He is remembered for his controversial form of skepticism and his separation of ethics from religion as an independent philosophical discipline.

[2] He was appointed priest in ordinary to Marguerite de Valois, wife of Henry IV of Navarre.

He delivered a course of sermons at Angers, and in the next year moved to Bordeaux, where he formed a famous friendship with Michel de Montaigne.

[3] From 1594, he used his own name; he spent from 1594 to 1600 under the protection of Antoine Hérbrard de Saint-Sulpice,[2] Bishop of Cahors, who appointed him grand vicar and theological canon.

Charron retired to Condom in 1600; he died suddenly of a stroke; his works were then receiving attention.

While Charron's reading of Montaigne is now considered dogmatic and indeed something of a distortion, it was important in its time and during the 17th century as a whole.

Then followed, in 1600, Discours chretiens, a book of sermons with a similar tone, half of which is about the Eucharist [citation needed].

In 1601, Charron published in Bordeaux his third work, De la sagesse, a system of moral philosophy that develops ideas of Montaigne.

Charron writes that all religions teach that God is to be appeased by prayers, presents, vows, but especially, and, most irrationally, by human suffering [citation needed].

While Charron declares religion to be "strange to common sense," the practical result at which he arrives is that one is not to sit in judgment on his or her faith, but to be "simple and obedient," and to submit to public authority[citation needed].

Another equally important is to avoid superstition, which he defines as the belief that God is like a hard judge who, eager to find fault, narrowly examines our slightest act, that he is vengeful and hard to appease, and that, therefore, he must be flattered and won over by pain and sacrifice.

Charron declares the sovereign to be the source of law, and asserts that popular freedom is dangerous.