Margaret of Navarre

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Margaret of Navarre, portrait by Jean Clouet (around 1530)
SignatureMargueriteDeNavarre.png

Margaret of Navarre (also Margaret of Angoulême , French Marguerite de Navarre ; born April 11, 1492 in Angoulême , †  December 21, 1549 in Odos ) was the daughter of Count Charles of Angoulême and older sister of King Francis I of France. By marriage she became Duchess of Alençon in 1509 and Queen of Navarre in 1527 . She promoted poets, artists and scholars and was also a writer herself. Her best-known literary work is the heptaméron .

Life

Margarete came from a branch of the French royal family, which by the death of Louis XII. became the main line without male heirs (House of Valois-Angoulême ). She was the daughter of the highly educated Count Karl von Angoulême and two years older sister of Franz von Angoulême, who succeeded Francis I on the throne in 1515. Even as highly educated as her father, she was married to Duke Charles IV of Alençon for dynastic reasons in 1509 . With her brother's accession to the throne, she became, alongside her mother Luise of Savoy, for a while the most powerful woman in France. So she traveled to Madrid as a negotiator to free Franz when he was held there as a prisoner by Charles V after the lost battle of Pavia .

In 1525 she was widowed and courted by many princes to remarry, among others, as it is said, by Charles V and Henry VIII. In 1527, Margarete married Henri d'Albret , King of the on the , again for dynastic reasons north of the Pyrenees, the remainder of the ancient Kingdom of Navarre , the greater part of which was annexed by Spain in 1512. Henri was 11 years younger than she and came from the Count's dynasty of Foix . The couple initially lived mainly at the French court, but also spent a lot of time in the residential towns of Nérac and Pau in southwestern France , where they had their own small court.

Margarete, who could read seven languages, was not only active as a patron, but was also very interested in questions of faith and sympathized with Luther . It promoted and sponsored (and often hosted) intellectuals who were also inclined to the Reformation, including Clément Marot , Bonaventure des Périers , Jacques Lefèvre d'Étaples , Jean Calvin , Melchior Volmar , Nicolas Denisot, Jacques Peletier, Victor Brodeau, François Rabelais and Étienne Dolet.

For a while she had a moderating influence on her brother, who disapproved of the reformers' concerns, but initially tolerated them. In 1534, after the Affaire des Placards , she had to experience that, more for political than for religious reasons, he decided to take the Catholic side. Margarete herself was spared by him; personally she was more inclined to a mystical, undogmatic sensualism than to strictly Protestant views.

She spent most of the last phase of her life in her small kingdom, far from the Parisian court, where she u. a. in her role as protector of the above-mentioned Protestants was hostile.

She apparently died of wintry pneumonia.

Margarete had no children from her first husband, from her second a son, who died as a child, and a daughter, Jeanne d'Albret . Jeanne's son was crowned King of France as Henry IV in 1594 .

Literary work

Today Margarete is mainly known as an author. In 1524 she published the verse meditation Dialogue en forme de vision nocturne . In 1531 she had three religious long poems printed under the title of the longest of them, Le Miroir de l'âme pécheresse (the mirror of the sinful soul). The booklet reflects the enormous interest that the educated and polarized layers of reformers and anti-reformers, not least the nobility, showed in theological problems, especially the new question of the relationship of the individual believer to “his” God. It was condemned by the Sorbonne .

Margarete achieved her literary fame with the Heptaméron begun in 1542 , a collection of novels with a framework that, like practically all collections of novels of the time, is in the tradition of the Decameron by Giovanni Boccaccio (around 1350).

Margarete in the Book of Hours of Caterina de 'Medici

The work, which was probably created by dictation, partly while traveling, was originally intended to include a hundred novels, which were to be told by ten people (five women and five men) over ten days; However, it remained unfinished with Margaret's death in novella 72. The main theme, as in all collections of this type, is the attraction of the sexes to one another and the many forms it causes. What is new is Margarete's assertion of absolute truthfulness of the narrative and also her idea of ​​having her committee of ten discuss their respective morals more or less in detail after each novella. Since these discussions often seem less than determined and the reader does not always correctly recognize or cannot understand the very idealistic point of view of the author, they appeared to younger contemporaries such as Montaigne as something artificial and bloodless.

The work was published posthumously in 1559 on behalf of Margarete's daughter Jeanne d'Albret in the original text and with the more or less appropriate title L'Heptaméron (The Seven-Day Work), after a pirated print had already appeared in 1558 under the title Histoires des amants fortunés , whose text in the sense of the Counter-Reformation Council of Trent (1545–1563) was theologically and morally “purified”, that is, at times rather mutilated.

While she was still alive, however, a collection of poems was published under the title Marguerites de la marguerite des princesses (Margarites of the Margaret of the Duchesses , 1547). In addition, some unprinted plays and numerous letters have been preserved. A collection of poems that had also remained unprinted appeared in 1896 as Les dernières poésies (last poems).

Text editions and translations

Complete edition

  • Marguerite de Navarre: Œuvres complètes , ed. by Nicole Cazauran. Honoré Champion, Paris 2001 ff. (Critical edition). Published so far:
    • Volume 1: Pater Noster et Petit Œuvre dévot , ed. by Sabine Lardon, 2001, ISBN 2-7453-0293-0
    • Volume 3: Le Triomphe de l'Agneau , ed. by Simone de Reyff, 2001, ISBN 2-7453-0576-X
    • Volume 4: Théâtre , ed. by Geneviève Hasenohr, Olivier Millet, 2002, ISBN 2-7453-0705-3
    • Volume 5: L'Histoire des Satyres, et Nymphes de Dyane. Les Quatre Dames et les quatre Gentilzhommes. La Coche , ed. by André Gendre, Loris Petris, Simone de Reyff, 2012, ISBN 978-2-7453-2390-3
    • Volume 8: Chrétiens et mondains, poèmes épars , ed. by Richard Cooper, 2007, ISBN 978-2-7453-1572-4
    • Volume 9: La Complainte pour un detenu prisonnier et les Chansons spirituelles , ed. by Michèle Clément, 2001, ISBN 2-7453-0294-9
    • Volume 10 (in three parts): L'Heptaméron , ed. by Nicole Cazauran, Sylvie Lefèvre, 2013, ISBN 978-2-7453-2483-2

Editions of individual works

  • Marguerite de Navarre: Chansons Spiritual , ed. by Georges Dottin. Droz, Genève 1971 (critical edition)
  • Marguerite de Navarre: Le Miroir de l'âme pécheresse , ed. by Renja Salminen. Academia Scientiarum Fennica, Helsinki 1979, ISBN 951-41-0362-9 (critical edition with commentary)
  • Marguerite de Navarre: Les prisons , ed. by Simone Glasson. Droz, Genève 1978 (critical edition with commentary)
  • Marguerite de Navarre: Les Prisons. A French and English Edition , ed. by Claire Lynch Wade. Peter Lang, New York 1989, ISBN 0-8204-0802-6 (critical edition)

translation

  • The heptameron. The gallant stories of Queen Margaret of Navarre , translated by Johannes Carstensen. Pawlak, Herrsching 1980

literature

Overview representations

Biographies

  • Marie Cerati: Marguerite de Navarre. Éditions du Sorbier, Paris 1981, ISBN 2-7320-0011-6
  • Patricia F. Cholakian, Rouben C. Cholakian: Marguerite de Navarre. Mother of the Renaissance. Columbia University Press, New York 2006, ISBN 0-231-13412-6
  • Jean-Luc Déjean: Marguerite de Navarre. Fayard, Paris 1987, ISBN 2-213-01939-8
  • Lucien Febvre: Margaret of Navarre. A queen of the Renaissance between power, love and religion. Campus, Frankfurt 1998, ISBN 3-593-35926-X

General examinations

  • Jonathan A. Reid: King's Sister - Queen of Dissent. Marguerite of Navarre (1492-1549) and her Evangelical Network. 2 volumes, Brill, Leiden / Boston 2009, ISBN 978-90-04-17497-9
  • Barbara Stephenson: The Power and Patronage of Marguerite de Navarre. Ashgate, Aldershot 2004, ISBN 0-7546-0698-8
  • Carol Thysell: The pleasure of discernment. Marguerite de Navarre as Theologian. Oxford University Press, Oxford 2000, ISBN 0-19-513845-7

General collections of articles

  • Nicole Cazauran, James Dauphiné (eds.): Marguerite de Navarre 1492–1992. Actes du Colloque international de Pau (1992). Editions Interuniversitaires, Mont-de-Marsan 1995, ISBN 2-87817-051-2
  • Gary Ferguson, Mary B. McKinley (Eds.): A Companion to Marguerite de Navarre. Brill, Leiden / Boston 2013, ISBN 978-90-04-22189-5
  • Marcel Tetel (ed.): Les visages et les voix de Marguerite de Navarre. Actes du Colloque International sur Marguerite de Navarre (Duke University) April 1-11, 1992. Klincksieck, Paris 1995, ISBN 2-252-02969-2

Investigations on the heptaméron

  • Jules Learned: World of Many Loves: The Heptameron of Marguerite de Navarre. The University of North Carolina Press, Chapel Hill 1966
  • Britt-Marie Karlsson: Sagesse divine et folie humaine. Étude sur les structures antithétiques dans l'Heptaméron de Marguerite de Navarre (1492–1549) (= Romanica Gothoburgensia 47). Acta Universitatis Gothoburgensis, Göteborg 2001, ISBN 91-7346-392-2
  • Gisèle Mathieu-Castellani: La conversation conteuse. Les Nouvelles de Marguerite de Navarre. Presses Universitaires de France, Paris 1992, ISBN 2-13-044456-3
  • Judith Perrenoud-Wörner: Rire et sacré: La vision humoristique de la vérité dans l'Heptaméron de Marguerite de Navarre. Slatkine, Genève 2008, ISBN 978-2-05-102055-8
  • Axel Schönberger: The representation of lust and love in the heptaméron of Queen Margaret of Navarra. Domus Editoria Europaea, Frankfurt am Main 1993, ISBN 3-927884-30-8
  • Marcel Tetel: Marguerite de Navarre's Heptameron: Themes, Language, and Structure. Duke University Press, Durham (NC) 1973, ISBN 0-8223-0279-9

Collections of essays on the heptaméron

  • Dominique Bertrand (ed.): Lire l'Heptaméron de Marguerite de Navarre. Presses Universitaires Blaise Pascal, Clermont-Ferrand 2005, ISBN 2-84516-300-2
  • Nicole Cazauran: Variétés pour Marguerite de Navarre, 1978-2004. Autour de l'Heptaméron. Champion, Paris 2005, ISBN 2-7453-1336-3 (collection of essays by the author from 1978-2004)
  • John D. Lyons, Mary B. McKinley (Eds.): Critical Tales. New Studies of the Heptameron and Early Modern Culture. University of Pennsylvania Press, Philadelphia 1993, ISBN 0-8122-3206-2

Poetry and Drama

  • Robert D. Cottrell: The Grammar of Silence. A Reading of Marguerite de Navarre's Poetry. The Catholic University of America Press, Washington (DC) 1986, ISBN 0-8132-0615-4
  • Olga Anna Duhl (ed.): Quêtes spirituelles et actualités contemporaines dans le théâtre de Marguerite de Navarre (= Renaissance and Reformation , Volume 26, No. 4). Canadian Society for Renaissance Studies, Toronto 2002
  • Gary Ferguson: Mirroring Belief: Marguerite de Navarre's Devotional Poetry. Edinburgh University Press, Edinburgh 1992, ISBN 0-7486-0347-6
  • Claudia Kraus: The religious lyricism of Margaret of Navarra. Fink, Munich 1981, ISBN 3-7705-2007-6
  • Hans Sckommodau: The religious poems of Margaret of Navarra. West German publishing house, Cologne / Opladen 1955
  • Paula Sommers: Celestial Ladders: Readings in Marguerite de Navarre's Poetry of Spiritual Ascent. Droz, Genève 1989

Web links

Commons : Margaret of Navarre  - Collection of images, videos and audio files
predecessor Office successor
French crown domain
( Franz I. ) 		Duchess of Berry
1517–1549 		French crown domain
( Heinrich II. )
Charles IV Duchess of Alençon,
Countess of Le Perche
1525–1549 		French crown domain
( Heinrich II. )
Charles IV Countess of Armagnac
Countess of Rodez
Countess of Fézensac
1525–1549 		Heinrich von Albret
personal data
SURNAME Margaret of Navarre
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Margaret of Angoulême
BRIEF DESCRIPTION French writer
DATE OF BIRTH April 11, 1492
PLACE OF BIRTH Angoulême
DATE OF DEATH December 21, 1549
Place of death Odos