Maurits Sabbe


Maurits Sabbe, born Maurice Charles Marie Guillaume Sabbe, was a Flemish man of letters and educator who became curator of the Plantin-Moretus Museum in Antwerp.

Life

He was a son of Julius Sabbe and the eldest of seven children. He grew up in Bruges, going to school there, and studied philology at the University of Ghent, obtaining a doctorate in 1896 with a thesis on Jan Luyken. He became a secondary school teacher, working at a number of different establishments. In 1899 he married Gabriëlla De Smet. From 1903 to 1919 he taught at the Koninklijk Atheneum in Mechelen, also providing Dutch classes at the Royal Conservatoire Antwerp from 1907.
In 1919 he was appointed curator of the Plantin-Moretus Museum. During this period he published on the Plantin Press, the Verdussen family, and the poetry and pamphleteering of the 16th and 17th centuries. From 1923 to 1937 he was professor of Dutch literature at the Université Libre de Bruxelles, in succession to August Vermeylen. He died in Antwerp on 12 February 1938 and was buried at the Schoonselhof Cemetery in Antwerp. A statue of him, unveiled in 1950, stands at the Sashuis near the Minnewater in Bruges.

Honours