Guillaume Budé

Guillaume Budé (1467–1540) was France's leading humanist. After studying law at Orléans, he devoted himself to Latin and Greek in his twenties, and won fame with the Annotationes in Pandectas (1508), which applied philology to Roman law, and De Asse (1514), on ancient coins and measures.

Sent as ambassador to Rome under Louis XII and made master of requests under Francis I, he persuaded Francis to found the Collège des Trois Langues, later the Collège de France, and the royal library at Fontainebleau, whose books began the Bibliothèque nationale. In 1533 he helped dissuade the king from banning printing. He died in Paris on 20 August 1540.