Jacob Balde (1604 – 1668) was a premiere Baroque poet writing in Latin. His desire to become a Jesuit can be traced back to a night when, while serenading a woman from beneath her window, he overheard the psalms sung in a nearby chapel. He first studied law at the University of Ingolstadt. In 1628 he was ordained. The court chaplain for the Bavarian Elector Maximilian I, he lived much of his life in Munich, cut off from his native Alsace by the Thirty Years War. He was best known for his odes and epodes. He died in Neuberg on the Danube.