The Petrus Canisius translation (PC) is a Dutch Roman Catholic translation of the Bible. It was published in three stages: Gospels and Acts in 1906, the complete New Testament in 1929, the complete Bible (Old and New Testament) in 1936-1939. This article describes its making, its various editions, and its reception, and represents the first stage of a larger research project on the PC and on the more recent Catholic Willibrordvertaling. The project deals with the more technical aspects of both translations as well, such as the textcritical problems regarding the source texts, the handling of the various literary genres, metaphors, and intertextuality within the Bible, the division of larger texts into smaller units, the solutions to specific translation problems, etc. Both translations are compared to trace possible developments in these areas. The author hopes to demonstrate the usefulness of the historical component in any description of a translation.