Montaigne, Michel de (1533–1592)

French writer whose very personal thoughts and confessions—in the form of essais or “tries”—have remained influential in modern times. Born into a wealthy family that owned estates in the Aquitaine region of southern France, Montaigne was the son of Pierre Eyquem, a mercenary soldier and one-time mayor of Bordeaux. Montaigne was given a humanist education and a thorough training in the use of Latin as both written and spoken language. Trained as a lawyer in Toulouse, he became counselor to the Parlement court in Bordeaux in 1557. He entered the service of King Charles IX in 1561.

Montaigne took a much greater interest in letters and poetry than the study and practice of law. The politics and rivalries of the royal court, and the demands of public service, left him yearning for privacy, solitude, and enough time to read, study, and work out a personal philosophy of life and how it should be lived. In 1569 he published a translation of Natural Theology, a work of the Spanish monk Raymond Sebond. In 1570, he retired as a lawyer and moved to the family estate, known as the Chateau de Montaigne. There he began work on a series of short writings, in which he expressed his private views on politics, society, literature, family life, childhood, and many aspects of the common human experience that had never been considered suitable material for a serious writer. Working for ten years in isolation, he brought out his book of Essais in 1580, to widespread puzzlement and disdain on the part of serious writers, scholars, and philosophers. Gradually, as the writing of personal experience and confession grew in popularity, Montaigne's work won widespread acceptance.

Seeking a cure for poor health and painful kidney stones, Montaigne set out on a journey across Europe in 1580. From this experience he wrote a series of travel essays that were eventually published in the late eighteenth century as the Travel Journal. In the meantime, the citizens of Bordeaux elected him mayor, in honor of his capable statesmanship during the violent Wars of Religion between Protestants and Catholics. After his term as mayor ended in 1585, he returned to his country estate, where he died in 1592.

Montaigne's book of Essays is one of the most important and original literary works of the Renaissance. In these short works, all literary pretense and artificiality is dropped, and the author reveals his own thoughts and emotions directly to the reader. Montaigne's work created a foundation for the confessional literature that remains a popular literary genre to the present day.

Montaigne, Michel de (1533–92), French essayist. He was a counsellor in the Cours des Aides at Périgueux, but on succeeding to the family estates (1568), he sold his office and in 1571 retired to the Chateau de Montaigne. He published the first two books of his Essais in 1580 and a third in 1585. The longest of his Essais is an ‘Apologia’ for Raymond of Sebonde. In this he demonstrates the fallibility of the human mind and its inability to known anything. Scepticism is used to humble man's pride and defend the Faith, revealed exclusively to the RC Church, by destroying all philosophical and religious certainty based on unaided human reason, and by emphasizing each man's need of grace. The Essais were placed on the Index in 1676.