“In good faith”

or “Of good faith”?

I'm working in my barn.

Midway between a church founded by Eleanor of Aquitaine, Huguenot at the time Michel de Montaigne was writing, and the home I now occupy, formerly the sixteenth-century home of the choirmaster appointed by a Catholic hierarchy to win the local protestant congregation back to the Catholic Church.

One wall of my barn is likely the remains of the tourelle of the château of the Abbé Laïque, the lay-abbot of this village, and my potager is outside the former tithe yard of the enclosure. And the seigneur to whom they would all have owed fealty was none other than Henri of Navarre – first a Protestant, then the Catholic King of France, and the man who eventually brought an end to the Wars of Religion; exemplified in the small village landscape in which I am currently toiling.

As the labour proceeds I am reflecting on the English-language Wikipedia article I have just read on Michel de Montaigne and his Essays. Montaigne's famous Avis au lecteur opens with a declaration that he presents himself to the reader de bonne foi. English translations almost invariably render this as “in good faith”. The translation is perfectly defensible.

But as I put away my tools there is a tiny nag, and it will not go away. In modern English, in my experience, in good faith usually refers to the manner of an action. If I act in good faith, I act honestly, sincerely, without intent to deceive. The emphasis falls on conduct. I may be mistaken, but my intentions are honourable.

Yet I find myself hearing the French de bonne foi slightly differently.

Perhaps this is partly because of where I am. I have Irish and Basque friends, and Breton ones too. And perhaps living amongst people whose languages have developed in such different relationships to French and English has made me more attentive to the nominal structures of language – to the way prepositions and nouns can carry meaning together rather than simply marking grammatical relationships that modern English would treat as incidental.

It has also made me wary of assuming that the grammar of modern English is a transparent window onto an older language. We have compressed some things that earlier languages allowed to remain more spacious.

The old association between preposition and noun can carry something that a modern grammatical analysis is inclined to tidy away. And de seems to me to be one of those small words whose apparent simplicity becomes less certain the longer one looks at it. I am not suggesting that de simply means from here. In fact, of is perhaps what interests me first.

Un livre de bonne foi. – A book of good faith.

Even as I write this, that reads a little differently to the Wikipedia article. That sentence seems to me to ask a different question from a book written in good faith. In good faith asks something about the manner in which Montaigne writes. But of good faith seems to ask something about the constitution of the work itself: What kind of book is this? And if I allow myself to take the thought one step further, another question appears: From where does Montaigne speak?

I don't mean that de bonne foi should therefore be translated from good faith. That would be to make the speculation do more work than the language warrants. Rather, the awkwardness of the thought has made me stop.

And now I look through the opening in the barn wall towards the old church. The architecture reveals its history without needing to explain it. Catholic, Huguenot, Catholic again. The old structures of land and authority remain in the landscape, even though the people who inhabited them and the allegiances they carried have long since changed.

And suddenly the word foi begins to trouble me more than de. Because here foi isn't an abstract word. Faith has been lived here. It has been believed and imposed, defended and abandoned, inherited and converted, even woo'd by music. It has been bound up with allegiance, authority and trust. And perhaps that is why Montaigne's little phrase catches me.

The Avis au lecteur is unusual. Montaigne tells the reader that his book has no grand public purpose beyond presenting himself honestly to his family and friends. He has not written to seek fame, instruction or public approval. Instead, he offers a plain and unadorned portrait of his character, habits and thoughts, preserving a record of himself as he is.

The book's subject is not simply the world. It is Montaigne himself encountering the world. And so he asks the reader not to expect anything more than a sincere self-portrait written de bonne foi.

As the author of essayism.org, I grasp his intention. The Avis au lecteur may even be an inspiration for essayism.org itself. Only now do I realize this. And now the nag is becoming hesitation. Past hesitation now, reluctance itself. I cannot quite accept the conventional translation without qualification.

In good faith can make Montaigne sound like a conscientious reporter of facts. Yet the Essays are not reports. They are attempts to establish a position from which a human being may speak truthfully about their own experience despite uncertainty. The essay is not founded on certainty but on a fidelity (foi ?) to experience.

I pick up a carpenter's pencil lying on my bench, take a rag and wipe away an area of decaying seventeenth-century plaster. And adopt the old habit I and Montaigne both share: writing to clarify.

In good faith asks: How is Montaigne speaking? Of good faith asks: What kind of work is this? From good faith asks: From where does Montaigne speak?

I wonder if the final question might be the most significant. But perhaps I am getting ahead of myself. Because I have begun by worrying about de, and now I find myself worrying about foi. And foi seems to open onto a much larger territory than I had intended to enter...

Faith. – Fidelity. – Trust. – Allegiance. The keeping of one's word. – Perhaps even the conditions under which one person can speak to another and ask to be believed without pretending to possess certainty.

Montaigne lived through the French Wars of Religion. Henri of Navarre, whose name is written into the history of this landscape, was first Protestant and then Catholic King of France. The very distinction between faith and allegiance was not as clean as we might now imagine.

But I don't want to resolve that here. The historical landscape has already done what it needs to do. It has made the word feel heavier. I began with de. I thought I was wondering whether in good faith was quite the right way to hear de bonne foi.

Now I find myself wondering what Montaigne's foi actually asks of the reader. That is probably another note. For now, I will leave the thread where I found it. – De bonne foi.

And go back to the work- the land demands attention.