Jacques Amyot

Who was Jacques Amyot?

Jacques Amyot, French Renaissance writer and translator, was born of poor parents, at Melun.

He found his way to the University of Paris, where he supported himself by serving some of the richer students. He was nineteen when he became M.A. at Paris, and later he graduated doctor of civil law at Bourges. Through Jacques Colure, abbot of St. Ambrose in Bourges, he obtained a tutorship in the family of a secretary of state. By the secretary he was recommended to Margaret of France, Duchess of Berry, and through her influence was made professor of Greek and Latin at Bourges. Here he translated the Æthiopica of Heliodorus, for which he was rewarded by Francis I with the abbey of Bellozane.

He was thus enabled to go to Italy to study the Vatican text of Plutarch, on the translation of whose Lives he had been some time engaged. On the way he turned aside on a mission to the Council of Trent. Returning home, he was appointed tutor to the sons of Henry II, by one of whom he was afterwards made grand almoner and by the other was appointed, in spite of his plebeian origin, commander of the Order of the Holy Spirit.