The Spiritual Advisor (1516)
In 1516, King François’s older sister, Marguerite, is 24 and in an unhappy, childless marriage, arranged by her father, to Charles, the duc d’Alençon, who owns a large part of Normandy. Marguerite is well educated and well-read (but not yet the renowned literary figure that she will become), so it is understandable that she had cried throughout her wedding service as her husband is illiterate and primarily concerned with hunting. In contrast, Marguerite has books imported to her new home at the castle in Alençon, and also invites musicians, poets and scholars to a regular salon which becomes known as ‘The New Parnassus’ after the mountain in Greek Mythology which, as the home of the Muses, was the inspiration for all poetry, music, and learning.
For a young woman of royal blood, she has an unusual sense of social justice that contrasts with the entitlement of most of her peers. She looks at, rather than through, the ordinary people of Alençon and notices how many are poor and begging, or are old and infirm. She makes it her duty to visit the convents, hospices and almhouses, and sees the unmarried pregnant women and abandoned children. She listens to the stories of violence, rape and infanticide. She recoils hearing how certain types of men, some of them priests and monks, abuse their positions of power. Then she decides that she can do something about this, at least in the lands her husband controls. She starts collecting funds from the noblewomen of her court to give to charity, but being of a reflective nature, she soon realises that real improvements require reform, so she focuses on how hygiene can be improved to stop disease spreading, and how healthier meals can be provided to reduce infant mortality. So that all this is not a ‘once and forgotten’ exercise, she establishes a group of observers to oversee the implementation and report back.
Marguerite’s marriage options were first publicised as a child when her mother Louise de Savoie, widowed early after the death of her husband, had written a letter to England offering Marguerite, aged 10, as a bride to Henry Tudor who was a year older. It was not unusual among the ruling classes to be betrothed as young children, as part of political machinations. At that time, Henry had just become heir to the throne of England after his older brother, Arthur Prince of Wales, had died of sweating sickness at his castle on the Welsh Marches after only 5 months of an unconsummated marriage to Katherine of Aragon, who survived the same illness. The offer was politely refused, and Marguerite was spared the opportunity to become Henry VIII’s first wife.
As Marguerite now knew, marriage did not necessarily lead to happiness. Another accepted convention amongst the nobility, and one that she would fight against throughout her life in her actions and writings, was that of male infidelity. She is acutely aware that her mother had been a victim of such ‘traditions’, but also that this experience had made her a formidable woman. Louise was married at 11 to Charles d’ Angoulême who was part of the ruling Valois dynasty, although they only began living together when she was 15, by which time he had an established mistress who was to remain living with them in the household, and who bore him two daughters. He also had third illegitimate daughter with another mistress. Charles fell ill after going out riding one winter and died aged 36, leaving Louise a widow at 19, with Marguerite aged 4 and François aged 2. This state of affairs could have been disastrous for Marguerite had Louise not believed in education for women and, as she matured into her later role as mother of the king and regent, developed a keen political mind. An avid reader herself, she made sure that her children were both brought up familiar with the classics, particularly with the rediscovery of the original writings leading to new thinking in the arts and sciences coming out of Italy, and she encouraged translations into French. She made sure that François learned Spanish and Italian, which may or may not have been a blessing given his future dealings, mostly unfriendly, with those countries. Marguerite grew up with an appreciation of philosophy and poetry.
For a few years after her husband’s death, Louise and her children continued to live in Cognac, with a smaller residence at the place of her birth in Romorantin, a pretty village closer to the summer residence of the French court. Then as François became heir presumptive, they lived for nine years in the small Château of Clos-Lucé1, which is close to the Château d’Amboise. In 1515, the king, Louis XII, who was a cousin of Louise’s deceased husband, died. He had only just married his third wife, Mary Tudor (Henry VIII’s younger sister) but failed to produce a male heir in any of these alliances. So François 1 became king and the formidable ‘Trinity’ that will rule France for the next 30 years was born – François as King, Louise as Regent and Marguerite as Spiritual Advisor – that stemmed from a lifelong bond born out of the early loss of their husband and father, and a mutual understanding of each other’s strengths and weaknesses. In practical terms this meant that François was free to pursue his appetite for war, hunting, drinking and women; Louise could effectively run the country in his absence (of which there will be many) using her diplomatic and ambassadorial skills; and Marguerite could fulfil her religious, literary and feminist ambitions and at the same time provide companionship to, and take on some of the duties of, François’s wife Claude, who was chronically ill.
The Reluctant Father Figure (1522)
In the intervening decade following the battle at Marignano, and then the brief peaceful respite after the Field of the Cloth of Gold, the main combatants have remained the same, but alliances have shifted: Charles V, the Holy Roman Emperor, and Henry VIII are now allies; and François I is the enemy.
Charles V has made an agreement with Pope Leo X to expel France from the Italian states, and Henry senses an opportunity to push forward his claims to France under the useful guise of ‘protecting the Pope’. So he invites Charles to England where they can formalise letters of intent into a legal document. In May 1522, Henry meets Charles at Dover where he shows off his fleet, before the large international group, consisting of several hundred nobles and their servants from England, Spain, Germany and the Low Countries, proceed to Greenwich Palace, to be presented to Katherine of Aragon, Charles’ aunt, and his cousin Mary, who is six. Despite the age gap, and the close familial ties, dispensation has been received from the Pope that Charles, who is now twenty-two, and Mary can be betrothed.
The two Kings leave for London, where they are feted with pageants praising their efforts to defend Christendom, then take some time off touring royal palaces, hunting and dining at Hampton Court, before the official signing of the Treaty at Windsor Castle. On the journey back to the coast, they make a stop at Winchester Cathedral where Henry flaunts the legendary Round Table of King Arthur and his Knights that is hanging in the Great Hall, made of oak and measuring over 5 metres in diameter, which he has recently re-decorated with an image of himself as King Arthur and a large red Tudor rose in the centre.
England and Spain both invade France in 1523, but the attacks are at opposite ends of the country, and are half-hearted and uncoordinated, and achieve very little. Charles breaks off his engagement.
In February of 1525, François 1, finding his kingdom surrounded by enemies on all sides, attempts to repeat his former glory by invading neighbouring Lombardy, where he besieges the city of Pavia, a few miles south of Milan. However, he makes a huge mistake during the subsequent battle, that proves fatal to many of his countrymen and leads to his capture. He does not lay the blame for this elsewhere, which is the right of kings, but others will do so.
As always, Galiot had brought the canons into position in good time and, sighting the advancing enemy coming out of the woods towards the French encampment, they had begun to fire on the Holy Roman Emperor’s army. But François’s blood was up, he was over-excited to be back in the fight again, God was on his side, he was feeling the pressure of command – well, there must have been a reason that he begins a charge towards the enemy before the bombardment has finished, and Galiot, rather than fire on his own king and countrymen, has to give the order to his artillery men to stop firing, thereby losing the advantage. François and his cavalry, his knights in heavy armour, now unwittingly find themselves separated from the main bulk of the French army and are quickly surrounded, shot down with muskets and butchered with knives. In the melee, François’s horse is killed under him and, falling to the ground and fortunate to be recognised, he is taken prisoner. Observing this, the rest of the French army attempts to flee but are annihilated – the opposing armies are of a similar size, but the French suffer five times as many casualties.
In a little over an hour, there has been a complete rout with several leading members of the French nobility killed, among them Guillaume Gouffier, seigneur de Bonnivet, one of François’s closest friends and confidents, and Richard de la Pole, the last of the ‘pretenders’ to the throne of England, descended from the Duke of York who fought the War of the Roses, and who was in exile in France trying to gain François’s support for an invasion to win back the crown. Other noblemen have been captured, including Galiot de Genouillac. Only the rearguard, led the Duke of Alençon, Marguerite d’Angoulême’s husband, escapes unharmed as they have taken no part in the battle, and have quickly retreated. This will not go down well when they arrive home, and he is made a scapegoat for the king’s defeat, and dies in the spring, partly as a result of his torment.
François, now prisoner of Charles V, is taken to the fortress at Pizzighettone, about a day’s ride away, where he writes a letter to Louise de Savoie that is very different in tone from the one he had written after Marignano: “To inform you of how the rest of my ill-fortune is proceeding, all is lost to me save honour and life, which is safe.” Louise, de facto regent once again, is under huge pressure – France may be attacked at any moment by the allies but the French army has been all but destroyed; there are other elements who might lay claim to the throne; and reports come in of peasants revolting against their overlords. She puts France on high alert, especially on the Channel coast, where Henry might launch an invasion, and in the Pyrenees from where Spain might cross. In an act of desperation, she sends a delegation to Constantinople to seek help from Suleiman the Magnificent, ruler of the Ottoman Empire, but it gets lost in the Balkans and does not complete its mission.
Funding war is a perennial problem. Charles does not have enough money so that he is counting on the dowry from marriage to a Portuguese princess to refill his treasury. But now, with his prisoner who rules one of the richest countries in Europe, he sees another, less awkward, opportunity for gain. What he does not realise is that there is little money in the French treasury either, also due to the cost of years of constant war.
In order to secure his golden goose, Charles decides that it is too risky to keep François in Italy, where there is the danger of his rescue or escape, so he transfers him by ship from Genoa to Barcelona, then via Tarragona and Valencia, finally onto Madrid where he is based awaiting his forthcoming marriage.
Fortunately for Louise, over the course of the next few weeks the tensions subside as she receives the support of the remaining French nobility and clergy, who contribute some money, and instead of taking the chance to invade, Henry VIII and the Pope form an alliance against Charles V because they now consider him too powerful and a threat to all. By the summer of 1525 when she learns that François has been transferred to Spain, she can put her mind fully to how she can negotiate her son’s freedom.
François is hoping for a rapid revelation of his captor’s demands as a basis for negotiations, but Charles is in no hurry to meet. He is receiving advice on what to do with his regal prisoner, the tone of which depends on the person offering it. Erasmus, the scholar whose modus operandi is to write letters offering his wisdom to statesmen, humanists and theologians, proposes that Charles should give François his liberty, without even a ransom being paid, on the basis that clemency would be an even greater reward than victory. It was after all only fate that has led to this situation when it could just as easily have been the reverse. And what better way to illustrate how an emperor should behave, and to encourage his citizens to follow his leadership? On the other hand, his chancellor (whose grandiose vision is of Charles as a ‘global monarch, one shepherd for all of Christianity’) was of the opinion that François was worth more in prison than out.
As his captivity drags on into months, François is left alone to contemplate his misery. First his thoughts become darker, as he comes to believe that he might remain locked up forever, then he stops eating and becomes ill. Only once his health deteriorates to such an extent that the jailer worries that he might die, does Charles turn up in person to find a broken, emaciated man, and worries about the potential loss of a king’s ransom.
When news of François’s pitiable condition reaches the French Court, there is panic. With both maternal and regal instincts, Louise reasons that the presence of close family could help his recovery, and maybe provide an opportunity for less formal negotiations, and Marguerite, newly widowed, agrees to make the arduous journey to tend to her brother. This will be a mission fraught with danger, involving a voyage at sea, a long journey in enemy territory, plus an unknown welcome at the other end with the potential to also being taken hostage. Louise suggests that Galiot de Genouillac, her most trusted advisor and soldier, should accompany Marguerite at the head of an escort of French cavalry.
Since his capture at Pavia, where his name is listed among those taken prisoner, Galiot has kept somewhat of a low profile and it is not quite clear how he has managed to free himself. In certain quarters, there is rumour mongering that he has cut a deal. Whatever the truth of the matter may be, he is back at court and ready to make preparations for the journey.
Marguerite and Galiot set off by barge along the river Rhône heading for the coast at Aigues-Mortes, the port built near the salt marshes from where her ancestors had left for the Crusades, but Marguerite cannot leave before she is guaranteed safe-conduct, and a contract which will cover her for six months from August 1525 takes a further two weeks to arrive. They take a ship that lands at Palamos, north of Barcelona, expecting to find François imprisoned nearby, but that is old news and from there they must progress as quickly as possible towards Madrid, covering the 500 miles in the heat of summer, with Marguerite dressed in black mourning clothes on a palanquin carried by four soldiers, and Galiot on horseback at her side.
In the long stretches from dawn to dusk, Marguerite has time to reflect on her emotional state and she is able to translate this into words which she records as poems.
Je regarde de tous costez
Pour voir s'il n'arrive personne
Priant sans cesse, n'en doutez,
Dieu, que santé à mon roi donne
Quand nul ne vois, l'oeil j'abandonne
A pleurer....
(I look all around
To see if anyone is coming
Praying unceasingly, do not doubt it,
To God, that he gives health to my king
When no one is looking, I let my eyes
cry....)
Marguerite is shocked at the state in which she finds her brother. As well as looking after his body, she wants to make sure his soul recovers and sets up an alter in the room where he lies motionless, and kneels there to pray for him. Little by little, François responds and after some weeks can begin to consider his fate again.
Charles has left for Toledo in Castile where his imperial court is based, and Marguerite follows him there hoping to intercede. But Charles will not meet with her and she is forced to stay in a Carmelite monastery whilst she waits in vain. On her return, François has arrived at a master plan that might turn the situation back to his advantage – he will relinquish the throne. He has a letter of abdication drawn up, in which he hands power to his eldest son, the Dauphin François who is only 9, and exhorts his family and the people of France to act as if he has died. If this is agreed, then France will have a new king, ably represented until his maturity by Louise, and Charles will no longer have a king as prisoner, but simply a gentleman.
The time approaches for Marguerite’s contract of safe-passage to expire so that she has no choice but to leave François, with the abdication letter safely among her luggage. She has left her departure a bit late, and hearing a rumour that Charles is prepared to arrest her at the exact time the contract expires, worries that she will not reach the French border in time. In the end, traveling twelve hours a day on horseback for speed, she crosses the Pyrenees with little more than an hour to spare.
Negotiations drag on into the winter. Charles’ negotiators tighten the screw: François must renounce all his claims in Italy, Artois and Flanders; he must agree to persuade Henry II of Navarre to relinquish his throne in favour of Charles; he must surrender Burgundy to Charles Bourbon, his childhood friend turned traitor who was now fighting for Charles; and he must marry Charles’ sister Eleanor.
Charles is under no illusion that his demands are onerous and will only be met if there is a compelling reason to do. The idea of hostages is raised, specifically François’s two sons – the Dauphin François and his younger brother Henri who is 7. As an alternative to the younger son, an option is put on the table – 12 of the most senior noblemen of France, who would be chosen by Charles – but Louise, the regent, will not agree to this, so it will be her grandsons.
The bargaining is concluded. As he presses his seal on the Treaty of Madrid , François is on some level aware that he is signing away the childhood of his sons, but worse, in the back of his mind, he knows that he has no intention of keeping to any of the agreements contained therein. All that matters is liberty at whatever the cost. Charles signs also, but with some foreboding. The evidence of this is that he waits a further month before setting a date for François’s release.
The day arrives when it is agreed that François is to be set free from his lodgings in the Torre de los Lujanes, and the exact choreography this will require needs to be considered. Charles is adamant that François should acknowledge his defeat and show his gratitude at being released, by kneeling before the waiting Charles in full view of the crowd, before being escorted to the border. But François refuses this ultimate humiliation and will not even agree to bow. So Charles’s advisors come up with a plan that involves lowering the height of the doorway where François will exit so that, being a tall man of over six feet, he will have no choice but to bow as he leaves. François, however, still has some wits about him and comes out backwards showing his rear to the Holy Roman Emperor.
François returns to France by way of the Basque Country, passing his sons on a boat across a river travelling in the opposite direction. Two months later the French Royal Council renegues on the Treaty with the explanation that it had been signed when François was a prisoner under duress. François joins with the Papal Forces, and the Italian cities of Milan, Venice, Florence and Genoa, and launches yet another war to win back the ‘lost’ territories. Henry VIII, who does not send an army, acts as ‘Protector’.
Marguerite and Galiot return home, having spent the best part of four months on the road together. He has watched her tend to her brother, and engage in diplomatic discussions. He has marvelled at her fortitude and resilience. He has been privy to her innermost thoughts and fears, and he has observed her burgeoning literary prowess as she has read her poems to him. He has been a support, a comfort, and has consolidated his role – however reluctantly – as a father-figure.
Marguerite now pours all her efforts into securing the release of her nephews2, which means raising enough money for a ransom which, following François’s about-turn, amounts to four tons of gold. She starts by donating all the money she has and pawning her jewellery. The endeavour to gather the two million gold coins required empties the treasury again and further ruins the economy.
The royal men are no longer on speaking terms, so the negotiations, over four long years, are spearheaded by the women. Marguerite of Austria, Anne Boleyn’s former employer, represents her nephew Charles V, and Louise de Savoie represents her son the king, with Marguerite acting as go-between. Eventually another treaty, the Peace of the Ladies (La Paix des Dames) is signed and, just in time for François’s forced marriage to Eleanor, his sons are released to attend the festivities.
Marguerite’s Literary Legacy (1540s)
In the intervening years following the return of François 1 from Madrid and his last illness and death, all has not gone well for Marguerite. She married again soon after her diplomatic adventures, by her own choice, to Henry II of Navarre, a man eleven years her junior. Now entitled Marguerite de Navarre, she joins him in what little remains of the Kingdom of Navarre which, following years of disagreements with Spain, is a landlocked territory on the French side of the western Pyrenees. They have a daughter, Jeanne d’Albret3, and later a son who dies at 5 months old, and later still when she didn’t realise her body was still capable, twins who survive only a few hours. Possibly this introduces a melancholy that causes the marriage to sour.
Her relationship with Jeanne is a complicated one. François, the king, had offered to provide an education to his niece, but in practice this means that from the age of two Jeanne is brought up nearer to him in the Loire Valley and is only rarely visited by her parents. As she grows up, Jeanne will internalise an image of them, and especially of her mother, as cold and distant. When she is about to reach puberty, Jeanne becomes, as is the norm, a pawn in the tangled web of regal alliances across Europe when she is married to William I of Cleves, the brother of Anne of Cleves. Even at 12, she has a strong-mindedness that is revealed by her insistence on signing a document expressing her lack of consent to the marriage. Furthermore, she refuses to walk down the aisle and has to be carried to the altar. It is not a surprise then that four years later the marriage is annulled, using the habitual royal excuse of lack of consummation, and she marries into the Bourbon family.
On those occasions when they are together, Marguerite tries to instil in Jeanne, as she did with her maids of honour, the learnings from her own life and the principles she has formulated and written about to address them: that men are warlike and power hungry, but women can achieve power through diplomacy; that love is a deadly game with men holding the best hand, but that a woman’s virtue is the trump card than can even influence kings; that faith and prayer are the path to God, but that the Church itself is rife with greed and hypocrisy. Yet somehow, despite her tender age, Jeanne is already there and beyond – her daughter has a narrower moral perspective and a stricter, one might say, less tolerant religious attitude. This is possibly due to the influence of her latest tutor, Nicholas Bourbon, a reformist who has arrived back from England where he had been living under the protection of Anne Boleyn since being exiled from France. Whatever the reason is, her mother does not know whether to be proud or concerned that Jeanne can talk without pausing for breath about the follies of men and the shortcomings of Catholicism.
Almost from the moment of François’s death, Marguerite finds herself alone in her castle. Henry II, the new king and her nephew, does not want her at court and Henry, her husband, finds other places to be rather than at home. Jeanne, as always, is elsewhere. On the positive side, though, she finally has time to commit herself fully to her the activities that have always given her the greatest pleasure – her charity work and her writing.
She often walks, rather than is carried in a litter, in the streets of Pau or Nérac where the locals can approach her and ask for help. As in Alençon and Paris previously, she takes a personal interest in supporting organisations providing support to the needy. In the capital, alarmed by the death rate among children in the poor houses, surrounded by illness and filth, she had encouraged her brother to fund the purchase of a large building to be solely dedicated to caring for abandoned children. The first of its kind in France, she dressed the children in red, and it became known as “L’Hospice des Enfants-Rouges” (hospice of the children in red). In Alençon, she calls herself “the Prime Minister of the Poor”.
She has always been an active letter-writer and she maintains her correspondence with her friends and acquaintances, among them writers she has admired – many of whom have dedicated works to her. But most of her contacts are related to her firmly-held religious views. A Catholic by birth, she first learned to question the doctrine upon reading the humanist classic texts of her education, in which (even if she was not prepared to give up God) she understands that humans can create their own sense of meaning through concern for the well-being of others. She has also always felt an affinity with the religious reformists. As soon as the news of Martin Luther’s actions in Wittenberg, and his writings protesting at the corruption of the Catholic church, started filtering through to France in the early 1520s, she was at the forefront of efforts to fund their translation into French. She recognises their arguments on the basis of what she has experienced in her charity work, namely the greed of the church with its riches funded by indulgences, and the hypocritical misbehaviour of some of the priests. She is confirmed in her intuition that the Scriptures should be accessible to all people in their own language, and that eternal salvation should be as a result of the sincerity of your faith and true repentance for your sins, rather than from the purchase of forgiveness, like any other commercial transaction, or reciting prayers you cannot understand, or from pilgrimages that are only undertaken for the bragging rights.
It is a shock when Luther is excommunicated by the Pope and, wanting guidance, she is introduced to Guillaume Briçonnet, bishop of Meaux just outside Paris, who had been François’s ambassador to the papal court in Rome. With others they form the ‘Circle of Meaux’ calling themselves ‘Evangelists’4 and setting out to win converts via the printing and distribution of French texts – largely paid for by Marguerite. Along the way, they come into contact with other like-minded souls, such as Erasmus, and Jean Calvin.
Her views become the topic of conversation in her daily interactions with her entourage – her maids of honour and those of Claude – and with the royal household. Marguerite maintains a correspondence with Anne Boleyn on this topic, even after she has left her service, often exchanging letters via George Boleyn who is the new ambassador, from the time that Henry starts sending her love letters5 and giving her jewels, through to the tense years of 1533 to 1536 and Anne’s final message when she writes to Marguerite that ‘that my greatest wish, next to having a son, is to see you again.’
Marguerite’s brother, the king, is initially supportive even if he doesn’t share her zeal. However, one night in October 1534, in a conscious or unconscious imitation of Martin Luther, reformist pamphlets are nailed to the doors of churches in major towns across France, and even, in a perceived act of treason, on the door of the king’s bedchamber. This becomes known as L’Affaire des Placards (The Pamphlet Affair). A list of potential culprits is made, religious dissenters including members of the Circle of Meaux who seek Marguerite’s protection, and several are imprisoned and executed. Marguerite, who has always argued for change from within the Catholic church rather than from outside, finds herself in a very dangerous position – not extreme enough for the Protestants, but inevitably allied to the reformists from the perspective of the established church. With Marguerite implicated in the scandal, François’s tolerance is gone in an instant. Although he later tries to heal the rift with Marguerite, the damage is done and the relationship will never fully recover.
The main events of Marguerite’s life have provided the trigger for her writing, much of which is published in her lifetime: She wrote poetry in anguish over the failing health of François in his Spanish jail; she wrote her ‘Dialogue of a Nocturnal Vision’ after the death from measles of her favourite niece Princess Charlotte, in which she imagines Charlotte telling her not to grieve her death, since death releases the soul to join with God through Christ; the loss of her only son, Jean, at five months old inspired her epic poem “Mirror of the Sinful Soul”6 which is for the most part a monologue to Christ about her personal relationship with Him from the perspective of the four key roles of her life as mother, daughter, sister and wife; on the death of her adored brother, she writes two works, another dialogue she calls Le Navire (The Ship) and a play with songs entitled La Comédie sur le Trespas du Roy (Comedy on the Passing of the King); she writes other plays and comedies – religious ones that, in line with reformist principles, simplify language so that the biblical messages are more accessible to audiences, and secular ones that poke fun at her detractors.
In 1547, she publishes a collection of her works in two-volumes that she calls “Les Marguerites de la Marguerite des princesses”7 which plays upon the double-meaning in French of a ‘marguerite’ also being a pearl – so “Pearls from the Pearl of Princesses”. She knows for certain now, holding the literary output of her life to date in her hands, that she has a reputation as a writer at least as accomplished as the best of her male counterparts, and that with her words she has influence, particularly as far as the role of women is concerned, to hold a mirror up to society and make it question itself.
During the last few years in Navarre, as she travels, she has the opportunity to remember some of the glorious and not so glorious events that had happened, or that she had been told about, at the French court. She also asks her entourage for any stories they remembered. As her ideas about life, about the relationship between men and women, coalesce in her mind, she begins to think about how best to record them. The inspiration for how to proceed eventually comes from her education where she had adored the Decameron by Boccaccio, in which a group of people take turns to tell each other stories. The difference would be that her stories were true, or at least believable gossip. So she would have to devise a way of disguising the identities of her characters, but not too much so that the intrigue would be lost.
Life progresses in this way until she has news that François is ill. This gives her the excuse to bring the stories together so that she can read some of them to him and provide some enjoyment.
Looking out from the rural Château at Odos near Tarbes, a far cry from the enormous royal residences of her past, she can see through the clouds and rain, the various levels of the Pyrenees stretching away into the distance. This gives her the framework for her book – a group of people who had been hoping to reach a spa in the Pyrenees in late summer, become trapped by a sudden storm at the Abbey of Our Lady at Sarrance8 which is at the narrowest point of the Aspe valley, since the only road in or out is impassable because the stone bridge over the river has been washed away by a flood of almost biblical proportions. None of the travellers has had an easy journey, being attacked either by outlaws or wild animals – in one case a bear – and lives have been lost, although mainly by the servants.
She works on the structure of the narrative for a while and these will be no random storytellers or subjects. So, the group – five men and five women – whilst they wait for the workmen to repair the bridge which is expected to take ten days, pass the time by telling stories. Each day will have its own theme, and there will be one hundred stories in all, with time set aside after each for debate about its meaning as seen from the differing perspectives of the members of the group. As in real life, their arguments are sometimes hard to follow and the moral of the story is often left unresolved, but differing opinions are always treated with respect by the others, an acknowledgment that a way forward does not have to be based on conflict.
She bases the narrators and their inherent opinions, on people close to her, or an amalgamation of people she has known. She herself and her views, will be known as Parlamente, whose husband is Hircan, a man with a quite misogynistic attitude, not coincidentally similar to those of her estranged spouse. Her mother, Louise de Savoie, will be portrayed as Oisille, an elderly widowed woman of great wisdom and religious fervour. Ennasuite (a play on the name ‘Anne et suite’ – Anne and so forth) will be the name of a young, unmarried woman who is a maid of honour to a member of the court, and because of this is in possession of an overbearing disposition of superiority. Marguerite has in mind a few ambitious, entitled young girls who fit this bill, including two Annes – Anne Boleyn and Anne de Vivonne9. On the male side are Simontault, a gentleman who has an unrequited love for Parlement, who is much younger than him (Marguerite is aware that she has had admirers, one in particular comes to mind, and has enjoyed being admired even if she was always faithful to her husbands) and Saffredent (‘Sweet tooth’) an ageing knight, who nevertheless is deferential to the other narrators, and who has a secret admiration for one of the members of Marguerite’s court (despite his young and vivacious wife Nomerfide being present as one of the female narrators). Then there is Dagoucin, who is a young man, possibly clergy, who has an idealised view of love based on probably being a virgin.
They will settle quickly into a regular daily routine: firstly Oisille will read from the scriptures in the main hall; then they will attend mass in the chapel; after eating together in the dining hall they will retire to their rooms to work on their notebooks; then in the afternoon they will wander out to the meadow behind the Abbey where there is a large tree under which they tell their stories (one can only assume that the storm has cleared the air and that warm weather has dried the ground). At the end of each day someone will enquire about the progress of the bridge repairs.
The themes revolve around the tangled relationship between men and women: of idealism and deceitful tricks; of honour and dishonour; of virtue and shame; of eternal truths and hypocrisy; of forgiveness and revenge; of pleasure and suffering. Many of the stories are erotically charged and there are two which include incest. Because the themes are universal, the stories cover a wide panoply of characters of all social levels: there are Kings and Queens, Princes and Princesses, Dukes and Duchesses, Lords and Ladies; there are serving maids, valets, farmers, merchants, apothecaries, upholsterers and boatmen and women. There are stories from all corners of France, some from Spain and Italy, and one from England. And there is an alarming number that involve a cross-section of religious men – Priors, Abbots, Canons, Priests and Monks – mainly up to no good. In particular the Grey Friars (Franciscans) are singled out for their social climbing (they try to inveigle themselves with the nobility), social awkwardness (they are cut off from normal life), hypocrisy (they do not believe or live by what they preach), corruption (they are money grabbers) and finally, if that was not enough criticism, their lecherousness and pursuit of both virtuous and wanton women that turns the worst of them into rapists. It is fortunate that the storytellers in the meadow are out of earshot of the Abbot and the monks of their refuge.
In writing the stories, developing the themes, finding the right words and phrases for each of the narrators, and honing the arguments and debates, she is aware even early on at how personally engaged she is. Whilst there is occasionally some humour lurking behind the scheming and subterfuge, there is a strong undercurrent of misogyny and violence towards women, particularly when the men are in a position of status or power. Having come from a family where women were respected, where her mother was an effective regent and where she herself had proved her worth, she cannot help but use this to draw out the wrongs in society as she sees them. Despite her standing in society, she writes from personal experience and she is dredging up past events and processing them as she goes. As she writes the fourth story on Day 1, she is thrown back to an episode in her youth that was the catalyst for a great deal of how she has lived her life since.
In the story a young, twice-widowed woman is the sister of a Prince who is fond of the pastimes of youthful nobility (including hunting and womanising) and she finds herself accompanying him and his close friends on various outings. One of these friends is a man known for his particular good looks, who admires the Princess’s joyous personality, and makes it known that he is interested in more than just friendship. However, the Princess is a virtuous woman and politely rejects the offer. This only makes her pursuer more keen and, having understood that words will get him nowhere, he contrives to invite the Prince and his sister to his stately home, near to some good hunting grounds, where he is able to climb into the Princess’s bed one night via a secret trapdoor. In the darkness, the Princess fights off her unknown attacker with frenzied biting and scratching, until her servants are roused and the assailant flees. With his face bloodied and bruised, the no-longer-quite-as-handsome man feigns illness until his guests have departed, but not without the Princess realising what has taken place. The dilemma of how to deal with the situation is resolved with the advice of a maid of honour, whereby the Princess understands that she can say nothing of the attack for fear of being blamed in some way for having encouraged it with her friendliness. She should act as if nothing had happened, except for a gradual withdrawing of the amity that she had once shown him. In this way, the best outcome to hope for is that the man will be harmed on two accounts: firstly that he will be seriously upset at having failed in his desires, and secondly that he will have lost the friendship of one who he had loved.
Marguerite had known Guillaume Gouffier, Seigneur de Bonnivet for most of her life because he had grown up with François and, as a soldier, had accompanied him on his military campaigns. He was in fact to die at Pavia, where François was captured. He was known for his good looks and wit, and was a well-known womaniser as a result. His attempted rape of Marguerite, and her inability to tell anyone about it, would leave a lasting impression, and would inform her views on the ill-balanced relationship between the sexes, which she would pass on by osmosis to her maids of honour.
She was never a sexual revolutionary, but wanted to change the relationship between men and women via discourse, much as she wanted to change the church from within. She was also pragmatic and understood that morality is not always black and white and can be ambiguous, and that women have sexual needs as well. And she was aware of opposing, if abhorrent views, that for some men rape was perceived as just an excess of male passion. She sought to show in the discussions between the narrators that improvement in society comes from acknowledging divergent opinions and rational debate.
Having presented several examples of men’s power over women, she comes in time to write the forty ninth story, which is the penultimate one on Day 5, as somewhat of a contrast. To do this she makes Hircan, with his chauvinistic views, the narrator. She thinks about how to jumble up the three names of the male protagonists, so that they are not immediately identifiable, but also not hard to decipher. These were key advisors in the 1490s to King Charles VIII, who had begun the wretched wars in Italy that would cause so much bloodshed. These men had so much influence with the king that it was said that Chastillon, Bonneval and Galiot were effectively ‘in control of the royal blood’. For Chastillon, she chooses the pseudonym Astillon; for Bonneval she mixes up the letters a little – Valnebon. And for Galiot, who came from Assier which sounds like Acier (‘steel’) and who she often heard referred to as the Gentilhomme d’Acier (‘man of steel’), which was somehow appropriate given his military bearing, she comes up with Durassier (‘hard steel’). She has only good memories of Galiot: his loyalty; his erudition; his ability to say what needed to be said and inability to engage in small talk; his clear affection for her. But she is aware that the story she is about to set down does not paint him in his younger days in a particularly good light, for when all was said and done, he was just like all men of a certain status that she had known.
Marguerite’s health deteriorates and she has trouble breathing. The present falls away, and since she has no life beyond her meals and prayers, when she does talk it is only about the distant past, and specifically certain episodes that have been smoothed advantageously over time with re-telling, and made into stories with morals attached. Stories from a time when she was sought after and admired, when writers and artists beat a path to her salon, when the impact of her very demeanour could change the lives of the women around her. She converses nowadays with less than a handful of people, and no longer recognises that she tells those same stories over and over.
She stops all official duties. For a short while, her husband joins her and in late autumn they travel the region searching for a spa that might provide some relief, or even a cure. Eventually, now on her own again, she selects to take the waters at Odos-en-Bigorre, near Tarbes. But it is winter and the cold seeps through the walls and into her lungs, and two months later, on the 21st December 1549, having not spoken for some days, she shouts out the name of Jesus three times and dies in the presence of a single Franciscan monk. Her husband, daughter and son-in-law attend her funeral in the New Year, but there is no representative from the French court.
The Heptameron: Day 5, Story 49 – The Countess and Her Lovers
The scandalous events have as the main subject of interest an Italian Countess who was widely admired for her self-confidence, gracefulness and fashion sense, but who also possessed a stern and forbidding nature. Not unsurprisingly, she caught the attention of the king who had the Count, her husband, sent away on a long mission and was able to pursue her successfully in his absence. The king was not one to maintain a discrete silence about his conquests, especially one that had appeared so redoubtable, so that one of his key councillors, Astillon, was inspired to strike up a conversation with the Countess in which he proposed that she might like to bestow her favours on him too. At first, she reacted with such outrage that the councillor, despite being a fearless soldier, was afraid that she might tell the king, but eventually she suggested to him a way that they might be able to meet in her private apartment. As a pretext, Astillon told the king he was going on a journey for a week, but he returned the same night in darkness and made love to the Countess who then proceeded to keep him as a ‘prisoner’ in her lodgings, feeding him with sweetmeats to keep up his strength.
Whilst the councillor was in blissful hiding, another of the king’s advisors, Durassier, a military man of few words, managed to speak with the Countess. The discourse proceeded in exactly the same way – initially a firm rebuff then a slow surrender. And so, as Astillon’s week came to an end and he returned to court, Durassier, knowing nothing of his predecessor, was installed in the apartment for his week of pleasure. This routine continued with the remaining king’s councillor, until the Count returned home from his duties abroad.
Some time later, at a banquet in which the king’s inner circle were drunkenly sharing stories of the wars they had fought in and the prisons in which they had been held, Valnebon gave a sly smile and recounted the story of the one prison, and its jailer, that in contrast to his compatriots he would always remember with delight. It did not take long for the others, after some guarded questioning and comparing of dates, to realise that they had all suffered the same fate, one after the other, each believing that they alone were the fortunate inmate. The conversation then took a sobering turn as the options for revenge were discussed, and it was agreed that the first step would be to shame the Countess in public for her wantonness.
The next morning as the Countess was making her way to church with her entourage, she was confronted by a small group of men dressed entirely in black, each with a length of iron chains around his neck. At this she burst out laughing, asking where such wretched individuals could be going in this state. Valnebon answered that they had simply come as slaves to do her bidding. Despite clearly understanding that her sensual adventures had been uncovered, the Countess did not change her countenance at all, nor did she appear embarrassed in any way. On the contrary, she carried on speaking to them as if nothing had happened, to such an extent that in a short time the king’s men shuffled away, taking with them the shame that they had intended to place upon her.
When Hircan has finished, the ladies are shocked by the behaviour of the Countess, and conclude that she has been abandoned by God. The men are more concerned with the three advisors who were unable to refrain from boasting of their apparent good fortune and whether or not they were justified in attempting to shame her publicly.
Marguerite’s aim is to examine the role that women have in society, arguing through her story and morality discussion that women should, like men, also be allowed to prioritise their own pleasure if they so desire, and to retain their dignity if they do so.
The Heptameron’s Legacy
Marguerite de Navarre writes her stories mostly on the move as she travels by litter along the roads in the foothills of the Pyrenees. She is always accompanied by her maid of honour, who will relate to her children that the stories seem to come naturally, and that Marguerite writes as quickly as if someone is dictating to her. These memories will go a long way to counter the claim that Marguerite was not the author – as the extant manuscripts have no overall title and are unsigned – and that the right way to refer to the book is that it is ‘attributed’ to Marguerite. She has the intention to complete 100 stories for her book, in keeping with Boccaccio’s Decameron which has inspired her, but she dies of pleurisy, an inflammation of the lungs, just before Christmas 1549 aged 57, at which point she has only finished 72. She has still not provided a name for her major work.
The book will therefore be published posthumously, but nine years go by until a writer, Pierre Boaistuau, who is also an editor and translator, publishes the stories with the title “Histoire des Amans Fortunés” (The story of the Fortunate Lovers). His readers would have been unaware of his major editorial changes from the original manuscript, but he has changed the order of the stories so that the grouping into days no longer exists, censored several sections he deems too objectionable, has changed the names of some of the characters who were too clearly recognisable, and has not included the conversations that follow the stories in which the participants discuss their particular reactions. A year later, a second edition is published by Claude Gruget, who is the secretary to Louis 1st de Bourbon-Condé. Louis is married to Jeanne d’Albret the daughter of Marguerite de Navarre, and the leader of the Huguenots in France. Gruget restores the original order of the stories by day, and in doing so provides a new title – the Heptameron, from the Greek for seven days. He also puts back the prologues and epilogues, but not the objectionable stories or the changes to characters names. Inexplicably, unless he has had input from Marguerite’s family, he adds some new stories that he has written himself, but does not indicate this to the reader.
Forty years later, in 1598, the number of printed copies of the Heptameron in circulation has dropped and a publisher in Amsterdam decides to make a reprint. The decision is for two new editions: the first a faithful reproduction of the flawed Claude Gruget version in the original language which has in the intervening years become somewhat outdated, but which will appeal to those of a scholarly disposition; and the second one is to be in published in modern French which will be more acceptable to the ‘lazy’ readers of the day, and more accessible to the foreign market. It is generally accepted by those in a position to comment, that the publisher did not pay for a professional ‘translator’ who was fluent in both the old and new languages, and that the true meaning of Marguerite de Navarre is literally lost in translation. This situation was exacerbated further since the ‘modern’ edition quickly outsells the ‘classic’ edition.
The true nature of Marguerite’s writings and her contribution to the feminist discourse only begin to be appreciated when, in the middle of the nineteenth century, publishers finally return to the original manuscripts and copies, of which twelve are found in the Bibliothèque Nationale de Paris, dating from the second half of the sixteenth century. The resulting accurate, unedited, original French edition, but this time with a title and the author’s attribution, is finally published by the Société des Bibliophiles Français in 1883, more than 330 years after her death, with a full English translation three years later.
Footnotes
- Clos-Lucé: Called Château de Cloux at the time. ↩︎
- The Nephews: The Dauphin François died aged 18, probably of tuberculosis, five years after being released from his time spent in a damp prison in Spain. He had become bookish, solitary boy, dressing in sombre black clothes. His younger brother will become Henri II of France. ↩︎
- Jeanne d’Albret: Jeanne’s descendants, the Bourbon absolutist monarchs, will establish France, its culture and language, as the most advanced in all of Europe right up until the Revolution. These include the ‘Sun King’ Louis XIV and the unfortunate Louis XVI. Jeanne will become the leader of the French Huguenots during the Wars of Religion throughout the 1560s. ↩︎
- The Gospel and Evangelism: The Gospel refers to the four biblical narratives covering the life and death of Jesus Christ, written by Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. The word “Gospel” is derived from the Anglo-Saxon ‘god-spell’, meaning “good story,” which is itself related to the Latin evangelium and the Greek euangelion, meaning “good news” or “good telling.” ‘Evangelists’ originally referred to the writers of the Gospel, but is now applied to anyone trying to convert people to the Catholic faith by bringing the good news of the Gospels. ↩︎
- Henry VIII’s Love Letters: Henry VIII wrote his love letters to Anne Boleyn in French, so it was useful that she had learned the language. These somehow found their way to the Vatican library. Anne’s replies were lost so we are unable to see whether her French had progressed. ↩︎
- Le Miroir de l’âme Pécheresse (Mirror of the Sinful Soul): In 1544, Elizabeth I aged eleven translated the poem into English prose as ‘The Miroir or Glasse of the Synneful Soul’ and presented the hand-written pages to Catherine Parr. It was published in 1548 in the reign of Edward VI. ↩︎
- Marguerite or “Pearl”: There is a legend that Louise de Savoie chose the name Marguerite for her daughter having had a craving for oysters during her pregnancy and inadvertently swallowing a pearl. ↩︎
- Abbey of Our Lady at Sarrance: A stop on the Camino de Santiago. ↩︎
- Anne de Vivonne: Mother of the writer Brantôme. ↩︎