Maximilien de Wignacourt

Maximilien de Wignacourt, alternatively Vignacourt or Vignacurtius (1560–1620) was a writer in Latin and French in the Spanish Netherlands.

Wignacourt was born in Arras in 1560, a nephew of the renowned jurist François Baudouin.

In the late 1570s he studied at the University of Leuven under Justus Lipsius, to whom he wrote a letter (now in Leiden University Library) on 9 November 1586.

[1] In 1582 he entered the service of Bernardino de Mendoza in England, and on his recommendation seems to have become a hanger-on at the court of Philip II of Spain.

His poems of commemoration and congratulation for powerful figures provided a meagre income.