Jean Lemaire de Belges

Jean Lemaire de Belges (c. 1473 – c. 1525) was a Walloon poet, historian, and pamphleteer who, writing in French, was the last and one of the best of the school of poetic 'rhétoriqueurs' (“rhetoricians”) and the chief forerunner, both in style and thought, of the Renaissance humanists in France and Flanders.

He was born in Hainaut (Hainault), the godson and possibly a nephew of Jean Molinet, and spent some time with him at Valenciennes, where the elder writer held a kind of academy of poetry.

This latter piece was subsequently utilised in the sublimely melancholic Soubz ce tumbel (Within this tomb) by Pierre de la Rue.

Within this tomb, which is a harsh, locked cell, Lies the green lover, the very worthy slave Whose noble heart, drunk with true, pure love,

In his love for antiquity, his sense of rhythm, and even the peculiarities of his vocabulary he anticipated the humanist movement led by Du Bellay and Ronsard, the Pléiade.