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Guy Du Faur, Seigneur de Pibrac

1911 Encyclopedia Britannica

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SEIGNEUR DE (1529-1584), French jurist and poet, was born at Toulouse, of an old family of the magistracy. He studied law there with Jacques Cujas, and afterwards at Padua. In 1548 he was admitted to the bar at Toulouse, at once took high rank, and rose to be juge-mage, an office in Languedocian cities about equal to that of prevot. He was selected in 1562 as one of the three representatives of the king of France at the council of Trent. In 1565 he became general advocate to the parlement of Paris, and extended the renaissance in jurisprudence which was transforming French justice. In 1573 he was sent by Charles IX. to accompany as chancellor his brother Henry (afterwards Henry III.) to Poland, of which country Henry had been elected king. Pibrac's fluent Latin won much applause from the Poles, but his second visit to Poland in 1575, when sent back by Henry III. to try to save the Crown he had deserted, was not so successful. Then he was employed in negotiations with the so-called politiques, and he managed to keep them quiet for a while. In 1578 he became the chancellor of Marguerite of France, queen of Navarre. Although he was fifty, her beauty and intellectual gifts led him to aspire to win her affection; but he was rejected with disdain. He died in 1584. His oratorical style was too pedantic, but quotations from the classics had a fresher meaning in his day. He was the friend of Ronsard, de Thou and L'Hopital, and left, among other literary remains, elegant and sententious quatraines.