Jacques Peletier
born 1517, Le Mans, France
died 1582, Paris
Jacques Pelletier du Mans, also
spelled Peletier, (1517–1582) was a
humanist, poet and mathematician of the
French Renaissance.
Born at Le Mans into a bourgeois
family, he studied at the Collège de
Navarre (in Paris) where his brother
Jean was a professor of mathematics and
philosophy. He subsequently studied law
and medicine, frequented the literary
circle around Marguerite of Navarre and
from 1541-43 was secretary to René du
Bellay. In 1541 he published the first
French translation of Horace's Ars
poetica and during this period he also
published numerous scientific and
mathematical treatises.
In 1547 he pronounced a funeral
oration for Henry VIII of England and
published his first poems "Œuvres
poétiques", which included translations
from the first two cantos of Homer's
Odyssey and the first book of Virgil's
Georgics, twelve Petrarchian sonnets,
three Horacian odes and a Martial-like
epigram; this poetry collection also
included the first published poems of
Joachim Du Bellay and Pierre de Ronsard
(Ronsard would include Jacques Peletier
into his list of revolutionary
contemporary poets "La Pléiade"). He
then began to frequent a humanist circle
around Théodore de Bèze, Jean Martin,
Denis Sauvage.
Jacques Pelletier tried to reform
French spelling (which in the
Renaissance had, through a misguided
attempt to model French words on their
Latin roots, acquired many
inconsistencies (see Middle French)) in
a treatise (1550) advocating a
phonetic-based spelling using new
typographic signs which Pelletier would
continue to use in all his published
works (because of this system,
"Peletier" is consistently spelled with
one "l").
After years spent in Bordeaux,
Poitiers, Piedmont (where Peletier may
have been the tutor of the son of
Maréchal de Brissac) and Lyon (where he
frequented the poets and humanists
Maurice Scève, Louise Labé, Olivier de
Magny and Pontus de Tyard). In 1555 he
published a manual of poetic
composition, "Art poétique français", a
Latin oration calling for peace from
Henry II of France and emperor Charles V
and a new collection of poetry, L'Amour
des amours (consisting of a sonnet cycle
and a series of encyclopedic poems
describing meteors, planets and the
heavens) which would influence poets
Guillaume du Bartas and Jean-Antoine de
Baïf.
His last years were spent in travels
(Savoy, Germany, Switzerland, maybe
Italy, and various regions in France)
and in publishing numerous works in
Latin on algebra, geometry and
mathematics, medicine (a refutation of
Galen, a work on the Plague). In 1572 he
was briefly director of the College of
Aquitaine (Bordeaux), but, bored by the
position, he resigned. During this
period he was friends with Michel de
Montaigne and Pierre de Brach. In 1579
he returned to Paris and was named
director of the College of Le Mans. A
final collection of poetry "Louanges"
was published in 1581.
Pelletier died at Paris in July or
August 1582.
