ABSTRACT
‘War, and the pity of War’ filled the whole of Montaigne’s adult life. When the Chancellor of France, Michel de l’Hospital, a friend of Montaigne, spokesman of Catherine de Medici, gave the Huguenots a restricted right to worship, the Massacre of Vassy took place on 1 March 1562, and that was effectively the outbreak of eight fratricidal wars. From 1581 to 1585, Montaigne served two terms as mayor of Bordeaux. Montaigne’s qualities of lucidity and manoeuvrability underlie his position vis-a-vis the civil wars. Montaigne makes a distinction between public and private virtue. The ‘Know yourself’ adage in Montaigne is not only a pragmatic and moral precept, but an epistemological one also: the primacy of self-knowledge takes on significance only in regard to the moral study of man.
