Montaigne, Michel de

Michel Eyquem de Montaigne was born in a wealthy merchant family that had lived for generations in the ancestral castle near Bordeaux, and Michel was the first to adopt the name of the property. His father placed his young son with a family of poor farmers on the estate so he could learn how to live a simple life from an early age. When he was five years old his father employed a German tutor who spoke fluent Latin but no French. He also decided that his son should wake up gently every morning to the sound of music. His mother was a Sephardic Jew who later converted to Protestantism while father and son remained Catholics; remarkable in a country that was at the time plagued by religious wars fought between Catholics and Huguenots. The conflict culminated with the St. Bartholomew Day massacre in 1572. During the weeks that followed thousands of Protestants were murdered all over France. The civil war raged for forty years until the Protestants were granted religious freedom through the Edict of Nantes in 1598. During this period there were also several outbursts of the plague.