Michel de Montaigne (2/28/1533 – 9/23/1592) was born in Southwestern France to a privileged family. His father and grandfather had established the family in the administrative nobility of France, or the noblesse de robe, and his great-grandfather, who had acquired the family estate, held a title of nobility. He was tutored according to his father’s methodology which manifested itself in his exclusive use of Latin (considered to be the language of educated people). He studied law at the University of Toulouse and went into public-service, following in the footsteps of his father and grandfather. At age 24, he entered into the Parliament of Bordeaux, one of eight that constituted the whole of the French Parliament.
During his early career he met Étienne de la Boétie, who quickly grew to become a close friend that left a lasting impression on Montaigne for the rest of his life. It was Boétie’s early death of dysentery that many speculate drove him to write, about six years after the loss. Montaigne suffered heavily from his death throughout the rest of his life, and he writes of Boétie fondly in his essay, “On Friendship.”
Montaigne was married in 1565 and had six daughters, of which only one survived infancy. His father passed away in 1568, leaving him the domain and title of ‘Montaigne.’ He sold his seat on the Parliament in 1570, and effectively retired after publishing the remaining works of Boétie a year later. After this time, he infamously retreated to the Montaigne castle’s library and began work on his essais. The first two books were composed between 1571 and 1580. During this time, Montaigne still supervised his estate and participated lightly in public life. While respected and even honored by many for his work in mediating two two sides of a religious conflict between Catholics and Protestants, he was harshly criticized and harassed by extremists. Disgusted by the state of affairs in France, Montaigne set out to travel Europe. Visiting Germany, Switzerland, Austria, Italy, and exploring further across France, he kept a travel log, Journal de Voyage, which outlines specific aspects of his travels. It was published after his death.
In 1581, Montaigne learned of the fact that he was elected to become the mayor of Bordeaux. While infamously hesitant to accept initially due to the religious state of affairs of the city, he was eventually persuaded by King Henry III’s insistance. Montaigne played a critical role in mediating the religious conflict, and held his position for two terms. By the end of his second term, a plague forced him to retreat to solitude once more. It was here that he began work on Book three of essais, which was completed in 1587.
In a display of the toll religious conflicts took on Montaigne, he was arrested by Protestants twice in 1588 for his support of King Henry III. It was around this time that he met Marie de Gournay, an aspiring writer and fan of his work. He later referred to her as his “covenant daughter”, and the two were relatively close throughout this stage in his life. Montaigne spent the final years of his life reading, writing, and reflecting in his estate. He fell ill to several diseases in this time, but passed away after suffering quinsy (an inflammation of the tonsils) that had left him mute. He was deeply impacted by the religious turmoil and overall pessimism of his time throughout his life, and was initially deeply critical of the world and others. In reflecting upon himself and his life, Montaigne found sense in it all by projecting the human condition he sleuthed from his own work onto the rest of the world. His essais hold significant literary and philosophical importance, signifying the beginning of the essay as a format.