Aneau, Bartholomew

, a man of eminent learning in the sixteenth, century, was born at Bourges in France, and educated under Melchior Volmar, a very able instructor of youth. He made great advances under him in polite literature, and imbibed the principles of the protestant religion, which Volmar professed, and Aneau afterwards embraced. The great reputation which he soon gained by his skill in the Latin and Greek languages and poetry, induced some of the magistrates of Lyons, who were his countrymen, to offer him a professorship in rhetoric in the college which they were going to erect in that city. Aneau accepted this offer with pleasure, and went thither to take possession of his place, which he kept above thirty years till his death. He discharged his professorship with such applause, that, in 1542, he was chosen principal of the college. In this situation he propagated the doctrines of the reformation among his scholars, which was done secretly for a long time, and either was not perceived, or was overlooked; but an accident which happened on the festival of the sacrament in 1565, put a period to all his attempts in favour of protestantism by a very fatal catastrophe. Upon that day, 21st of June, as the procession was passing on towards the college, there was a large stone thrown from one of the windows upon the host and the priest who carried it. Whether Aneau was the author of this insult or not, is not certain, but the | people, being enraged at it, broke into the college in a ody, and assassinated him as the guilty person, and the college itself was shut up the next day by order of the city. Aneau wrote a great many verses in Latin and Greek, and other works; the principal of which are, 1. “Chant Natal,” containing the mystery of the nativity, Lyons, 1539, 4to, and 1559, with the title “Genethliac musical et historical de la Conception et Nativite de J.C.” 2. “Lyon marchand,” a French satire, or drama of the historical kind, 1542, 4to. 3. “Alciati’s emblems translated,” Lyons, 1549, 8vo, 1558, 16mo. 4. “Picta poesis,” Leyden, 1552, 8vo, a collection of emblems, with Greek and Latin verses. 5. A translation of sir Thomas More’s “Utopia,” Paris and Lyons. 6. “Alector; ou le Coq,” a fabulous history, pretendedly from a Greek fragment, Lyons, 1560. ¹