Life

He was born at Toulouse

Toulouse

Toulouse is a city in the Haute-Garonne department in southwestern FranceIt lies on the banks of the River Garonne, 590 km away from Paris and half-way between the Atlantic Ocean and the Mediterranean Sea...

 to an old family of the magistracy. He studied law

Law

Law is a system of rules and guidelines which are enforced through social institutions to govern behavior, wherever possible. It shapes politics, economics and society in numerous ways and serves as a social mediator of relations between people. Contract law regulates everything from buying a bus...

 there with Jacques Cujas

Jacques Cujas

Jacques Cujas was a French legal expert. He was prominent among the legal humanists or mos gallicus school, which sought to abandon the work of the medieval Commentators and concentrate on ascertaining the correct text and social context of the original works of Roman law.He was born at...

, and afterwards at Padua

Padua

Padua is a city and comune in the Veneto, northern Italy. It is the capital of the province of Padua and the economic and communications hub of the area. Padua's population is 212,500 . The city is sometimes included, with Venice and Treviso, in the Padua-Treviso-Venice Metropolitan Area, having...

.

In 1548 he was admitted to the bar at Toulouse

Toulouse

Toulouse is a city in the Haute-Garonne department in southwestern FranceIt lies on the banks of the River Garonne, 590 km away from Paris and half-way between the Atlantic Ocean and the Mediterranean Sea...

, at once took high rank, and rose to be juge-mage, an office in Languedoc

Languedoc

Languedoc is a former province of France, now continued in the modern-day régions of Languedoc-Roussillon and Midi-Pyrénées in the south of France, and whose capital city was Toulouse, now in Midi-Pyrénées. It had an area of approximately 42,700 km² .-Geographical Extent:The traditional...

ian cities about equal to that of privat. He was selected in 1562 as one of the three representatives of the king of France at the Council of Trent

Council of Trent

The Council of Trent was the 16th-century Ecumenical Council of the Roman Catholic Church. It is considered to be one of the Church's most important councils. It convened in Trent between December 13, 1545, and December 4, 1563 in twenty-five sessions for three periods...

. In 1565 he became general advocate to the parlement

Parlement

Parlements were regional legislative bodies in Ancien Régime France.The political institutions of the Parlement in Ancien Régime France developed out of the previous council of the king, the Conseil du roi or curia regis, and consequently had ancient and customary rights of consultation and...

 of Paris, and extended the renaissance in jurisprudence

Jurisprudence

Jurisprudence is the theory and philosophy of law. Scholars of jurisprudence, or legal theorists , hope to obtain a deeper understanding of the nature of law, of legal reasoning, legal systems and of legal institutions...

 which was transforming French justice.

In 1573 he was sent by Charles IX of France

Charles IX of France

Charles IX was King of France, ruling from 1560 until his death. His reign was dominated by the Wars of Religion. He is best known as king at the time of the St. Bartholomew's Day Massacre.-Childhood:...

 to accompany as chancellor his brother Henry (afterwards Henry III

Henry III of France

Henry III was King of France from 1574 to 1589. As Henry of Valois, he was the first elected monarch of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth with the dual titles of King of Poland and Grand Duke of Lithuania from 1573 to 1575.-Childhood:Henry was born at the Royal Château de Fontainebleau,...

) to Poland

Poland

Poland , officially the Republic of Poland , is a country in Central Europe bordered by Germany to the west; the Czech Republic and Slovakia to the south; Ukraine, Belarus and Lithuania to the east; and the Baltic Sea and Kaliningrad Oblast, a Russian exclave, to the north...

, of which country Henry had been elected king. Pibrac's fluent Latin won much applause from the Poles, but his second visit to Poland in 1575, when sent back by Henry III to try to save the Crown he had deserted, was not so successful. Then he was employed in negotiations with the so-called politiques, and he managed to keep them quiet for a while. In 1578 he became the chancellor of Marguerite of France, queen of Navarre

Marguerite de Valois

Margaret of Valois was Queen of France and of Navarre during the late sixteenth century...

. Although he was fifty, her beauty and intellectual gifts led him to aspire to win her affection; but he was rejected with disdain.

Works

His oratorical style was rather pedantic, but quotations from the classics had a fresher meaning in his day. He was the friend of Ronsard, de Thou and l'Hôpital

Michel de l'Hôpital

Michel de l'Hôpital was a French statesman.-Biography:De l'Hôpital was born near Aigueperse in Auvergne ....

, and left, among other literary remains, elegant and sententious quatrain

Quatrain

A quatrain is a stanza, or a complete poem, consisting of four lines of verse. Existing in various forms, the quatrain appears in poems from the poetic traditions of various ancient civilizations including Ancient Greece, Ancient Rome, and China; and, continues into the 21st century, where it is...

es.