The most intriguing aspect in the biography of Michel de Montaigne (1533-1592) is his decision, when he was in his late thirties, to abandon a promising career in law and retire to live in a countryside manor.
I have an explanation for Montaigne’s unusual decision: His daily work at the Bordeaux Parliament had made him acutely aware of the social decay in France. He had witnessed cases of confiscation, discrimination, and the beginning of the religious war between Catholics and Protestants (Huguenots).
At that point, he weighed his chances and took an audacious decision, which would prove enormously successful. I wonder how many individuals today would be willing to take a similar choice.
In addition to the social decay, Montaigne had experienced two major personal losses, namely, the death of his father and that of his best friend La Boetie. He had other friends, but none that could compare to La Boetie in terms of intellectual powers and commonality of cultural interests.
Thus, Montaigne’s decision to retire to the countryside was partly derived from his circumstances and partly from a desire to improve his life.
Montaigne’s decision to change his life
I must point out an aspect that few historians mention: the life expectancy in sixteenth-century France. When Montaigne decided to abandon his career in the law, he was thirty-seven year old.
In our century we regard a man of thirty-seven as young. He has decades ahead of him to develop his career, or otherwise to change careers. In contrast, in sixteenth-century France, it was not unusual for peasants or soldiers to die in their mid-forties.
A minor aristocrat like Montaigne would be expected to live until his late fifties or mid-sixties, that is, if he took good care of himself. In fact, Montaigne lived only fifty-nine years.
At thirty-seven, he must have looked ahead and figured out that, with some luck, he would live another two decades. If he wanted to give his life a new direction, he really had no time to waste.
Working in Bordeaux and commuting to his manor was not workable in the sixteenth century. Even with good weather, it would have taken Montaigne half a day to travel the sixty kilometres separating his manor from Bordeaux.
Michel de Montaigne’s personal library
Historians consider that Montaigne’s library at the manor consisted of a thousand volumes, but from reading his essays, I fail to see references to more than a hundred books. He quotes those hundred books many times, but there is a long way from one hundred to one thousand.
A possible explanation is that he had one hundred books by today’s standards (what we regard nowadays as a pocket book, for instance), by that those books took up hundreds of volumes because they were printed and bound in large format, as it was often the case in the sixteenth century.
Before retiring to life in his manor, Montaigne had a fairly clear plan for the future. He tells us that he started to write his essays on the day when he turned thirty-eight.
There is no way to ascertain this detail though. I wonder if Montaigne had just made it up solely to make his literary work look more exciting.
What was Montaigne’s daily routine in his manor? He set up his library and writing desk in the manor tower, on the upper floor, and retired there at least four hours a day to read, plan his essays, and write.
We know of the composition of Montaigne’s library because of the authors he is quoting in his essays. He must have reread often the works of Plutarch (46-120 AD), Marcus Aurelius (121-180 AD), Seneca (4 BC-65 AD) and Cicero (106-43 BC).
In addition, Montaigne frequently quoted Aristotle (384-322 BC), especially the “Nicomachean Ethics”, Julius Caesar (100-44 BC), and Plato (427-347 BC), in particular the “Apology.”
Michel de Montaigne’s literary project
Montaigne’s project entailed reading and writing primarily for personal use, and possibly circulating his essays to a small circle of friends interested in literature and philosophy. It is not known when exactly Montaigne changed his mind, and started to aim at publication and wide distribution.
When I said that “he spent time in the tower planning his essays,” I just mean that he made a list of subjects and literary sources. I do not mean that Montaigne made detailed outlines.
The lack of detailed outlines explains the unequal quality of his essays. Sometimes, Montaigne goes on a tangent and keeps writing page after page, only to circle back much later to the essay’s main theme. Those tangents make a chaotic impression on modern readers.
How did Montaigne choose his topics? Historians have not come up with a waterproof answer to this question. My reading of the essays leads me to think that he picked up subjects that, at that particular time, were bothering or intriguing him.
Nonetheless, Montaigne’s use of rhetorical questions doesn’t let us pinpoint his precise personal concerns. For instance, his essay “Of Cannibals” asks rhetorical questions about cruelty in history and in current times.
If we read between lines, we arrive at the conclusion that he was referring to the war between Catholics and Protestants in France. Both parties in the conflict had displayed horrendous, abominable cruelty. Montaigne was simply attempting to come to terms with the dark side of human nature.
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