Johannes Secundus

In 1528 his family moved to Mechlin, where Secundus wrote his first book of elegies.

In 1533 he went to join his other brother Grudius at the Spanish court of Charles V. There he spent two years working as secretary to the Archbishop of Toledo.

He returned to Mechlin because of illness, and died at Saint-Amand in September 1536 at the age of twenty-four.

Secundus was a prolific writer, and in his short life he produced several books of elegies on his lovers Julia and Neaera,[2] epigrams, odes, verse epistles and epithalamia, as well as some prose writings (epistles and itineraria).

His most famous work, though, was the Liber Basiorum (Book of Kisses, first complete edition 1541), a short collection consisting of nineteen poems in various metres, in which the poet explores the theme of the kiss in relation to his Spanish lover, Neaera.