Guillaume Budé
French scholar, humanist and administrator (1467-1540)
Guillaume Budé (French: [ɡijom byde]; Latinized as Guilielmus Budaeus; January 26, 1467 – August 20, 1540) was a French scholar and humanist. He was involved in the founding of Collegium Trilingue, which later became the Collège de France.
Budé was also the first keeper of the royal library at the Palace of Fontainebleau, which was later moved to Paris, where it became the Bibliothèque nationale de France. He was an ambassador to Rome and held several important judicial and civil administrative posts.
Life
Budé was born in Paris. He went to the University of Orléans to study law, but for several years, having ample means, he led an idle and dissipated life. When about twenty-four years of age, he was seized with a sudden passion for study, and made rapid progress, particularly in Latin and Ancient Greek.
The work which gained him greatest reputation was his De Asse et Partibus Eius (1514), a treatise on ancient coins and measures. He was held in high esteem by Francis I, who was persuaded by him, and by Jean du Bellay, Bishop of Narbonne, to found the Collegium Trilingue (afterwards the Collège de France) and the library at Fontainebleau, which was removed to Paris and was the origin of the Bibliothèque Nationale.
He also induced Francis to refrain from prohibiting printing in France, which had been advised by the Sorbonne in 1533.
“Guillaume Budé” enters the record as french scholar, humanist and administrator (1467-1540). Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Guillaume, Budé and French can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Apr 11, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q353668. VIAF identifies the subject as 105878228. The Library of Congress control number is n50041736. 3 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1467, 1540, 1514 and 1533.
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This entry incorporates text from “Guillaume Budé” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.