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Michel de Montaigne is born in France. He was one of the most influential writers of the French Renaissance. He was commonly thought of as the father of skeptism.
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Born on October 6, 1565, Marie Le Jars belonged to a minor aristocratic family. Marie de Gournay was born as Marie le Jars in Paris. She was the first of 6 children. Her father's name was Guillaume Le Jars and her mother's name was Jeanne de Hacqueville who descended from a family of jursts.
Her father purchased the estate of Gournay-sur-Aronde which made the family name "de Gournay". -
King Charles IX of France, under the sway of his mother, Catherine de Medici, orders the assassination of Huguenot Protestant leaders in Paris, setting off an orgy of killing that results in the massacre of tens of thousands of Huguenots all across France.
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Marie de Gournay's father died who, according to records, she loved and deeply admired. The death of Gournay's father caused Marie to retire with her mother and siblings to the chateau of Gournay. By this time she had become fluent in Latin and some Greek.
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Gournay met with Montaigne for the first time. Gournay was 22 and Montaigne was 55 years old.
Monatigne referred to Gournay as his "adopted daughter" -
Marie de Gournay's mother dies. She soon moves to Paris leaving the family home to her brother Charles, who was later forced to sell it in 1608. In Paris, Marie de Gournay met Henri Louis Habert de Montmor and the scholar Justus Lipsius presented her to Europe as a woman of letters.
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Michel de Montaigne dies in France leaving his book collection to Marie de Gournay, who he preffered rather than his own children.
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Gournay published a new edition of Montaigne's "Essays". Françoise de Montaigne, provided Gournay with a copy of the Essays. Marie de Gournay published the first posthumous edition of the Essays with a long preface praising Montaigne's ideas. Gournay was later praised for her translation of "Essays".
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Gournay deffended the unpopular Jesuits, whom many French pamphleteers had blamed for the assassination of King Henry IV of France.
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In 1626 she published a collection of her previous writings. It was a financial and critical success which earned her the respect of French women and men.
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Marie de Gournay dies at age 79 and is buried at the Saint-Eustache Church in Paris. Gournay was an editor, a translator, an activist of controversial literary movements and ideas, published a novel, poetry and numerous essays. She never married and never had children.
