Philippe Goibaut

March 1629 – 1 July 1694), known to his contemporaries as Monsieur Du Bois (pronounced [məsjø dy bwɑ]), was a translator of St. Augustine, member of the Académie Française and director of Mademoiselle de Guise's musical ensemble.

[citation needed] One of his detractors claimed that Goibaut began his career as dancing master to the young Louis Joseph, Duke of Guise and did not learn Latin until he was thirty, when the Jansenist “Messieurs” of Port-Royal became his spiritual and intellectual mentors.

His father, Philippe Goibaut, "écuyer" and "seigneur du Bois et de La Grugère" (d. 1638), was sénéchal of Champdeniers, a fief of the powerful Rochechouarts.

An inventory of his possessions drawn up that year refers to a library of some 200 books in Greek, Latin and French, as well as a viol, a theorbo and a guitar.

In 1655 he married Françoise Blacvod (d. 1676), the daughter of an official of Poitiers who descended from Adam Blackwood, physician to Mary, Queen of Scots.

[3] In 1660, Du Bois journeyed to Paris and rapidly entered the circle of Artus Gouffier, Duke of Roannez, the royal governor of Poitou.

[9] Mlle de Guise lodged her protégé in an apartment in the newly renovated stable wing of her splendid urban palace.

For seventeen years the two men — joined by an ever-increasing number of singers and instrumentalists — performed religious and secular music for the two Guise princesses, not only in their private residences and chapels but also at the royal court and in select Parisian venues.

The translated text was complemented by brief annotations providing background information about the history of the late Roman Empire or the theological quarrels of the first centuries of the Church.