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Brief Lives

Michel de Montaigne (1533-1592)

Brad Rappaport writes an essay on the inventor of the essay.

In order to understand Michel de Montaigne, one must understand his time; and yet, paradoxically, the reason why his Essays continue to be read down to our own day is on account of their timelessness.

Montaigne lived in the late sixteenth century, a time of faction and civil war in France. Protestantism had just arisen out of the ferment of ideas which had been brewing since the rediscovery of ancient texts during the time now known to us as the Renaissance, which had seen the flourishing of the arts in all their forms. Eventually, the success of the arts in such respects as the emergence of perspective in painting would be paralleled by developments in the sciences, leading, centuries later, to the Industrial Revolution. But at the time Montaigne was writing, such forces were just beginning to coalesce, and their birth was violent, with wars of religion breaking out across Europe.

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