BRANTOME, PIERRE DE BOURDEILLE, SEIGNEUR AND ABBE DE (c. 1540-1614), French historian and biographer, was born in Perigord about 1540, or earlier. He was the third son of the baron de Bourdeille. His mother and his maternal grandmother were both attached to the court of Marguerite of Valois, and at her death in 1549 he went to Paris, and later (15 5 5 ) to Poitiers, to finish his education. He was given several bene fices, the most important of which was the abbey of Brantome, but he had no inclination for an ecclesiastical career, and became a soldier. He travelled extensively in Italy; in Scotland, where he accompanied Mary Stuart (then the widow of Francis I.) ; in England, where he saw Queen Elizabeth (1561, 1579) ; in Moroc..o (1564) ; and in Spain and Portugal. He fought on the galleys of the order of Malta, and accompanied his great friend, the French commander Philippe Strozzi (grandson of Filippo Strozzi, the Italian general, and nephew of Piero), in his expedition against Terceira, in which Strozzi was killed (1582). During the wars of religion under Charles IX. he fought in the ranks of the Catholics, but was influenced by the ideas of the reformers. He spent his last years in writing his remarkably frank and naïve Memoirs. He died on July 15, 1614.
Of the several editions of the works of Brantome that by Lalanne for the Societe de l'Histoire de France (12 vols., 1864 96) is perhaps the best.
Lalanne's edition has the great merit of being the first to indicate the Spanish, Italian and French sources on which Brantome drew, but it did not utilize all the existing mss. It was only after Lalanne's death that the earliest were obtained for the Bibliotheque Nationale. At Paris and at Chantilly (Musee Conde) all Brantome's original mss., as revised by him several times, are now collected (see the Bibliotheque de l'ecole des Chartes, 1904) .