Laurent de Premierfait

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.

The recorded working language is medieval Latin and Middle French. Works named in the authority record are Le livre de vraye amistié, Le livre de vieillesse, Decameron, Des cas des nobles hommes et femmes, Le livre de yconomiques and Vers en latin faiz a la louenge de Jehan Bocace. Work by Laurent de Premierfait is recorded in the collections of J. Paul Getty Museum.

Laurent was born in Premierfait, a small village near Troyes. He lived at the papal court at Avignon for a while and came shoulder-to-shoulder with other humanists while being employed by the Papal Court. Laurent was well known for translating Aristotle, Cicero, and Livy. He was also the first French translator of Giovanni Boccaccio's works. He states in one of his works that he, like his interlocutor Jean de Montreuil, was a clerc du diocèse de Troyes and secretary-notary to Jean-Allarmet de Brogny, Cardinal of Saluces. Laurent worked as well for Amadeus VIII, Duke of Savoy, Jean Chanteprime, contrôleur général des finances, and for king Charles VI. He made a living as a translator for such nobles as Louis de Bourbon, Bishop of Liège and the great collector-connoisseur, Jean, Duke of Berry, both being relatives to Charles VI. Jacques Monfrin states that Laurent's translations were not done for the general public but more for wealthy aristocratic patrons. He may have died of the Black Death that wiped out about half of the European population recurring repeatedly from the mid fourteenth century. There is a possibility, however, that he was murdered during the invasion of Paris by the Burgundians in 1418, a result of the Armagnac-Burgundian civil war that raged in France after John the Fearless, Duc de Bourgogne, murdered the king's brother Louis d'Orléans in 1407. A portrait of Laurent, considered to be an authentic representation, figures among the illuminations in the manuscript of Du cas des nobles hommes et femmes that was dedicated to the duc de Berry and has come with the former royal library to the Bibliothèque Nationale.

• Aristotle • Economics (1418) • Seneca • De quattuor virtutibus • Cicero • De amicitia (1416) • De senectute (1405) • Giovanni Boccaccio • De Casibus Virorum Illustrium (1400 and again in 1409) • De mulieribus claris (1405) • Decameron (1410) In this, Laurent worked from a Latin version, of which he seems to imply he is the author as well.

Works recorded as notable number 7: Le livre de vraye amistié, Le livre de vieillesse, Decameron, Des cas des nobles hommes et femmes, Le livre de yconomiques, Vers en latin faiz a la louenge de Jehan Bocace and Poems.