Marot, Cl�ment c.1497-1544
French poet

Born in Cahors, he entered the service of Margaret of Angoul�me, Queen of Navarre. He was wounded at the Battle of Pavia in 1525, and soon after imprisoned for a few months on a charge of heresy. In 1535 he fled first to the court of the Queen of Navarre, and later to that of the Duchess of Ferrara, and returned to Paris in 1536, where he began to translate the Psalms into French in 1538. He had to flee again in 1543 when accused of heresy by the Sorbonne. He made his way to Geneva, but left under a cloud (he is said to have played backgammon on a Sunday), and went to Turin. His poems consist of elegies, epistles, rondeaux, ballads, sonnets, madrigals, epigrams, nonsense verses and longer pieces.

Bibliography: C A Mayer, Marot (1969)