The Complete Essays (233 page)
Read The Complete Essays Online
Authors: Michel de Montaigne
Tags: #Essays, #Philosophy, #Literary Collections, #History & Surveys, #General
69
. Cicero’s vanity was indeed great. (Montaigne cites his
Tusc. disput.
, II, xxvi, 64.)
70
. ’88: much
hoped
for that…
71
. Virgil,
Aeneid
, V, 849, 848 (two lines of the
Aeneid
with the words rearranged and adapted).
1
. A further allusion to the Gregorian reform of the calendar (1582). Cf. III, 10, note 23. The previous reform was that of the Emperor Augustus.
2
. Plutarch (tr. Amyot),
Demandes des choses Romaines
, 464 B, drawing the same conclusions as Montaigne.
3
. Persius,
Satires
, I, 20.
6
. Cicero,
De divinatione
, II, xxxix, 81; then, St Augustine,
City of God
, VI, x. (Montaigne’s context echoes Seneca,
Epist. moral.
, LXXXI, etc.)
7
. Seneca,
Epist. moral.
, CVIII, 7; then, Quintus Curtius, IX, ii.
8
. Cicero,
Academica
, II (Lucullus), xlvii, 146.
9
. The Scholastic axiom,
Admiratio parit scientiam
. (Consult Signoriello,
Lexicon peripateticum philosophico-theologicum
, s.v.
Admiratio
, citing Thomas Aquinas.) The saying derives from Plato,
Theaetetus
, 155 D. (Plato derived the name of Thaumas, Iris’ father, from
thauma
, wonder, prodigy. Montaigne’s name for him, Thaumantis, is in fact the name of Isis herself.)
10
. The case of Martin Guerre (now well-known from a film thanks to the scholarship of Professor Nathalie Zemon Davies). Cf. the
Arrest memorable du Parlement de Tholose contenant une histoire prodigieuse d’un supposé mary, advenüe de nostre temps… par M. lean de Coras
, Paris, 1582. Coras (p. 129) justifies the sentence of strangulation by hanging followed by the public burning of the body but (pp. 130–3) makes a passionate plea against burning anyone alive and against cruel torturings as unworthy of Christians, since they are partly based on a desire to purge one’s own guilt.
11
. The Areopagus in Athens had to judge a wife who murdered her second husband who, with his own son, had murdered her child by her dead husband. (This became the classical example of a
casus perplexus
, a case with the maximum degree of moral difficulty.) The Areopagus decreed that the parties concerned were to return to the Court, in person, one hundred years later! Tiraquellus evokes this well-known
exemplum
in his treatise
De poenis temperandis
(
Opera
, 1597, VII, 14). Cf. Rabelais (
Tiers Livre
, TLF, XLIIII, 6–44).
12
. Cf. II Chronicles 33; II Kings 9;. Samuel 28 (the Witch of Endor consulted by Saul).
13
. The Holy Ghost who, for Montaigne, was the author of Scripture.
14
. The second from Tacitus,
Hist.
, I, xxii; the first is attributed by Marie de Gournay to Pliny, but remains untraced.
15
. Cicero,
Academica
, II (Lucullus), xxvii, 87.
16
. In law.
maleficus
(a witch, an ‘evil-doer’) was taken in general as one who harmed another and was not necessarily restricted to
incantatores
(workers of spells). (Cf. Spiegel,
Lexicon Juris
, s.v.) Montaigne here excludes those not allegedly working their evil through magic; thus strengthening and limiting his argument. The crucial biblical authority is Exodus 22:18, ‘Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live.’ But what does it mean? The Greek Septuagint uses the word
pharmakous
here, the Clementine Vulgate uses
maleficos
. Both words apply to both sexes. But Hebraists, since at least Nicolas of Lyra, insisted that the original term
kashaph
is used in the feminine. Liberal theologians clung to the Greek term and insisted that it means sorcerers who use potions to produce their wicked effects.
17
. As Montaigne is about to talk of physical rapture from one place to another he is doubtless thinking of the rapture of Philip (Acts 8:39) when the ‘Spirit of the Lord caught away’ Philip from the road to Gaza so that he was found at Azotus.
18
. St Augustine,
City of God
, XIX, xviii, contrasting scriptural truth with human testimony. Vives comments that no human knowledge, since it is known through the senses, can have the certainty of Scripture.
19
. The so-called
witches’ spot
; when pricked the true witch felt no sensation there. Inquisitors made painful searches for such a spot on the body of anyone charged with witchcraft.
20
. Hemlock (
cicuta
) was used by the Greeks to poison criminals – hence Socrates’ death by it; hellebore was used to purge madness.
21
. Livy, VIII, xviii.
22
. From the earliest times, Roman law placed the insane in the primary care of their blood relations.
23
. It was said that whoever undid the untieable knot in the temple of Gordius would conquer the East: Alexander sliced it through with his sword. Cf. Erasmus,
Adages
, I, I, VI,
Nodum solvere
and, I, IX, XLVIII,
Heraculanus nodus
. (Throughout this passage Montaigne plays on the double meaning of
solutio
in Latin: ‘unloosening’ and ‘resolving’.)
24
. St Augustine,
City of God
, XVIII, xviii, suggesting that the cause was diabolical deception working through a Platonizing philosopher. Vives has a long theological note on the subject, rejecting as fictional Apuleius’ metamorphosis into a donkey in his
Golden Ass
.
25
. Cicero,
Tusc. disput.
, I, xxv, 60.
26
. Erasmus,
Adages
, II, IX, XLIX,
Claudus optime virum agit
. Cf. also Septalius’ note in his edition of Aristotle’s (or Pseudo-Aristotle’s)
Problemata
X, 25 (26); Coelius Richerius Rhodiginus,
Antiquae Lectiones
, XIV, v,
Cur claudi salaciores
. Cf. also Erasmus,
Apophthegmata
, VIII,
Thrasea
, second hundred, XXI.
27
. Torquato Tasso,
Paragon dell’ Italia alla Francia;
Suetonius,
Life of Caligula
, III.
28
. Cf. Erasmus,
Adages
, I, I, XCIV,
Cothurno versatilior
. Theramenes was an Athenian rhetorician who could find arguments for either party.
29
. Erasmus,
Apophthegmata
, IV,
Antigonus Rex Macedonian
, XV.
30
. Virgil,
Georgics
, I, 89–93 (two of several reasons why burning stubble is good for crops).
31
. Translated from Cicero,
Academica
, II
(Lucullus)
, xxxiv, 108:
‘adsensionem, id est, opinationem et temeritatem.’
32
. From Maximus Planudes’
Life of Aesop
, frequently printed with the
Fables
.
5
. In the Renaissance this was summed up in the Socratic adage,
Quae supra nos, nihil ad nos
(What is above us is nothing to do with us). As Erasmus points out (I; VI; LXIX) the early Christian writer Lucius Lactantius considered it to be ‘famous and approved by all’.
6
. Seneca,
Epist. moral.
, CVI, 12.
7
. Tacitus,
Agricola
, I, x.
8
. The notion that the soul, like the body, needs
pabulum
(food, nourishment) is Platonic.
9
. Christian ‘fools’ often combined real or pretended ignorance and madness with their other ascetic ideals and practices. An echo of Matthew 5:3, ‘Blessed are the poor in spirit’ (i.e., the foolish).
10
. Cf. for example the adages of Erasmus mentioned in III, 9, ‘On vanity’, note 160.
11
. ’88: what is
common and
natural is vain and superfluous…
Then, Seneca,
Epist. moral.
, CVI, 11 (adapted).
12
. [B] instead of [C]: philosopher. Erudition, while making an assay…
13
. Cicero,
Tusc. disput.
, V, v, B (criticizing Stoic arguments); Seneca,
Epist. moral.
, LXXV, 5 (adapted).
14
. ’88: His burning emotion,
so animated
, show that…
In [C], Seneca,
Epist. moral.
, CXV, 2, and CXIV, 3; in both cases contrasting mere words and style with solid moral action.
15
. ’88: more
pointed
, puts in the goad…
16
. ’88: more
solid
, constantly…
17
. Such temptations as St Jerome in the desert or the fearsome hallucinations of St Antony.
18
. ’88: such
subtleties and
learned maxims…
19
. Seneca,
Epist. moral.
, XCV, B.
20
. Attributed by Marie de Gournay to ‘Seneca’s Epistles’, but untraced. Then, Ovid,
Ex Ponto
, I, iii, 57–8.
21
. Source unknown; then, Virgil,
Aeneid
, XII, 46; Catullus,
Epithalamia Thetis et Pelei
, 406–7.
22
. Doubtless an echo of the saying of Alcibiades that an army should be organized under a Head, as is the human body.
23
. Virgil,
Georgics
, I, 500, applied almost certainly by Montaigne to the then Protestant Henry of Navarre, who, as the Roman Catholic Henri Quatre, did indeed bring comparative peace and moral government to France.
24
. Both cited by Justus Lipsius,
Politici
, V, xiii.
25
. Plutarch,
Life of Brutus
.
26
. Plato,
Utters
, VII, 331.
27
. How far man should ‘work together’ with God is a major theological problem, much quarrelled over during the Renaissance. Montaigne gives the prime and indispensable role to divine grace but expects man to work together with God. His theology is orthodox, as is his treating Plato as a pagan – for Erasmus he was a proto-Christian.
28
. Sedition is a sin for Christians. St Paul classifies ‘seditions’ with ‘heresies’ as works of the flesh (Galatians 5:20).
29
. In Roman Law parricide was not limited to killing fathers but used of all foul murders to mark the height of their impiety. (Cf. Spiegel’s
Lexicon juris civilis.)
30
. Livy, XXXIX, xvi; then, Plato,
Republic
, II, 361 A. (Cf. Cicero,
De officiis
, I, xiii, 41.)
31
. Virgil,
Eclogues
, I, 11–12; then, Ovid,
Tristia
, III, x, 65–6, and Claudianus,
In Eutropium
, I, 244.
32
. Montaigne lived in a region dominated by the Reformed Church; he was an active Roman Catholic who never hid his allegiance.
33
. ’88: unspoken
and hidden
suspicions, for which…
34
. Montaigne’s term
conscience
, like
conscientia
often in Latin, means not conscience here but a good conscience, the consciousness of having done right. In Montaigne as in the Renaissance generally it rarely means what it now does in English.
