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1. Seneca, Epist. moral., LIII, 11–12 (mocked in II, 12, ‘An apology for Raymond Sebond’, as are the following anecdotes about Pyrrho).

2. Diogenes Laertius, Pyrrho, IX.

3. Tibullus, De inertia inguinis. (Story from H. Estienne, Apologie pour Hérodote, XV, xxix.)

4. Propertius, II, xiii, 17–22.

5. From Classical times suttee was known from Cicero, Tusc. disput., V, xxvii, 77 and its commentators; Montaigne clearly used another source as well.

6. Plutarch, Life of Alexander.

7. ‘Our Masters’: the title of Professors of Theology in the Sorbonne. Their explanation of God’s foreknowledge is the standard Platonico-Christian one: God, the Creator of time, alone has an absolute existence outside time. For God, all things past, present and future are seen in an eternal present. But to see an event is not to cause it; neither, for God therefore, is ‘foreseeing’ necessarily causative. (Cf. the end of II, 12, ‘An apology for Raymond Sebond’.)

8. A theological quip. A ‘lively’ faith, a faith informed with charity, manifests itself through the works of charity. Otherwise it is dead. Theological controversy led Reformers and Evangelicals to segregate faith and works into discrete compartments: a man may have the ‘true’ faith yet do no corresponding good works which prove it to be a true and lively one. Both sides in the Civil Wars could be misled into contempt for good works, prizing orthodoxy above all else. Hence (for Montaigne) the decadence and the atrocities of his age in which rival credal orthodoxies took precedence over works of charity.

9. Joinville, Vie de Saint Louis, XXX. (Guillaume Postel, the Renaissance expert on Turkish affairs, was struck by the religion and piety of the Turks and by their valour.)

10. Cf. Innocent Gentillet, Discours… de bien gouverner, II, xii. Then, Nicolas Chalcocondylas, De la décadence…, VII, viii.

11. Doubtless Henry of Navarre (Henry IV).’95: profit from it, should he either believe it or else use it as justification to take extraordinary risks, provided that Fortune does not tire too soon of giving him a leg up. [B] In living…

12. The would-be assassins were Jeaureguy (1582) and Balthasar Gérard (1584).

13. The murder of the Duc de Guise (1563) by Poltrot de Méré.

14. Balthasar Gérard.

15. ’95: city, during our expeditions in the Crusades. So too Conrad, Marquess of Montfarat, whose murderers were all brought to the scaffold full of elation and proud of so beautiful a masterpiece… Cf. Bernard de Girard, Hist. des Roys de France.