Montaigne, Michel Eyquem De (1533–1592)

Montaigne, Michel Eyquem De(1533–1592)

Michel Eyquem De Montaigne, French essayist and skeptical philosopher, was born near Bordeaux. His father was an important merchant, and his mother belonged to a wealthy Spanish-Portuguese Jewish family that had fled to Toulouse. Montaigne was raised a Catholic and was given special training by his father, who would not allow him to hear any language other than Latin until he was six. At this time he was sent to the Collège de Guyenne at Bordeaux, where he studied with some of the leading humanistic teachers of the time, among them the learned Latin poet George Buchanan (1505–1582), who would later be arrested and charged by the Portuguese Inquisition for "judaizing" and skepticism. Montaigne also apparently studied at the University of Toulouse, a leading center of humanism and unorthodox religious ideas. For thirteen years he was a member of the parlement of Bordeaux and made several trips to Paris and the court seeking a more important position. His closest friend at this time was the stoic humanist and poet Étienne de La Boétie (1530–1563). Montaigne's first significant writing was a letter describing La Boétie's death, published at the end of the latter's Oeuvres in 1570.

In 1568 Montaigne published his French translation of Theologia Naturalis sive Liber Creaturarum ("Natural Theology or the Book of Creatures") by Raimond Sebond (Raymond of Sabunde, d.

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