Guillaume du Bartas

Guillaume de Saluste, Sieur Du Bartas
engraving of Du Bartas (Nicolas de Larmessin, possibly late 17th to early 18th century)
Born	1544
Died	1590
Nationality	French
Occupation	courtier and poet

Guillaume de Saluste Du Bartas (1544, Monfort – July 1590, Mauvezin) was a Gascon Huguenot courtier and poet. Trained as a doctor of law, he served in the court of Henri de Navarre for most of his career. Du Bartas was celebrated across sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Europe for his divine poetry, particularly L'Uranie (1584), Judit (1584), La Sepmaine; ou, Creation du monde (1578), and La Seconde Semaine (1584-1603).

Relatively little is known about Du Bartas’ life. Born in 1544, Guillaume Sallustre descended from a family of wealthy merchants in Montfort (in the Armagnac region). His family name later became ‘Saluste’ rather than 'Sallustre', perhaps to invite comparison with the Roman historian Sallust. He was possibly a student at College de Guyenne in Bordeaux (Michel de Montaigne’s school), and studied law in Toulouse under Jacques Cujas: he became a doctor of law in 1567, and subsequently a judge in Montfort in 1571. He gained the lordship of nearby Bartas (becoming Sieur Du Bartas) on his father’s death in 1566. He married Catherine de Manas, a local noblewoman, in 1570, and they had four daughters together: Anne, Jeanne, Marie and Isabeau.

He entered the service of Henri de Navarre in 1576, who would become Henri IV of France in 1589. He was sent on various diplomatic missions, including to Montmorency in 1580, and Scotland and England in 1587. He died in 1590, just weeks after composing a poem that celebrated Henri's victory at the Battle of Ivry, though it is not thought that he fought in the battle.

Château Du Bartas, found in Saint Georges, was Du Bartas' residence in the later part of his life. A statue of Du Bartas stands in a square named after him in Auch, the historic capital of Gascony.

Du Bartas began writing poetry in the 1560s after being invited to do so by Jeanne d'Albret de Navarre. His first collection, La muse chrestienne (1574) contains ‘L’Uranie’, a verse prosopographia in which the Christian muse urges the poet to commit himself to composing serious poetry on scriptural themes. The other two items in the volume, the biblical epic Judit and 'Le Triomphe de la Foi', were examples of this new religious verse.