Guillaume Bigot

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Guillaume Bigot (born June 2, 1502 in Laval , † around 1550) was a French poet , philosopher and doctor .

life and work

The life of the very learned Guillaume Bigot is marked by numerous accidents. When he was only a year old, his wet nurse died of the plague . He is said to have been abandoned and only found by chance by his father. His upbringing was entrusted to people who took little trouble. Then he studied philosophy at Angers , but lived very dissolute and eventually had to flee because of prosecution. He went to the country and now studied more eagerly and with rapid success largely self-taught ancient languages, philosophy, astronomy, astrology and medicine.

When Guillaume du Bellay, seigneur de Langey went on a secret mission to Germany, Bigot accompanied him there and in 1535 became professor of philosophy in Tübingen . But since he got into a dispute here as an opponent of Philipp Melanchthon's system , he left the University of Tübingen, went to Basel in 1536 , where he lived for some time, and then returned to France. At first he enjoyed the hospitality of the du Bellay family, his patrons . He later turned down the offer of a well-paid chair at the University of Padua and, after selling the rest of the goods he owned in Laval, became professor at the newly established University of Nîmes . But here, too, he had to struggle with many adversities, which forced him to frequent trips to Paris in order to obtain confirmation of his privileges here. His wife, with whom he had two daughters and whom he had left behind at Toulouse , had been unfaithful to him, and because her lover Pietro Fontano had therefore been emasculated by Bigot's former servant Antonin Verdanus, Bigot was charged with being the author of this crime. He had to spend a long time in prison, where he was still in 1549. Released at last, he retired to Metz and is likely to have died soon, but the time of his death is unknown.

Bigot has made a name for himself as a Latin and French poet through his poem Catoptron (Der Spiegel), which was written during his stay in Tübingen and published in Basel in 1536, and whose improved edition (Toulouse 1549) includes Christianae philosophiae praeludium; ad Jesum Christum carmen supplex , in which he laments his harsh fate as a prisoner. Another Latin poem by him, Somnium, in quo cum alia, tum imperatoris Caroli describitur ab regno Galliae depulsio , appeared in Paris in 1537. According to Bernard de La Monnoye , he published only one French poem, which is among the poems by Charles de Sainte-Marthe to whom it is addressed (Lyon 1540).

literature

personal data
SURNAME Bigot, Guillaume
BRIEF DESCRIPTION French poet, philosopher and doctor
DATE OF BIRTH June 2, 1502
PLACE OF BIRTH Laval
DATE OF DEATH around 1550