Birth of Marguerite, Queen of Navarre

Birth of Marguerite, Queen of Navarre

Marguerite Queen of Navarre, was an outstanding figure of the French Renaissance.
As an author and a patron of humanists and reformers, she was often referred to as “The First Modern Woman”
She was also the ancestress of the Bourbon kings of France.
Her Grandson, Henry IV of France, was the first Bourbon king.

Marguerite was born in Angoulême on 11th April 1492.
She was the eldest child of Charles~Count of Angoulême and Louise of Savoy.
She had several half-siblings from illegitimate relationships of her father, who were raised alongside Marguerite and her brother Francis.

Marguerite’s parents were both well-educated, valued books, and kept a large library.
Although educating girls was considered a pointless waste of time, Marguerite was tutored by scholars from a young age, and given a classical education that included Latin.
When Marguerite was ten, Louise tried to marry her to the Prince of Wales, who would later become Henry VIII of England, but the negotiations fell through.
A lucky escape for Marguerite…..

The one real love in her life was Gaston de Foix, the nephew of King Louis XII.
Gaston went to Italy, however, and died a hero at Ravenna, when the French defeated the Spanish and Papal forces.
In 1509, at the age of seventeen Marguerite was married to twenty year old Charles IV of Alençon.

The match was not a happy one and Marguerite is said to have cried throughout the wedding service
Marguerite was a radiant young princess with violet-blue eyes, while Charles was considered kind, but quite slow of learning, and practically illiterate.

The couple had no children together, and when Charles died in 1525, Marguerite went on to marry her second husband, Henry II of Navarre.

A year after the marriage, on 16th November 1528, Marguerite gave birth to a daughter, the future Jeanne III of Navarre, the mother of Henry IV.
Her only son, Jean, was born on 7th July 1530, when Marguerite was thirty-eight.
Sadly, he died on Christmas Day the same year.
Marguerite turned to poetry to express her grief and feelings of separation from God.
Historians generally believe that her grief at losing her son, motivated Marguerite to write her most controversial work, ‘Le miroir de l’âme pécheresse’
“Mirror of the Sinful Soul”

‘Le miroir de l’âme pécheresse’ is a first-person narrative of the soul as a yearning woman calling out to Christ as her father-brother-lover.
Theologians condemned Marguerite’s work as heresy.
One monk even said Marguerite should be sewn into a sack and thrown into the Seine.
Marguerite would go on to write many poems and plays.

Marguerite was a huge advocate for the poor and for unwed mothers.
Unmarried pregnant women were provided with shelter, food, and support before and after giving birth, and any act of molestation or r@pe was severely punished.
Marguerite established hospitals, almshouses, and orphanages, while also tending to her responsibilities at court.

She corresponded with some of the greatest Reformers of her time, including Martin Luther and John Calvin.
Marguerite was also a patron of Leonardo de Vinci, who spent his last years at the chateau she and Francois I provided.

During her years in France, Anne Boleyn had been a lady-in-waiting to Queen Claude.
The courts of Claude and Marguerite overlapped and there is a theory that perhaps Anne Boleyn was in service to Marguerite, rather than to Claude.
A letter by Anne Boleyn after she became queen exists, in which she makes strong expressions of affection to Marguerite.

It is also thought that Marguerite gave Anne the original manuscript of ‘Miroir de l’âme pécheresse’
It is certain that in 1544, nine years after Anne Boleyn’s death, that Anne’s daughter, the future Elizabeth I, translated the poem into English.

When Elizabeth was eleven years old she presented it, written in her own hand, to her then-stepmother, the English queen Katherine Parr.
This literary connection between Marguerite, Anne Boleyn, Katherine Parr, and Elizabeth suggests a direct link of reformist religious views.

Although she never officially renounced Catholicism, she supported the Protestant Reformation in France, protected Protestant preachers and writers from persecution.
Marguerite served as a mediator between Roman Catholics and Protestants.
She did her best to protect the reformers and dissuaded Francis I from intolerant measures as long as she could.
On 21st December 1549, Marguerite of Navarre died of pleurisy, in south-western France.
She was fifty-seven.

Marguerite’s collection of 72 stories, many of women, was published after her death.
These works found a wider audience in the 19th century and Marguerite’s reputation as a great Renaissance woman has only grown since then.
Today she is recognised as one of the most significant figures of her time, both for her literary achievements and her contributions toward social reform and freedom of religious expression.

? Portrait of Marguerite de Navarre 1527 ~ Jean Clouet.