[3][4] According to Keith Bosley, the de La Ceppède family was of Spanish heritage and may have been related to Saint Teresa of Avila, who was born a Cepeda.
Despite his devoutly Roman Catholic faith, de La Ceppède was a Politique and supported the claim of the Calvinist Henri of Navarre under Salic Law to the throne of France during the French Wars of Religion.
[6] As France was increasingly reunified by the armies of King Henri IV, de La Ceppède published his first collection of poems, which was an imitation of the Seven Penitential Psalms.
According to Keith Bosley, de La Ceppède's book was one of many peace offerings to the new King by the poets of Provence, where support for the Catholic League had been overwhelming.
[5] Accord to a 2012 article about de La Ceppède by Christopher O. Blum, "It was in 1594, at the end of the French Wars of Religion, that he published his first work, an imitation of the Penitential Psalms of David.
In a dedicatory epistle that was an extended meditation upon theme of shipwreck, he declared his desire to 'dispose his soul and, with it, poor France' to look to the Cross for safety and to take 'the good David' as guide for 'this perilous navigation.'
In response to de La Ceppède's frequent comparison of Jesus Christ to figures from Greek and Roman mythology, the Bishop wrote, "[I am] drawn by that learned piety which so happily makes you transform the Pagan Muses into Christian ones.
[5] According to Christopher Blum, "The Theorems is not only poetry, it is a splendid work of erudition, as each sonnet is provided with a commentary linking it to scriptural and patristic sources and, especially, to the Summa Theologiae of St. Thomas Aquinas.
As de La Ceppède put it in his introduction—which can be read in Keith Bosley's admirable translation of seventy of the sonnets—the harlot Lady Poetry had been unstitched of 'her worldly habits' and shorn of her 'idolatrous, lying and lascivious hair' by the 'two-edged razor of profound meditation on the Passion and death of our Saviour.
[8] Following his death in 1623, Jean de La Ceppède's former estate grew into a village called Les Aygalades [fr],[9] which is now part of the 15th arrondissement of Marseille.