Michel de Montaigne was born on February 28th, 1533 in the Château de Montaigne, close to Bordeaux in southwestern France (1). His father was a Roman Catholic, previously the mayor of Bordeaux, and had recently come into wealth and nobility after serving as a soldier in Italy for some time. Montaigne’s father also had a rather eccentric, nontraditional upbringing prepared for the child, sending him to a cottage to live with a peasant family until age three to get him acquainted with life outside of the nobility. Once he returned to the Château, his father hired a German doctor to tutor him as well as a team of Latin-speaking servants to ensure that Latin was the only language Montaigne heard until he was six years old (1, 2). He had a very rigorous education both intellectually and spiritually that remained quite nontraditional, utilizing a Greek pedagogical method that incorporated games, meditation, and conversation alongside books and traditional learning. In 1539, at only six years old, Montaigne was sent to the humanist College of Guyenne where he would spend the next seven years completing the entire college course (2, 3).
Montaigne’s whereabouts are entirely uncertain between 1546 and 1557, but it is likely that he studied law during this time because his father bought him an office in a court in Périgueux where he was a counselor for some years (3). In 1557, he was appointed counselor at a high court in Bordeaux and, while serving at the Bordeaux Parlement, became very close friends with the poet Étienne de La Boétie. From 1561-1563 Montaigne was a courtier to King Charles IX and was granted the decoration of the Order of Saint Michael later in 1571, fulfilling a childhood dream of his (2, 3). The death of Étienne de La Boétie in 1563 left Montaigne quite distraught and is considered by some to be a major factor in his decision to write the Essais as he had lost his best friend and needed to find a new way to communicate and get his thoughts out into the world (2). Montaigne was married in 1565 and had only one daughter who survived through infancy. His relationship with his wife was nearly absent from his writings, but his daughter is mentioned several times. His father died in 1568, and he returned to claim ownership of the Château de Montaigne, signaling the end of his public life and officially granting the title of Seigneur de Montaigne (2, 3). Though his mother still lived, she was rarely mentioned in Montaigne’s writings. His relationship with his father is discussed repeatedly. In 1569 he published a translation of Raymond Sebond’s Theologia naturalis at the request of his late father, and in 1570 he published a posthumous edition of the works of Étienne de La Boétie (2). In 1571 he retired completely from public life, self-isolating himself in a tower adjacent to the Château, locking himself in his extensive library for nearly 10 years. Much of this time was spent writing the Essais, the first edition of which would be published in 1580, the same year that he ended his self-imposed reclusion (3).
In 1578, Montaigne began to suffer from kidney stones and in 1580 he began traveling Europe, partly to look for a cure and partly as a holy pilgrimage (2, 3). He composed a travel journal, chronicling regional customs and personal accounts, including some descriptions of the kidney stones he passed (2). He discovered, while in Italy in 1581, that he had been elected mayor of Bordeaux like his father before him and returned to Bordeaux to serve as the mayor until 1585, acting as an important moderator between Catholics and Protestants during the French Wars of Religion (3). Montaigne retired from public life once again after leaving the office and wrote the third book of the Essays in 1588 (1, 2, 3). The same year, he met Marie de Gournay, who would go on to edit and publish the Essais after his death, and a correspondence between the two began (2). He would later refer to de Gournay as his “adopted daughter” (2). On September 15th, 1592, at the age of 59, Michel de Montaigne died of quinsy which paralyzed his tongue, a cruel and ironic end for the renowned essayist and conversationalist (2). Though he was respected more as a statesman than an author in his own time, he is known to contemporary audiences as history’s foremost essayist and one of the most influential philosophers of the French Renaissance.
References:
1. Collier’s new encyclopedia: A Loose-leaf AND self-revising reference work … with 515 illustrations And NINETY-SIX MAPS. (1921). In Collier’s new encyclopedia: A loose-leaf and self-revising reference work … with 515 illustrations and ninety-six maps (Vol. 6, p. 285). New York, New York: P.F. Collier. Retrieved March 16, 2021, from https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Collier%27s_New_Encyclopedia_(1921)/Montaigne,_Michel,_Seigneur.
2. Michel de Montaigne. (2021, March 09). Retrieved March 16, 2021, from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michel_de_Montaigne
3. Foglia, Marc, and Emiliano Ferrari. “Michel De Montaigne.” Stanford Encyclopedia of
Philosophy, Stanford University, 20 Nov. 2019, plato.stanford.edu/entries/montaigne/.
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