Clément Marot, court poet of King Francis…
April 1543 CE
Clément Marot, court poet of King Francis and his sister Marguerite de Navarre, infuses medieval and classical verse forms—rondeau, ballade, chanson, elegy, epigram—as well as the new sonnet form, with both elegance and spontaneity.
His poetic autobiography, Epitres (“Epistles”), written from 1526 to 1539, provide a fascinating portrait of court life and trace Marot's rise and fall from favor, resulting from his suspected Protestant sympathies following his notable two-year translation of the Psalms, which he completes in 1543, during which time he also edits the works of the fifteenth-century French poet François Villon.
Each courtier identifies his or her favorite psalms, and the poems are sung in the court and in the city.
It is said, probably with exaggeration, that these translations do more than anything else to advance the cause of the Protestant Reformation in France.
Marot's translations of the Psalms will continue to be sung for centuries by Protestant congregations.
Marot engages at the same time in a literary quarrel with a lesser poet named Sagon, who represents the reactionary Sorbonne.
Half the verse-writers of France align themselves as Marotiques or Sagontiques, and a great deal of versified abuse is exchanged.
Victory, as far as wit is concerned, remains with Marot, but his biographers suggest that a certain amount of ill-will had been created against him by the squabble, and that, as in Dolet's case, his subsequent misfortunes are partly the result of his own rashness.
The publication of the Psalms gives the Sorbonne the opportunity to condemn Marot.
As it is evident that he could not rely on the protection of Francis, Marot accordingly flees to Geneva.
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