Biography
Pierre Gilles (1490-1555), a scholar and naturalist born in Albi, was one of the great figures of French humanism. A Hellenist and Latinist, he was sent by Francis I to the East to purchase Greek manuscripts for the royal library. From 1544 to 1547, he lived in Constantinople, where, lacking royal funds, he enlisted for a time in the army of Suleiman the Magnificent. There he surveyed the ancient city, measured its monuments, and reconstructed its vanished topography. He died in Rome in 1555, leaving a Latin description of Constantinople that his nephew Antoine published in Lyon in 1561, the first methodical survey of the Byzantine city.
