Читать книгу Essays - Michel de Montaigne - Страница 9

BY PHILIPPE DESAN

Michel de Montaigne was born in 1533.

His father had high ambitions for his son and made certain he received the best education possible at the College de Guyenne in Bordeaux. The young Michel excelled at Latin and was an avid reader of the ancients. His favorite readings were Plutarch and Seneca, with a particular interest in past historians. Later, his father bought him a public charge so that Michel could enter the Parlement of Bordeaux (judicial Court of Appeal) as a young magistrate. However, political and religious tensions were so extreme in the southwest of France of the 1560s that, unable to adjust to the intricacies of local politics, Montaigne eventually abandoned his public roles.

After the death of his father in 1569, Montaigne retired as a gentleman on his seigneurie (feudal lands) with the intention of living “nobly”. His political patrons, the Foix family, arranged for him to be knighted in the highly coveted Order of Saint Michael (at the time the highest honor for a nobleman in France). This “proof” of his nobility represented quite an accomplishment for someone whose ancestors were merely rich merchants and had become bourgeois of the city of Bordeaux, thanks to the commerce of wine and salt fish.

Because of his new noble aspirations, Michel abandoned his patronymic name of Eyquem and adopted the name of the noble house – Montaigne – purchased by his grandfather, Ramon Eyquem, in 1477. He was henceforth known as “Lord Michel de Montaigne, Knight of the noble Order of St Michael, and one of the Gentlemen in Ordinary of the French King's Chamber”.