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1. All churches claim to be catholic. Roman Catholics in Montaigne’s time often stressed the ‘Roman’ so as to avoid any ambiguity.

2. The Lord’s Prayer (Matthew 6:9–13; Luke 11:2–4). Montaigne always presents the Bible as divinely inspired by the Holy Ghost. Here, by special grace, the incarnate Son ensures the absolute verbal accuracy of the central prayer of Christendom.

3. Romans 8:14–17, etc.

4. ’80: According to the criteria of his justice, not according to our inclinations and wishes. God’s…

5. Plato, Laws, X, 885 B–C.

6. ’80: at least for that time when… (This passage was raised by the Maestro del Palazzo. Consult Malcolm Smith, Montaigne and the Roman Censors, Geneva, 1981. Montaigne’s assertion is rigorist and neo-Augustinian. Some still judge it hyperorthodox.)

7. Cf. Matthew 3:8.

8. Juvenal, Satires, VIII, 144–5.

9. The Benedicite precedes dinner; grace follows it.’80: It amounts in the end to pretence. And it…’88: since they are practices which I honour and often imitate, only…

10. ’80: to usury, venality and lechery. Give… [Montaigne strengthens his case, replacing sinful practices by the infinitely more serious inward sins of the mind.]

11. 80: the Catholic Church has forbidden… (Psalm-singing, often in the translation of the French poet Clément Marot, had been a practice in the Court of Margaret of Navarre but had become for many the sign of the Reformed Church.)

12. ’80: kitchen, in the hands of everybody. A study…

13. ‘Lift up your hearts’ – the liturgical summons to prayer.

14. ’88: of translating and broadcasting…

15. All this paragraph of Nicetas comes directly from Justus Lipsius’ De una religione.

16. Plato forbade youths, not women, to discuss the laws (Plato, Laws, I, 634 D–E). Here, as often in the Renaissance, Law includes religion. (Christianity was termed ‘the law of Christians’ from medieval times.)

17. Bishop Jeronimo Osorio (da Fonseca), De rebus Emanuëlis Lusitaniae Regis gestis, Cologne, 1581 (1586).

18. Euripides apud Plutarch (tr. Amyot), De l’amour, 604B.

19. St Augustine, City of God, X, xxix. This was current Renaissance practice. For some reason the Maestro di Palazzo raised the question of the use of ‘fortune’ in the Essays. Montaigne changed a few passages but held his ground and explains why. (The passage of Chrysostom remains untraced.)

20. Montaigne’s terms are technical. He is giving his opinions (i.e. his unproven notions) ‘according to himself, ‘selon moy’ (secundum me). Anything which is said secundum quid (‘according to anything’) is not stated simpliciter (absolutely, simply) but in some partial respect only. Anything stated ‘selon Dieu’, ‘according to God’ (secundum Deum) would be infallible and a matter of absolute faith.

21. That was the practice of the Reformed Church. (Cf. Joachim Du Bellay, Regrets, 136, on the Genevan Calvinists.)

22. Persius, Satires, II, 4; glossing a petition from the Lord’s Prayer.

23. Persius, Satires, II, 21–31. The young monarch (or ‘prince’) in the next paragraph is Francis. (cf. Margaret of Navarre, Heptaméron, III, 25). Prince regularly means King in the Renaissance, as a current Latinism.

24. Lucan, Pharsalia, V, 104–5.

25. Persius, Satires, II, 6–7; Horace, Epistles, III, i, 16–19.

26. For Oedipus, cf. Plato, Second Alcibiades, 138 B–C. Then, for prayer, cf. The ‘magic’ prayers of Panurge during the Storm in the Quart Livre of Father Rabelais. Montaigne’s point is theologically sound and, at the time, not difficult to grasp.

27. That is, Christianity.

28. ’80: those concupiscences which…

29. Plato, Laws, IV, 717E.

30. Horace, Odes, III, xxxiii, 13–16.