Charron, Pierre(1541–1603)
Pierre Charron, a skeptical philosopher and theologian, was born in Paris in a family of twenty-five children. He studied at the universities of Paris, Bourges, Orléans, and Montpellier and received a law degree from Montpellier in 1571. Sometime during his student years he became a priest. He was a successful preacher and theologian in southern France, serving as preacher in ordinary to Queen Margaret of Navarre and as a theological advisor and teacher in various dioceses in the Midi. In spite of his many worldly successes, he tried to retire to a monastic order in 1589 but was refused admittance because of his age.
During the 1580s Charron met Michel Eyquem de Montaigne in Bordeaux and became his close friend and disciple. Montaigne made Charron his intellectual heir, adopting Charron as his son. After Montaigne's death in 1592 Charron wrote his major works: Les trois veritez (Bordeaux, 1593), Discours chrestiens (Bordeaux, 1601; Paris, 1604), De la sagesse (Bordeaux, 1601), and Petit traicté de sagesse (written in 1603, published posthumously in Paris, 1606). These works were popular and were republished often in the seventeenth century, especially the skeptical De la sagesse, which was highly influential in disseminating skeptical views and arguments into philosophical and theological discussions and played an important role in the development of modern thought, libertinism, and fideism.
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