Born at
Mauléon, in what is now
Pyrénées-Atlantiques, Jean de Sponde was raised in an austere
Protestant family in the
Basque region of France (some critics believe his family had Spanish roots) with close relations with the royal court of
Navarre. A bright student at the College of Lascar (1569), he received funds for his education from
Jeanne d'Albret, the mother of
Henry de Navarre (the future Henry IV of France), and went on to learn
ancient Greek and Protestant
theology. Despite his religious upbringing, in his early writings Jean de Sponde turned toward worldly literature: he produced an edition of
Homer accompanied by an extensive
Latin commentary which was printed in Basel in 1583, and wrote love poems (The
Amours, published posthumously in 1597 with
Poésies posthumes). In 1580, with the help of a travel grant provided by Henry of Navarre, he moved to
Basel to study under
Théodore de Bèze. Sometime later, the king of Navarre gave him a position as
maître des requêtes. In 1582, Jean de Sponde became profoundly moved after reading the
Psalms, and from this point on his writings took on a religious orientation, leaving the author to consider his early love poems as
fadaises (worthless things). It is from this period that he wrote what are considered his most important works:
Méditations sur les psaumes ("Meditations on the Psalms") and
Essai de quelques poèmes chrétiens ("Essay of Several Christian Poems", 1588). In this last collection, Jean de Sponde explored the passage of time, the shortness of life and the presence of death in man's life. He left Basel and returned to Navarre as royal counsellor and
maître des requêtes in 1583, and married. Upon a trip to Paris in 1589, Sponde was imprisoned by the
Catholic League for his religion. Upon his liberation, he became lieutenant-general of the appellate court (
sénéchaussée) in
La Rochelle, but left the city in 1593 and returned to Tours. After a second imprisonment for his beliefs, he converted to
Catholicism in
Tours in 1593, following the example of Henry IV. This conversion however earned him the hatred of the Protestants (his friend
d'Aubigné became his personal enemy) and distanced him from the king (who sought to maintain his alliances with the huguenots). Sponde then moved to
Bordeaux and spent the last years of his life writing against Calvinist theology. He died in Bordeaux in poverty in 1595. == Poetry ==