great devotion and the vicar-general had even overheard people expressing regret that Granvelle had ever left the Habsburg Netherlands. To Morillon one of the most hopeful signs was the cessation of ‘posters and pasquinades’.2 His relief was understandable. For a year or more the religious and political establishments had been openly assailed by a hostile press. With the country awash with Protestant books and Beggar pamphlets, even respectable printers had concluded that they would do no harm if they followed suit and reprinted such material. Besides, entrepreneurs hate to turn away good business and in those topsy-turvy times, the future seemed more uncertain than ever.
