Laurent de Premierfait

Who was Laurent de Premierfait?

Laurent de Premierfait was a Latin poet, a humanist and in the first rank of French language translators of the fifteenth century, during the time of the mad king Charles VI of France. To judge from the uses made of Du cas des nobles hommes et femmes in England, and the sheer number of surviving manuscripts of it, it was extremely popular in Western Europe throughout the fifteenth century. Laurent made two translations of the Boccaccio work, the second considerably more free. A large percentage of surviving manuscripts are carefully written and illuminated with illustrations.