The book of the ladies: Illustrious Dames: The Reign and Amours of the Bourbon RégimeBrantôme, Pierre de Bourdeille
History
The book of the ladies: Illustrious Dames: The Reign and Amours of the Bourbon Régime
Brantôme, Pierre de Bourdeille
France -- Biography; France -- Court and courtiers; Queens; Women -- Biography
These services rendered by Marguerite were real; but that which is a
subject of eulogy on the part of some is a source of blame on the part
of others. Her brother having married her for the second time, in 1527,
to Henri d’Albret, King of Navarre, she held her little Court at Pan
which thenceforth became the refuge and haven of all persecuted persons
and innovators. “She favoured Calvinism, which she abandoned in the
end,” says Président Hénault, “and was the cause of the rapid progress
of that dawning sect.” It is very true that Marguerite, open to all the
literary and generous sentiments of her time, behaved as, later, a
person on the verge of ‘89 might have favoured liberty with all her
strength without wishing or even perceiving the approaching revolution.
She did at this period as did the whole Court of France, which, merely
following fashion, the progress of Letters, the pleasure of
understanding Holy Scripture and of chanting the Psalms in French, came
near to being Lutheran or Calvinistic without knowing it. Their first
awakening was on a morning (October 19, 1534) when they read, affixed to
every wall in Paris, those bloody placards against the Catholic faith.
The imprudent ones of the party had fired the train before the
appointed time. Marguerite, good and loyal, knowing nothing of parties
and judging only by honourable persons and the men of letters of her
acquaintance, leaned to the belief that those infamous placards were the
act, not of Protestants, but of those who sought a pretext to compromise
and persecute them. Charitable and humane, she never ceased to act upon
her brother in the direction of clemency.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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