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before Montaigne wrote his ‘Apology’ at the request of an unnamed patroness who may well have been Princess Margaret of France, the future wife of Henry of Navarre. 4 In 1551 Jean Martin had translated Dorlandus’ version of Sebond’s
Violet of the Soul
into highly latinate French for Queen Eleonora of Austria, the widow of King Francis I. In her absence fromFrance the version was dedicated to the Cardinal de Lenincourt; there we read that the
Viola animae
is a book which could ‘bring back atheists, if any there be, to the true light, while maintaining the faithful in the good way’. Clearly Pierre Bunel had every reason to give the original and full version of such a book to an intelligent but not formally educated nobleman such as Montaigne’s father, who wanted to find an ‘antidote’ to Lutheranism.
    The Catholic credentials of the
Natural Theology
of Raymond Sebond may appear to need no defence or apology. In the fifteenth century the scholarly and saintly Cardinal Nicolaus of Cusa had possessed a copy: it may have contributed to his doctrine of ‘learned ignorance’ – that Socratic, Evangelical
docta ignorantia
of the Christian who is content to own that all human knowledge is as nothing, compared to that infinity who is God; learned ignorance never claims to know, or to aspire to know, anything beyond the saving law of Christ. In the sixteenth century the French Platonizing humanist Charles de Bouelles also had a copy: he was a Christian apologist of real depth and power. But Montaigne was not mistaken in believing that the
Natural Theology
did need an apologist against criticisms arising within his own Church. In 1559 a work called the
Violetta del anima
appeared on a list of prohibited books drawn up by the Spanish Inquisitor Ferdinando de Valdés, Archbishop of Seville. It may refer to a Spanish version of the
Violet of the Soul
. More important, in 1558–9, the entry
Raymundus de Sabunde: Theologia Naturalis
appeared on the Index of Forbidden Books of Pope Paul IV.
    So the Catholic Montaigne had translated a prohibited book! Or had he? His own translation was never condemned. On the contrary, it enjoyed a certain popularity well into the next century. After Montaigne’s first and second editions in 1569 and 1581 (both in Paris) it was reprinted in Rouen in 1603, in Tournon in 1611, in Paris again, also in 1611 and finally in Rouen in 1641.
    That fact can be easily explained. It was not to the
Natural Theology
that the censors took exception but to the short Prologue which accompanied it, as is shown by the definitive judgement of the Council of Trent; the Tridentine Index of Forbidden Books (1564) condemned the Prologue and nothing else. Shorn of the page and a half of Prologue, the Latin original of Sebond’s
Natural Theology
circulated freely and was fully reprinted in Venice in 1581, in Frankfurt-on-the-Main in 1631 – with the Prologue – and finally in Lyons in 1648, by which time it was becoming dated. And even the Prologue was eventually removed from the Index in the nineteenth century.
    This has not stopped Sebond’s method of teaching the Catholic faith from being thought of as somehow dangerous. Even the
New Catholic Encyclopedia
(which ought to know better) calls it heretical. It is not. But it was clearly a disturbing book – a good defence against heresy yet, for many, a work somehow not to be trusted. There were contemporaries of Montaigne who shared that opinion: hence his apology for it.
    When Montaigne published his translation in 1569, he included with it a translation of the Prologue which proved quite acceptable to the Roman Catholic Church. No censor has ever said a word against it. He had clearly taken theological advice and had adapted the Prologue to meet the needs of the Faith. A comparison of his version and the original shows why the Latin Prologue appeared among the prohibited books, while the French version never did.
    Sebond’s original Prologue is dense and