Early in 1527, Margaret was married with great pomp to Henri d'Albret, King of Navarre.[227] The match would seem to have been prompted by love and admiration on her side; for the groom had performed a romantic exploit in effecting his escape from prison after his capture at Pavia.[228] In spite of the great disparity between the ages of Margaret and her husband,[229] the union was congenial, and added greatly to the power and resources of the latter. The duchies of Alençon and Berry more than equalled in extent the actual domain of the King of Navarre; for, from the time when Ferdinand the Catholic (in July, 1512) wrested from brave Catharine of Foix and her inefficient husband John[230] all their possessions on the southern slope of the Pyrenees,[231] the authority of the titular monarch was respected only in the mountainous district of which Pau was the capital, and to which the names of Béarn or French Navarre are indifferently applied. The union thus auspiciously begun lasted, unbroken by domestic contention, until the death of Margaret, in 1549;[232] and the pompous ceremonial attending the queen's obsequies is said to have been a sincere attestation of the universal sorrow affecting the King of Navarre and his subjects alike. [Sidenote: She corresponds with Bishop Briçonnet.] It was through the instrumentality of the Bishop of Meaux that Margaret of Angoulême was first drawn into sympathy with the reformatory movement. Unsatisfied with herself and with the influences surrounding her, she sought in Briçonnet a spiritual adviser and guide. The prelate, in the abstruse and almost unintelligible language of exaggerated mysticism, endeavored to fulfil the trust. His prolix correspondence still exists in manuscript in the National Library of Paris, together with the replies of his royal penitent. Its incomprehensibility may perhaps forever preclude the publication of the greater part;[233] but we can readily forgive the bishop's absurdities and far-fetched conceits, when we find him in his letters leading Margaret to the Holy Scriptures as the only source of spiritual strength, and enjoining a humble and docile reception of its teachings. [Sidenote: Luther's teachings condemned by the Sorbonne.]