DESMARTES DE SAINT-SORLIN, JEAN. - French poet and writer, born in Paris in 1595, died there on 28 Oct. 1676.
In the preface to the poem Clovis ou la France chrétienne (1656) and elsewhere, D., a violent anti-Jansenist, advocated a new national and Christian art and initiated the famous Querelle. He also wrote dramas and novels, but in his maturity he preferred to devote himself to religious and moral literature. He translated the Initiation of Christ into verse (Paris 1654).
BIBL.: H. Bremond, Histoire littéraire du sentiment religieux en France, VI, Paris 1922, pp. 445-518. Iole Scudieri Ruggieri