Marot, CLÉMENT, a distinguished French poet of the time of Francis I., was born at Cahors in 1496 (?). Largely owing to the influence of his father, who was both poet and courtier, he began at an early age to write verses, and, abandoning his legal studies, entered the service of Margaret,
Duchess of Alençon, afterwards Queen of Navarre, to whom many of his poems are addressed. He was wounded at the battle of Pavia in 1525, and at the end of the year was imprisoned on a charge of heresy, but was liberated in the spring of 1526. Having a witty pen and a satiric turn, and not being particularly prudent either in speech or conduct, he made many enemies and gave his royal patrons considerable trouble. During his absence from Paris in 1535 his house was searched, and compromising literature was found in his library. His claim that a poet should be permitted to read everything being disallowed, he fled, first to the court of the Queen of Navarre, and later found refuge with the Duchess of Ferrara. He returned to Paris in 1536, and in 1538 began to translate the Psalms, which in their French dress became very popular, especially at the court, where they were sung to favourite secular airs, and helped to make the new views fashionable at least. He was encouraged by the king to continue his translation, but the part published in 1541 having been condemned by the Sorbonne, he had again to flee in 1543. He made his way to Geneva, but, finding Calvin's company uncongenial, he went to Turin, where he died in 1544. His poems consist of elegies, epistles, rondeaus, ballads, songs, sonnets, madrigals, epigrams, nonsense verses, and longer pieces of a general character; and, though he himself tells us that love was above all his master, his special gift lay in the direction of badinage and graceful satire. Marot has a singularly light touch, and a great power of simple natural expression, and in all his poems—if we except some early rhetorical exercises—there is the distinctive style Marotique which has had an important influence on French literary language. Though he was persecuted for his religious views, he expressly declares that he was not a Lutheran, and probably like many of his friends—Dolet for instance—he had no very definite theological beliefs.
See Œuvres Complètes (4 vols. Paris, 1873-75); Œuvres Choisies, an admirable selection (Paris, 1826); Life by Vitet (1868); Douen, Clément Marot et le Psautier Huguenot (2 vols. 1879). Of Guiffrey's costly edition only two volumes had appeared in 1890.