Pierre Gringore

Pierre Gringore was a French poet and playwright of the Renaissance, who wrote in Middle French and is remembered today above all for his satirical plays. He was probably born around 1475 at Thury-Harcourt in Normandy, and lived under Louis XII, when tensions with Rome were building toward the Italian Wars.

His first known work was Le Chasteau de Labour, an allegorical poem from 1499. Between 1506 and 1512 he worked in Paris as an actor, manager and writer for the Confrérie des Enfants sans Souci, known as the Sots, whose comedies mocked the papacy with the king's approval. After Francis I came to the throne, restrictions on theatre tightened, and in 1518 Gringore moved to Lorraine, where he married Catherine Roger. The exact date and place of his death are unknown; it probably took place in 1538 or 1539.

Despite his attacks on the papacy, he was a devout Catholic. In 1524 he published the Blazon des hérétiques, aimed at Protestant reformers, Martin Luther included. Some scholars regard his mystery play on Saint Louis, written in 1514 for the Paris guild of stonemasons and carpenters, as his finest achievement. His name has endured largely thanks to Victor Hugo, who made him a character in The Hunchback of Notre-Dame, though in a heavily reshaped form.