Margaret of Valois-Angoulême

Samuel Putnam called her "The First Modern Woman".

The recorded working language is Middle French, renaissance Latin and Italian. The field of work recorded is poetry and French literature. Positions recorded include royal consort. Works named in the authority record are Heptaméron, Les prisons, Letters, Oraison à Jésus-Christ, Miroir de l'âme pécheresse and Oraison de l'âme fidèle.

• Consort — yes • Succession — Queen consort of Navarre • Reign — 24 January 1527 – 21 December 1549 • Born — 11 April 1492 • Birthplace — Angoulême, Angoumois, France • Died — 21 December 1549 • Place of death — Odos, Gascony, France • House — Valois-Angoulême • Father — Charles, Count of Angoulême • Mother — Louise of Savoy • Issue — Jeanne III of Navarre • Issue Link — #Issue • Issue Pipe — more... • Religion — Roman Catholicism

Marguerite was born in Angoulême on 11 April 1492, the eldest child of Louise of Savoy and Charles, Count of Angoulême. Her father was a descendant of Charles V, and would thus have been on the line of succession to the French crown by masculine primogeniture, if both Charles VIII and the presumptive heir, Louis, Duke of Orléans, had died without producing male offspring. Two years after Marguerite's birth, the family moved from Angoulême to Cognac, "where the Italian influence reigned supreme, and where Boccaccio was looked upon as a little less than a god". She had several half-siblings from illegitimate relationships of her father, who were raised alongside Marguerite and her brother Francis. Two girls, Jeanne of Angoulême and Madeleine, were born of her father's long relationship with his châtelaine, Antoinette de Polignac, Dame de Combronde, who later became Louise's lady-in-waiting and confidante. Another half-sister, Souveraine, was born to Jeanne le Conte, also one of her father's mistresses. Thanks to her mother, who was only nineteen when widowed, Marguerite was carefully tutored from her earliest childhood and given a classical education that included Latin. The young princess was to be called "Maecenas to the learned ones of her brother's kingdom". When Marguerite was ten, Louise tried to marry her to the Prince of Wales, who would later become Henry VIII of England, but the alliance was courteously rebuffed. Perhaps the one real love in her life was Gaston de Foix, Duc de Nemours, nephew of King Louis XII. Gaston went to Italy, however, and died a hero at Ravenna, when the French defeated Spanish and Papal forces.

• Illustration — 17th century portrait of Charles d'Alençon, Marguerite's first husband. At the age of seventeen Marguerite was married to Charles IV of Alençon, aged twenty, by the decree of King Louis XII (who also arranged the marriage of his ten-year-old daughter, Claude, to Francis). With this decree, Marguerite was forced to marry a generally kind but practically illiterate man for political expediency—"the radiant young princess of the violet-blue eyes... had become the bride of a laggard and a dolt". She had been bartered to save the royal pride of Louis, by keeping the County of Armagnac in the family. There were no offspring from this marriage. Following the example set by her mother, Marguerite became the most influential woman in France during her lifetime when her brother acceded to the crown as Francis I in 1515. Her salon, known as the "New Parnassus", became famous internationally. After the death of Queen Claude, she took in her two nieces Madeleine and Marguerite, for whom she would continue to care during her second marriage.

• Illustration — Coat of arms of Marquerite as Queen of Navarre Marguerite was married twice, first to Charles IV of Alençon, but this marriage was childless. Her next marriage was to Henry II of Navarre. The children of Marguerite and Henry were: • Jeanne III of Navarre (16 November 1528 – 9 June 1572), the mother of the future Henry IV of France, also known as Henry III of Navarre. She became Queen regnant of Navarre from 1555 to 1572. She was the wife of Antoine de Bourbon, Duke of Vendôme, and mother of Henry of Bourbon, who became King of Navarre and also of France as the first Bourbon king. She was the acknowledged spiritual and political leader of the French Huguenot movement. • Jean (7 July 1530 – 25 December 1530), who died as an infant

• Illustration — Henri d'Albret King of Navarre After the death of her first husband in 1525, Marguerite married Henry II of Navarre in January 1527 at St. Germain-en-Laye. Ferdinand II of Aragon had invaded the Kingdom of Navarre in 1512, and Henry ruled only Lower Navarre, the independent principality of Béarn, and several dependencies in Gascony. Approximately a year after the lead image (in the information box) that was painted by Jean Clouet, on 16 November 1528, Marguerite gave birth to a daughter by Henry, the future Jeanne III of Navarre, who became the mother of the future Henry IV of France. A Venetian ambassador of that time praised Marguerite as knowing all the secrets of diplomatic art, hence to be treated with deference and circumspection. Marguerite's most remarkable adventure involved freeing her brother, King Francis I, who had been held prisoner in Spain by Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor after being captured in the Battle of Pavia, Italy, 1525. During a critical period of the negotiations, Queen Marguerite rode horseback through wintry woods, twelve hours a day for many days, to meet a safe-conduct deadline, while writing her diplomatic letters at night. Her only son, Jean, was born in Blois on 7 July 1530, when Marguerite was thirty-eight. The child died on Christmas Day the same year. Scholars believe that her grief motivated Marguerite to write her most controversial work, Miroir de l'âme pécheresse (The Mirror of the Sinful Soul), in 1531. Sorbonne theologians condemned the work as heresy. A monk said Marguerite should be sewn into a sack and thrown into the Seine. Students at the Collège de Navarre satirized her in a play as "a Fury from Hell". Her brother forced the charges to be dropped, however, and obtained an apology from the Sorbonne.

Following the expulsion of John Calvin and William Farel from Geneva in 1538, Marguerite de Navarre wrote to Marie Dentière, a notable Walloon Protestant reformer in Geneva. The two women appear to have personal history outside of their written correspondence: Marguerite was godmother to the daughter of Marie Dentière and Dentière's daughter composed a French guide to the Hebrew language to send to Marguerite's daughter. In her letter, Marguerite inquired what was the cause for Calvin and Farel's expulsion. Dentière responded in 1539 with the Epistre tres utile, commonly known today as the Epistle to Marguerite de Navarre. This epistle criticized the Protestant clergy who had expelled Calvin and Farel, asked for Marguerite's support and aid in increasing scriptural literacy and access among women, and advised her to act in expelling Catholic clergy from France. During her years in France, Anne Boleyn had been a lady-in-waiting to Queen Claude. There is conjecture that the courts of Claude and Marguerite overlapped and that perhaps Anne was in service to Marguerite, not only to Claude, and may have become a follower of Marguerite's, absorbing her views about Christianity. A letter by Anne Boleyn after she became queen exists in which she makes strong expressions of affection to Marguerite. It is conjectured that Marguerite gave Anne the original manuscript of Miroir de l'âme pécheresse at some point. It is certain that in 1544, nine years after Anne Boleyn's execution, Anne's daughter, who would become Elizabeth I (1533–1603), translated the poem into English prose as The Miroir or Glasse of the Synneful Soul when she was eleven years old and 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 mentoring link or legacy of reformist religious convictions. • Illustration — Francis I and Marguerite de Navarre by Richard Parkes Bonington

As a generous patron of the arts, Marguerite befriended and protected many artists and writers, among them François Rabelais (1483–1553), Clément Marot (1496–1544), Claude de Bectoz (1490–1547), Pierre de Ronsard (1524–1585) and Julián Íñiguez de Medrano (1520's-1585-1588). Also, Marguerite served as a mediator between Roman Catholics and Protestants (including John Calvin). Although Marguerite espoused reform within the Catholic Church, she was not a Calvinist. She did, however, do her best to protect the reformers and dissuaded Francis I from intolerant measures as long as she could. After her death, eight religious wars occurred in France, including the notorious St. Bartholomew's Day Massacre of 1572. • Illustration — Clos Lucé in Amboise, France, where Leonardo da Vinci died in 1519 Leonardo da Vinci (1452–1519) died while guest of Marguerite and her brother, Francis I. They had been raised at Château d'Amboise, which belonged to their mother, Louise of Savoy. The king maintained his residence there and Marguerite maintained a residence nearby. During the first few years of the reign of Francis the château in which he lived reached the pinnacle of its glory. Leonardo had been the architect of a large château for them, among many other projects, and they provided quarters for him when he left Italy and joined her court. As a guest of the king, who provided him with a comfortable stipend, Leonardo da Vinci came to Château Amboise in December 1515 and lived and worked in the nearby Clos Lucé, connected to the château by an underground passage. Tourists are told that he is buried in the Chapel of Saint-Hubert, adjoining the Château, which had been built in 1491–96.