Bernard, commonly called "The Potter," was born about 1509, in the diocese of Agen in France, or, according to some, at Chapelle Biron, a poor hamlet near the small town of Biron in Perigord. His father is said to have been a glass-worker, who exercised his craft, like the rest of his fraternity in those days, in the recesses of a forest. Young Bernard's education was accordingly sadly neglected; but, "as a child, he rolled upon the moss, and ripened into the chestnut," which, in the long run, proved not quite so bad a school for the youth as might have been supposed. With some skill as a worker in painted glass, he, at the age of eighteen, set out to study nature, to see the world, and to earn his bread. The succeeding nine or ten years of his life were spent in wandering over France in all directions; painting a window now and then; constantly prying into the secrets of nature in woods and fields, by rivers and roads; talking with a wise man when he found one; studying his Bible as he went, and eagerly reading what scraps of philosophy came in his way. It was during these journeyings that he first became acquainted with the Reformed doctrines, which he subsequently espoused, and for which he had ultimately to suffer. In 1538 Palissy took up his abode in the little town of Saintes, married, and gave up wandering. During these years his eye chanced to light upon a beautiful enamelled cup of Italian manufacture, when, without the slightest knowledge of the art, he too resolved to make enamels as well as any Italian. He set about his experiments with uncommon ardour; but nothing came of it meanwhile, he says, but "great cost, loss of time, confusion and sorrow." His attention was diverted for a time by the duties of surveyor of the salt-mashes of Saintonge, to which he had been appointed; but the discovery of white enamel again became his care. Failure upon failure mocked his enthusiasm; his neighbours jeered him, his wife became petulant, and his children clamoured for bread. Then, with genuine childish simplicity, he comported himself, he says, "as if I were not zealous to dive any more into the secret of enamels," and took duly to glass-painting, and eschewed folly. But no sooner had his domestic affairs begun to assume a more prosperous aspect, than the little pet at the coy enamels was got over, and he took to his furnaces again. The furnaces soon burnt up all the fuel, and consumed all the Potter's money. In his extreme need, he flung the flooring of his house to the flames, and when that was done, the furniture followed it. No wonder that his poor wife became now positively sulky. The Potter was clearly mad now, in the eyes of all sensible people. But mad or not, he discovered his enamel, and became the greatest potter in France.

Sixteen years had been spent on this discovery, and Palissy was now bordering on fifty; yet he had accomplished his purpose, and he met with the patronage which success generally secures. In 1557 or 1558 he published a book without his name, which is either now lost or cannot be authentically identified. In the first collected edition of the Potter's works, by MM. De Saint Fond and Gobet, the Declaration des Abus des Médecins is supposed to be the missing treatise, and is printed accordingly among Palissy's works. High and mighty patrons now sought the humble shed of the artisan; and among the foremost was the Constable Montmorenci, who employed him to decorate his Chateau d'Ecouché, near Paris. It has already been noted that the Potter was a stanch Reformer. Reform was unfortunately not a commodity in equal demand with enamelled clay among the great and luxurious of France in those days. On the contrary, old men and simple maidens had more than once met death on the martyr's scaffold, even in remote Saintes, and under the eyes of the devout Palissy. This had not the effect of silencing the outspoken, courageous Potter; it rather made him more vehement in his denunciation of the oppressors. But for his skill in clay, his head would doubtless have fallen with the rest; but to imprison or behead old Bernard was equivalent to depriving many wealthy people of the luxury of his decorative art—a thing not to be thought of. This it was that delivered him from the Bordeaux dungeon and from the massacre of St Bartholomew's. In 1563 he published his second book, containing treatises on four subjects,—viz., agriculture, natural history, gardening, and fortification, with an appended history of the troubles in Saintonge. Here, as elsewhere, the strong original genius of the man comes out, sometimes in quite startling anticipations of scientific theories, which centuries were needed to develop and verify. Under royal patronage, the Potter removed to Paris; and at the age of sixty-five became "Master Bernard of the Tuileries." His sons aided him in his art; and he not only continued to prosecute his study of natural history, but commenced a course of lectures in the capital on scientific subjects, which were published in 1580. The doctrines of this, his last book, were a century or two in advance of his time; and it is this work which has obtained for him the admiration of men like Buffon, Haller, and Jussieu. The sturdy old Huguenot had religious enemies in abundance, who had long been anxious for his head; and when the Potter was in his seventy-sixth year, Henry III. gave way to their importunities. He was thrown into the Bastile, where he lay for the next four years. The king visited him in his dungeon one day about the end of that period, and held out to him the alternatives of recantation or death. "Sire," said the old man of eighty, "the Guiscarts, all your people, and yourself, cannot compel a potter to bow down to images of clay." Next year both king and potter had gone to their account: the former fell by the hand of the assassin, and the latter died in calm hope in the Bastile. (See Life of Bernard Palissy of Saintes, by Henry Morley, 2 vols., Lond. 1852.) The last and best edition of Palissy's works is entitled Œuvres Complètes de Bernard Palissy, avec des Notes et une Notice Historique, par P. A. Cap, Svo, Paris 1844.