Théophile de Viau

Théophile de Viau (1590 – 25 September 1626) was a French Baroque poet and dramatist.

Born at Clairac, near Agen in the Lot-et-Garonne and raised as a Huguenot, Théophile de Viau participated in the Protestant wars in Guyenne from 1615–16 in the service of the Comte de Candale. After the war, he was pardoned and became a brilliant young poet in the royal court. Théophile came into contact with the epicurean ideas of Italian philosopher Lucilio Vanini, which questioned the immortality of the soul. (Vanini was accused of heresy and of practising magic, and after having his tongue cut out, was strangled and his corpse burned in Toulouse in 1619.)

Because of his religion and his libertine lifestyle, de Viau was banished from France in 1619 and traveled in England, though he returned to the court in 1620. In 1622 a collection of licentious poems, Le Parnasse satyrique, was published under his name, although many of the poems were written by others, and de Viau was denounced by the Jesuits in 1623, and sentenced to appear barefoot before Notre Dame in Paris and to be burned alive.

While de Viau was in hiding, the sentence was carried out in effigy, but the poet was eventually caught in flight toward England and put in the Conciergerie prison in Paris for almost two years. The trial led to debates among scholars and writers, and 55 pamphlets were published both for and against de Viau. His sentence was changed to permanent banishment and de Viau spent the remaining months of his life in Chantilly under the protection of the Duke of Montmorency before dying in Paris in 1626.

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