Charron, PIERRE

Charron, PIERRE, a French moralist and theologian, born at Paris in 1541. He studied for the law, but after being called to the Paris bar, entered the church, and became a conspicuous member of the politiques, or party of moderate Catholics. He assailed the League in his Discours Chrétiens (1589), vindicated Catholicism against Protestantism in his treatise Les Trois Verités (1594), and in his chief work, the treatise De la Sagesse (1601), took a sceptical attitude towards all forms of religion. He died in 1603. He was a friend and disciple of Montaigne, to whom he was, as a writer, immeasurably inferior, and from whose essays he borrowed freely. An edition of his principal work was published at Paris in 1789.