Montaigne invented the essay to replace a dead friend
Michel de Montaigne (1533–1592) popularized the essay by making himself his book’s subject—scandalous then, foundational now. After Étienne de La Boétie died in 1563, critic Donald Frame argues, the Essais became a new conversation with readers standing in for the lost friend.
Born 28 February 1533 at Château de Montaigne near Bordeaux to a wealthy Eyquem line—great-grandfather Ramon bought the estate in 1477 from herring wealth—he spent his first three years with a peasant family so he would know common life. A German tutor and Latin-only household made Latin his first language; music woke him each morning. At the College of Guienne under George Buchanan he finished the curriculum by thirteen, then entered law; by 1557 he sat on Bordeaux’s Parlement and later earned the Order of Saint Michael.
Friendship with La Boétie became legend: Montaigne wrote he loved him “because it was he, because it was I,” added in margins of his 1588 copy and printed in the 1595 Bordeaux edition. La Boétie died likely of plague or tuberculosis after three days of agony Montaigne recorded for his father. In 1570, after a near-fatal riding accident, Montaigne retired at thirty-eight to a tower library of some 1,500 volumes, carving a 1571 vow of freedom, calm, and leisure. Essais appeared in 1580.
Contemporaries prized the statesman over the digressive self-chronicler; Que sais-je?—What do I know?—later defined his skeptical spirit. A Catholic moderate trusted by Henry III and Protestant Henry of Navarre, he translated Raymond Sebond at his father’s request and published Boétie’s works. Married to Françoise de la Cassaigne in 1565, he saw only daughter Léonor survive infancy among six children.
Private grief, public wars, and a library citadel taught Europe to think on the page as if speaking to one absent soul.
Source: Michel de Montaigne
