last years of his life writing against Calvinist theology. He died in Bordeaux in poverty in 1595. Poetry Jean de Sponde's youthful Amours comprise 26 sonnets in the manner of other love sonnet sequences of the period (as made fashionable by the members of La Pléiade). His posthumous collection also includes various other long lyric poems (stances), chansons and elegies. Jean de Sponde's later poetry is impregnated with the major themes of the so-called French "baroque" poetry of the period and with the moral concerns of the huguenots. His poetry is often placed alongside the works of Agrippa d'Aubigné and Guillaume de Salluste Du Bartas as the major poetic works of the French Renaissance Protestants. His Essai de quelques poèmes chrétiens comprise 12 sonnets and three long lyric poems (two on the last supper and one on death). Sponde's writing paints the massiveness of the world, man's tortured destiny, and his lack of clarity. The author is obsessed with inconstancy, masks, appearances, and death, and this presence of death in the midst of man's life inspires man to seek eternity and to reach out to God. References This article is based in part on the article Jean de Sponde on the French Wikipedia, retrieved on October 5, 2006. Albert-Marie Schmidt, ed. Poètes du XVIe siècle. Bibliothèque de la Pléiade. Paris: Gallimard, 1953. External links Selection of poems (in French) 1557 births 1595 deaths 16th-century French poets 16th-century male writers Baroque writers Catholic poets French Catholic poets Converts to Roman Catholicism from Calvinism French Roman Catholics French male poets Sonneteers Translators of Homer