Death of Marguerite d’Angoulême, Queen of Navarre

The death of Marguerite d’Angoulême or Marguerite de Navarre as she is more usually known, on 21st December 1549, at the age of fifty-seven.

Marguerite was born on 11th April 1492 in Angoulême, now in the Nouvelle-Aquitaine region of Southern France. Her parents were Charles de Valois-Orléans, Count of Angoulême, then thirty-three and Louise of Savoy, then fifteen. Marguerite’s brother, the future King François I was born in September 1494. Her father, Charles, died on 1st January 1496 and the infant François inherited his title. Apart from Marguerite and François, Charles is known to have had at least three “natural daughters” whom Louise brought up and educated alongside her own children, arranging marriages for them in due course. Louise, who had been very well educated, taught her children Italian and Spanish herself; she also commissioned books for them, including one on ancient mythology and on penance. Marguerite and François were educated in arithmetic, geography, grammar, history, reading, spelling, writing, Hebrew and Latin. Dancing, music, poetry, riding and the courtly arts were also taught as was theology and philosophy.

In April 1498, when Marguerite was six, her three and half-year-old brother François became heir presumptive to the French throne as Charles VIII had died having left no heirs, and the new king, Louis XII had no son. Being so close to the throne meant that any future marriage of Marguerite’s had become a matter of state; Louis XII and Louise tried to arrange marriages to among others, Henry VII, Prince Arthur and the future Henry VIII but these plans came to nothing.

In August 1508, François went to court and it seems likely that Marguerite, then sixteen, would have accompanied him. In 1509 when she was seventeen King Louis XII arranged a marriage between Marguerite and Charles IV, Duke of Alençon, aged twenty, in order to settle a territorial dispute in southwest France. This would prove to be an unsatisfactory and childless marriage for the highly educated and learned Marguerite as apparently her husband, though a capable warrior, was barely literate and shared none of her intellectual or literary interests.

Marguerite, despite her unsatisfactory marriage, involved herself in efforts to alleviate the hardship and poverty in her duchy. She supported hospices and orphanages where children, the elderly and sick could be cared for and encouraged wealthy women to raise funds for these establishments. Marguerite also attempted to lessen the plight of poor, abandoned or single mothers; she believed that these women should receive food and shelter before and after the birth (usually in convents). Marguerite was also interested in questions of diet and hygiene. In the 1530s Marguerite, with her brother King François, founded what became known as L’Hôpital des Enfants Rouges in Paris, an orphanage for destitute children who, up until that time, were housed with adults in the Hotel Dieu Hospital. (They became known as Red Children (enfants rouges) because of the red uniform they wore).

Once François became king in January 1515 Marguerite and her mother, Madame Louise, became the two most prominent and powerful women of his court, easily eclipsing the fifteen-year-old Queen Claude, who was self-effacing and homely as well as enduring more or less yearly pregnancies. In addition, François’ mistress in the early years of his reign, Jacqueline de Foix, had no real political ambitions of her own, unlike his later mistress, the Duchess d’Etampes who had and with whom Marguerite clashed.

Marguerite’s husband, the Duke of Alençon, fought at the Battle of Pavia on 24th February 1525 and died some weeks later in April. In 1526, Marguerite, then thirty-four married Henri II of Navarre, aged twenty-three. As Marguerite’s first marriage had been childless, she had assumed that the cause lay with her; this would have the assumption in the 16th-century when childlessness was usually blamed on the woman. So she was thrilled when, aged thirty-six, she discovered that she had become pregnant and wanted to be able to give her news to her mother personally so that she could “laugh with her over it myself”!

Marguerite’s first child Jeanne, the future Jeanne III of Navarre, was born on 16th November 1528; a son, Jean, born in July 1530, died in December of that year. His death devastated Marguerite who wore only black from that day on. She continued to care for her two nieces, Madeleine and Marguerite, during her second marriage; this arrangement had started after the death of Queen Claude in 1524. This second marriage was more satisfactory to Marguerite than her first, because though Henri reputedly had numerous affairs and also enjoyed gambling, they shared some of the same intellectual interests. Following her mother’s example, Marguerite took charge of her daughter and nieces’ education.

Marguerite was interested in the mechanics of government and played a diplomatic role in her brother’s reign. When François lost the Battle of Pavia in 1525 and became a prisoner of the Emperor Charles V in Madrid, Marguerite was among those who attempted to secure his release. She rode to Madrid and met the emperor alone except for one lady-in-waiting. Although Marguerite returned to France before the terms of François’ release had been finalised, it does indicate that she was prepared to take a very proactive role in diplomacy. It also seems likely that Marguerite would have played some part in the Paix des Dames (Peace of the Ladies) which the Treaty of Cambrai of 1529 between France and the Empire was called. This was negotiated mainly between Louise, François I’s mother (who acted as regent in his absence at war and when he was a prisoner) and Margaret of Austria, Duchess of Savoy, aunt of Charles V and regent of the Netherlands.

Marguerite was very sympathetic to the new learning as it was called and to the teachings of Martin Luther. She was a follower of Erasmus and a supporter of French Humanist writers such as Rabelais; she protected Jacques Lefèvre d’Étaples, who translated the New Testament into French and who published it despite a ban by the Sorbonne. Marguerite encouraged François to found the Collège de France (situated in Paris’s Latin Quarter) to provide an alternative institution for progressive and humanist education. Her inner circle included many poets and writers and her salon became known as The New Parnassus. She supported reform within the Catholic Church and did her best to encourage François to a policy of tolerance. Marguerite, though she never changed her religion herself, was in important figure in the development of the Reformation in France.

Marguerite was a prolific writer who wrote many poems and plays but after the death of her son, her work became more serious. In 1531 she published her “Miroir de l’âme pécheresse” or “Mirror of a Sinful Soul”; this work is said to have been translated by the young Elizabeth Tudor and given to Catherine Parr as a gift. Marguerite included a revised version of the “The Mirror” in her two-volume collection of poetry called Les Marguerites de la Marguerite des princesses (Pearls from the Pearl of Princesses), a pun on her name. However, although most of Marguerite’s work is religious or spiritual in nature her best-known work is the Heptameron, a collection of short stories inspired by Boccaccio’s Decameron. Marguerite died before it was finished, but as she had reached the 72nd tale the title Heptameron was coined and that it how the work is still known. This work is well worth reading for, among other things, its interesting perspective on royal and aristocratic 16th-century sexual politics.

Marguerite was a frequent visitor to the thermal springs at Cauterets, now in the Hautes-Pyrénées départment in South-western France, though then part of Navarre, and it was there that she died on 21st December 1549 at the age of fifty-seven, from a lung inflammation. Her husband, Henri, had been informed of her illness but sadly she died before he reached Cauterets. Marguerite’s funeral took place on 10th February 1550 in the Cathedral of Lascar, where the monarchs of Navarre were interred.

Marguerite outlived her brother by two years. Her husband, Henri II (of Navarre) and her daughter, Jeanne, survived her. Unlike her mother, who never changed her religion, Jeanne did and became one of the principal leaders of the Huguenot movement. Through her daughter, Marguerite was the grandmother of the famous Henri IV, the first Bourbon king of France; she is also the 4 times great-grandmother of Charles Lennox, 1st Duke of Richmond, and an ancestor therefore to Princes William & Harry and their children.

Marguerite was a tall, attractive woman with violet-blue eyes (like her brother) quick-witted and charming. She was a remarkable woman, a writer, poet, diplomat, adviser and supporter to her brother, the King of France and her salon was famous throughout Europe.

Marguerite was, without doubt, one of the major figures of the French Renaissance.

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Background:
Lives of Fair and Gallant Ladies: by Pierre de Bourdeille, Abbé Brantôme (? – 1614); trans by A.R. Allinson, Alexandrian Soc., London 1922.
The Pearl of Princesses, Life of Marguerite d’Angoulême, Queen of Navarre: trans by H.N. Williams, Eveleigh Nash Company Ltd., London, 1916.
Marguerite de Navarre: Heptameron. Trans by P.A. Chilton, Penguin Classics, London, 1984.
Marguerite de Navarre: Mother of the Renaissance by P. F. & R. C. Cholakian, Columbia Univ Press, New York, 2006.

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