Pierre Charron

Roman Catholic theologian, born in Paris, France. He became a lawyer to the Parlement, then turned to theology and became a renowned preacher to Margaret of France, the queen of Navarre. He met and befriended Michel de Montaigne, from whom he acquired his sceptical tendency which, coupled with traditional Catholicism, is noted in his two major works Les Trois vérités (1593) and the lengthy De la sagesse (1601), influential in 17th-c France and England. He is remembered for his controversial form of scepticism, and his separation of ethics from religion as an independent philosophical discipline.

Pierre Charron (1541-1603) was a French philosopher.

He was born in Paris, one of the twenty-five children of a bookseller. After studying law, he practised at Paris as an advocate, but, having little success, entered the church, and soon became a popular preacher, rising to the dignity of canon, and being appointed preacher in ordinary to Marguerite de Valois, wife of Henry IV of Navarre. He delivered a course of sermons at Angers, and in the next year passed to Bordeaux, where he formed a famous friendship with Michel de Montaigne. On Montaigne's death, in 1592, Charron was requested in his will to bear the Montaigne arms.

In 1594 Charron published (at first anonymously, afterwards under the name of "Benoit Vaillant, Advocate of the Holy Faith," and also, in 1594, in his own name) Les Trois Vérités, in which by methodical and orthodox arguments, he seeks to prove that there is a God and a true religion, that the true religion is the Christian, and that the true church is the Roman Catholic. The last book (which is three-quarters of the whole work) is a response to a famous Protestant work, Le Traité de l'Eglise by Du Plessis Mornay; and in the second edition (1595) there is an elaborate reply to an attack made on the third Vérité by a Protestant writer. Les Trois Vérités ran through several editions, and obtained for its author the favour of the Bishop of Cahors, who appointed him grand vicar and theological canon.

In 1601 Charron published at Bordeaux his third and most remarkable work--the famous De la sagesse, a complete popular system of moral philosophy. It is specially interesting from the time when it appeared, and the man by whom it was written. The De la sagesse, which represented a considerable advance on the standpoint of the Trois Vérités, brought upon its author the most violent attacks, the chief being by the Jesuit François Garasse (1585-1631), who described him as a brutal atheist. but only a few pages had been printed when Charron died suddenly in the street of apoplexy.

Charron's psychology is sensationalist. Dividing the intelligent soul into these three faculties, he shows - after the manner later adopted by Francis Bacon - what branches of science correspond with each. The belief in its immortality, he says, is the most universal of beliefs, but the most feebly supported by reason. As to man's power of attaining truth his scepticism is decided; In comparing man with the lower animals, Charron insists that there are no breaks in nature. The estimate of man is not flattering. Upon this view of human nature Charron founds his moral system.

Special interest attaches to Charron's treatment of religion. In fact, however, a man is a Christian, Jew, or Muslim, before he knows he is a man. But while he openly declares religion to be "strange to common sense," the practical result at which Charron arrives is that one is not to sit in judgment on his faith, but to be "simple and obedient," and to allow himself to be led by public authority. and another equally important is to avoid superstition, which he boldly defines as the belief that God is like a hard judge who, eager to find fault, narrowly examines our slightest act, that He is revengeful and hard to appease, and that therefore He must be flattered and importuned, and won over by pain and sacrifice. True piety, which is the first of duties, is, on the other hand, the knowledge of God and of one's self, the latter knowledge being necessary to the former. It is the abasing of man, the exalting of God,--the belief that what He sends is all good, and that all the bad is from ourselves. Charron is thus the founder of modern secularism.

A summary and defence of the Sagesse, written shortly before his death, appeared in 1606. In 1604 his friend Michel de la Roche prefixed to an edition of the Sagesse a Life, which depicts Charron as a most amiable man of purest character.

See Liebscher, Charron u. sein Werk, De la sagesse (Leipzig, 1890);

This article incorporates text from the Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition, a publication now in the public domain.