Montaigne’s Life
Montaigne
(1533-1592) came from a rich bourgeois family that acquired nobility after his
father fought in Italy in the army of King Francis I of France; he came back
with the firm intention of bringing refined Italian culture to France. He decorated
his Périgord castle in the style of an ancient Roman villa. He also decided
that his son would not learn Latin in school. He arranged instead for a German
preceptor and the household to speak to him exclusively in Latin at home. So
the young Montaigne grew up speaking Latin and reading Vergil, Ovid, and Horace
on his own. At the age of six, he was sent to board at the Collège de Guyenne
in Bordeaux, which he later praised as the best humanist college in France,
though he found fault with humanist colleges in general.
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