Margaret of Bourbon (1438–1483) in the context of Agnes of Burgundy, Duchess of Bourbon

Pleurants or weepers (the English meaning of pleurants) are anonymous sculpted figures representing mourners, used to decorate elaborate tomb monuments, mostly in the late Middle Ages in Western Europe. Typically they are relatively small, and a group were placed around the sides of a raised tomb monument, perhaps interspersed with armorial decoration, or carrying shields with this. They may be in relief or free-standing. In English usage the term "weepers" is sometimes extended to cover the small figures of the deceased's children often seen kneeling underneath the tomb effigy in Tudor tomb monuments.

These figures represent the mourners, who pray for the deceased standing during the funeral procession. Because many of the original tombs have been vandalised or destroyed, relatively few examples remain to be studied. Many figures have been detached from their original context, which is not always known.

The Royal Monastery of Brou is a religious complex located at Bourg-en-Bresse in the Ain département, central France. Made out of monastic buildings in addition to a church, they were built at the beginning of the 16th century by Margaret of Austria, daughter of the Holy Roman Emperor Maximilian I and Governor of the Habsburg Netherlands. The complex was designed as a dynastic burial place in the tradition of the Burgundian Champmol and Cîteaux Abbey, and the French Saint-Denis. The church is known as the Église Saint-Nicolas-de-Tolentin de Brou in French.

The church was built between 1506 and 1532 in a lavishly elaborate Flamboyant Gothic style, with some classicizing Renaissance aspects. The tall roof is covered in coloured, glazed tiles. Margaret, her second husband Philibert II, Duke of Savoy, and his mother, Margaret of Bourbon, are all buried in tombs by Conrad Meit within the church, which have avoided the destruction that most royal tombs in France have suffered.