Pey de Garros

Pey de Garros (born c. 1530, Lectoure, near Agen, France—died 1585, Pau) was a Provençal poet whose work raised the Gascon dialect to the rank of a literary language in 16th-century France. A Protestant, Garros studied law, theology, and Hebrew at the University of Toulouse and later became avocat-général of Pau. In the preface to his Poesias gasconas (1567; “Gascon Poetry”) he chided his fellow countrymen for preferring French to Gascon and pleaded for a...