Montaigne at Paris and Blois, 1588

2.1 and 1.7 comprise the core of the two-volume study. Having followed Montaigne and the Essais to Rome in 1580–1 in 1.7, we now follow them to Paris in 1588. It emerges that Montaigne, in his persona as the author of the Essais, did not properly ‘arrive’ in Paris, as far as the French parliamentary elite were concerned, until after the posthumous publication of Paris 1595. Even then, he was not accorded the position of a patron-author, which was held only by great lawmen and scholars such as L’Hospital. He was in the shadow of the friend whose works he had edited and addressed to parlementaires in the early 1570s: La Boétie. He was welcomed in terms that retrospectively inserted the author and his book into a politique context. The major figures discussed include de Thou (whose brush with Roman censorship is contrasted with Montaigne’s), Sainte-Marthe, Pasquier, L’Estoile.