Guillaume Budé

Guillaume Budé (1467-1540), French humanist scholar, born in Paris. Budé is also known by the Latin form of his name, Budaeus. One of the most learned men of the Renaissance, he held several important offices, including those of royal librarian and provost of Paris, and brought about a revival of classical studies in France. At the suggestion of Budé, Francis I founded in 1530 the college that later became the Collège de France and the famed library at Fontainebleau, which became the basis of the Bibliothèque Nationale. Budé's works on philology, philosophy, and jurisprudence include translations of treatises by the Greek writer Plutarch; commentaries on Roman civil law (1508); a treatise on ancient coins (1514); and books on language and literature, especially Greek, which virtually founded the science of philology and greatly advanced the study of Greek literature.