ABSTRACT
On June 22, 1580, Michel de Montaigne, age 47, left his castle in Aquitaine for Paris. In his luggage he carried two freshly printed copies of his Essays: one was destined for the French king, Henry III, and the other would be given, five months later, to Pope Gregory XIII. Montaigne had set out on a long journey, which would take him to Italy through eastern France, Switzerland, Germany, and Austria. After publishing his first two books of Essays in Bordeaux, he certainly felt he deserved a vacation; but he also had other reasons to leave his home, family, and province. Later, in his third book, he will confess that he hardly enjoys “domestic servitude” and is rather lukewarm with regard to the “duties of marital love” (“devoirs de l’amitié maritale”: III.9.975b, 745). 1 By moving to unknown territory his hope was to find an excitement of the mind that would relieve him not only from daily routines but also from the deep-seated melancholy that had overwhelmed him since the death of his friend Étienne de La Boétie, a lawyer, political philosopher, and poet, in 1563. In the essay “On the Education of Children,” he recommended that young people travel abroad to open their minds and form their own judgments:
A cette cause, le commerce des hommes y est merveilleusement propre, et la visite des pays estrangers, . . . pour en rapporter principalement les humeurs de ces nations et leurs façons, et pour frotter et limer nostre cervelle contre celle d’autruy. (I.26.153a)
For this reason, mixing with men is wonderfully useful, and visiting foreign countries . . . to bring back knowledge of the characters and ways of those nations, and to rub and polish our brains by contact with those of others. (112a)
Above all, an extensive “field trip” would allow Montaigne to check and expand on his bookish knowledge of Latin and Italian languages and cultures. Like many of his contemporaries, he was eager to see with his own eyes what was left of Rome, a city that had occupied a large space in his classical education.