Background
He was born at Bavay in the Belgian province of Hainault, a town now in the French department of Nord.
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Jean Lemaire de Belges
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Clé mentClement Marot, Pierre de Ronsard, Joachim Du Bellay, and many other sixteenth-century poets were influenced by his writing and erudition. A relative, Jean Molinet, historiographer of the court of Burgundy, provided for the fatherless Lemaire's education at Valenciennes and at the University of Paris.
Career
By 1498 he was a clerk at the court of Peter II of Bourbon, at Villefranche-sur-Saone. Encouragement from Guillaume Cretin determined his career in letters. Peter's death, in 1503, inspired Lemaire's first important poem, Le Temple d'honneur et de vertu ("The Temple of Honor and Virtue"), which is notable principally for eighty-two tercets in the manner of Petrarch, the first use of this verse form in French poetry.
A later work of uncertain date, La Concordance des deux langues ("The Concord of the Two Languages"), in which prose alternates with poetry, is the first extensive French imitation of Petrarch and anticipates Joachim du Bellay's defense of the French language. Louis of Luxemburg, Count of Ligny, to whom Le Temple was dedicated, rewarded Lemaire with a secretarial post, but died a few weeks later.
Lemaire then dedicated La Plainte du desire ("The Complaint for the Beloved") to Margaret, daughter of the emperor Maximilian and wife of Philibert II, Duke of Savoy, and was accepted (1504) into the Duchess' household at Pont d'Ain near Bourg-en-Bresse. The sudden death of Margaret's husband brought from Lemaire another funeral poem, La Couronne Margaritique. Possibly influenced by ideas in this work, Margaret determined to build a great church at Brou as a monument to Philibert. Work was begun in 1505 under the artist Jean Perreal, with Lemaire in a supervisory capacity.
For Margaret's pleasure, Lemaire composed (1505 and 1508) his most graceful poems, the two Epitres de l'amant vert ("Epistles of the Green Lover"), fine examples of the epistolary form to which Marot later owed much of his fame. The theme, suggested by Ovid's Amores, is reminiscent of Dante's Inferno and Canto VI of Vergil's Aeneid. A mission to Italy in 1506 was for Lemaire the beginning of almost constant travels. He found time for study of the great works of the Italian Renaissance, and for research in the materials of his own masterpiece, the Illustrations de la Gaule et singularites de Troie ("Illustrations of Gaul and Peculiarities of Troy"). This work, in prose, was begun in 1500 and completed about 1512; it proposes, with vast erudition, to establish a common Trojan origin for the principal nations of western Europe; this was an idea much favored in the medieval period. Joachim du Bellay reflected the opinion of his age when he said that in this particular work, Lemaire had rendered illustrious both Gaul and the French language. Margaret's brother, Philip of Castile, died in 1506, and Margaret became regent of the Low Countries and Burgundy. In 1507 Lemaire succeeded his late relative, Molinet, as historiographer of Margaret's court at Malines; his future seemed assured. During his long absences on official business, however, court intrigues undermined his position; and when a mission brought him opportunely to the French court at Blois, in 1512, he obtained from Anne of Brittany a post as the Queen's historiographer.
On January 9, 1514, Anne died; Lemaire re-dedicated to her daughter Claude a funeral treatise composed earlier for Margaret. This dedication is the last definitely known detail of Lemaire's life. Although his works long remained in favor, their celebrated author, at the height of his powers, disappeared completely from view. This disappearance is one of the mysteries of history.
