CHARRON, PIERRE
(1541-1603)
French philosopher. Educated in both humanist and scholastic subjects at Paris, and then in law at Orléans, Bourges, and Montpellier, and ordained as a priest, he settled in southwestern France and became chaplain to Margaret of Navarre and a close friend of Michel de Montaigne. He sought to encourage an end to the French Wars of Religion by drawing a distinction between the realm of faith and the realm of reason. His book Les trois veritez / The Three Truths (1593) discussed the basic truths of Christianity, while his De la sagesse / On Wisdom (1601) discussed the theme of human reason as something distinct from religion though subordinate to it. De la sagesse was an influential work of Neostoic moral philosophy. It was usually interpreted as defining a secular moral code distinct from religion, though that was not Charron's intention.