Women of Modern France. Hugo P. Thieme
she participated in the brutalities, grossness, or glaring immoralities of her time; her weaknesses, compared with the great debauches of the age, seemed like virtues."
Such is this great woman of the sixteenth century, who has received almost universal condemnation at the hands of historians. It is to be taken into consideration that she was forced to marry a man whom she did not love, and to live in a country utterly uncongenial to her nature and opposed to the religion in which she was reared; furthermore, that her husband first defiled the marital union, thus driving her to follow the general tendencies of the time or to seek solace in religious activity, for which she had too much energy. After due consideration of the extenuating circumstances, her faults and vices, such as they were, may easily be condoned. Because she was the wife of a powerful Protestant king, she was condemned by Catholics and by them regarded with suspicion; and, in order to save herself, she was forced to commit unwise acts and even follies.
In fine, whatever may be said against Marguerite de Valois, whom despair drove to acts which are not generally pardoned, she stands foremost among the social leaders and cultured women of the sixteenth century, a century whose prominent women were notorious for their licentiousness and lack of conscience rather than famous for their virtue and womanly accomplishments. Undeniably powerful and brilliant, these unscrupulous women were never happy; usually proud, they finally suffered the most cruel humiliations; "voluptuous, they found anguish underlying pleasure." Their misfortunes are, possibly more interesting than those successes of which chagrin anxiety, and heavy hearts were the inseparable associates.
Religion, which in the sixteenth century was so badly understood, and practised even worse—obscured and falsified by fanaticism, disfigured and exaggerated by passion and hatred—was the secret cause of all downfalls crimes, horrors, intrigues, and brutality. Yet, it alone survives, and all the important figures of history return to it after a period of negligence and forgetfulness. In their religious aspect, the women of the sixteenth century differ as a rule, from those of the eighteenth, who, though equally powerful, witty, refined, sensual, frivolous, and scoffing, were far less devout; for "'tis religion which restores the great female sinners of the sixteenth century 'tis religion which saves a society ploughed up by so many elements of dissolution and so many causes of moral and material ruin, rescuing it from barbarism, vandalism, and from irretrievable decay;" but the women of the eighteenth century clung, to the end, to the scepticism and material philosophy which served them as their religion, their God.
Among the conspicuous women of the sixteenth century to whom, thus far, we have been able to attribute so little of the wholesome and pleasing, the womanly or love-inspiring, there is one striking exception in Marguerite d'Angoulême, a representative of letters, art, culture, and morality. With the study of this character we are taken back to the beginning of the century and carried among men of letters especially, for she formed the centre of the literary world. She, her mother, Louise of Savoy, and her brother, Francis I., were called a "trinity," to the existence of which Marguerite bore witness in the poem:
"Such boon is mine—to feel the amity
That God hath putten in our trinity
Wherein to make a third, I, all unfitted
To be that number's shadow, am admitted."
Marguerite inherited many of her qualities from her mother, "a most excellent and a most venerable dame," though anything but moral and conscientious; she, upon discovering that her daughter possessed rare intellectual gifts, provided her with teachers in every branch of the learning of the age. "At fifteen years of age, the spirit of God began to manifest itself in her eyes, in her face, in her walk, in her speech, and in all her actions generally." Brantôme says: "She had a heart mightily devoted to God and she loved mightily to compose spiritual songs. She devoted herself to letters, also, in her young days and continued them as long as she lived, in the time of her greatness, loving and conversing with the most learned folks of her brother's kingdom, who honored her so greatly that they called her their Mæcenas." Tenderness, particularly for her brother, seemed to develop in her as a passion.
Marguerite was a rare exception in a period described by M. Saint-Amand as one in which women were Christian in certain aspects of their character and pagan in others, taking an active part in every event, ruling by wit and beauty, wisdom and courage; an age of thoughtless gaiety and morbid fanaticism, and of laughter and tears, still rough and savage, yet with an undercurrent of subtle grace and exquisite politeness; an age in which the extremes of elegance and cruelty were blended, in which the most glaring scepticism and intense superstitions were everywhere evident; an age which was religious as well as debauched and whose women were both good and evil, innocent and intriguing. Everything was fluctuating; there was inconstancy even in the things most affected: pleasure, pomp, display. The natural outcome of this undefined restlessness was dissatisfaction; and when dissatisfaction brought in its train the inevitable reaction against falseness and immorality, Marguerite d'Angoulême stood at the head of the movement.
With her begins the cultural and moral development of France. It was she who encouraged that desire for a new phase of existence, which arose through contact with Italian culture. The men of learning—poets, artists, scholars—who soon gathered about the French court received immediate recognition from the king's sister, who had studied all languages, was gay, brilliant, and æsthetic. While her mother and brother were in harmony with the age, no better, no worse than their environment, Marguerite aspired to the most elevated morals and ideals; thus, she is a type of all that is refined, sensitive, loving, noble, and generous in humanity, a woman vastly superior to her time; in fact, the modern woman, with her highest attributes.
In Marguerite d'Angoulême contemporaries admired prudence, chastity, moderation, piety, an invincible strength of soul, and her habit of "hiding her knowledge instead of displaying it." "In an age wholly depraved, she approached the ideal woman of modern times; in spite of her virtue, she was brilliant and honored, the centre of a coterie that delighted in music, verse, ingenious dialogues and gossip, story telling, singing, rhyming. Deeply afflicted by the sad and odious spectacle of the vices, abuses, and crimes which unroll before her, she suffers through her imagination, mind and heart." Serious and sympathetic, she was interested in every movement, feeling with those who were persecuted on account of their religious opinions.
Various are the names by which she is known: daughter of Charles of Orléans, Count of Angoulême, Duchesse d'Alençon through her first marriage, and Queen of Navarre through her second, she was called Marguerite d'Angoulême, Marguerite of Navarre, of Valois, Marguerite de France, Marguerite des Princesses, the Fourth Grace, and the Tenth Muse. A most appreciative and just account of her life is given by M. Saint-Amand, which will be followed in the main outline of this sketch.
She was born in 1492, and, as already stated, received a thorough education under the direction of her mother, Louise of Savoy. At seventeen she was married to Charles III., Duke of Alençon; as he did not prove to be her ideal, she sought consolation in love for her brother, sharing the almost universal admiration for the young king, whose tendency to favor everything new and progressive was stimulated by her. She became his constant and best adviser in general affairs as well as in those of state. The foreign ambassadors sought her after having accomplished their mission, and were referred to her when the king was busy; they were enraptured, and carried back wonderful reports of Marguerite.
The world of art was opened to the French by a bevy of such painters and sculptors as Leonardo da Vinci, Rosso, Primaticcio, Benvenuto Cellini, and Bramante, and they were encouraged and fêted by Marguerite especially. In those days a new picture from Italy by Raphael was received with as much pomp and ceremony as, in olden times, were accorded the holiest relics from the East.
Men of letters gathered about the sister of the king, forming what might be termed a court of sentimental metaphysics; for the questions discussed were those of love. This refined gallantry, empty and vapid, formed the foundation of the seventeenth-century salon, where the language and fine points of sentiment were considered and cultivated until sentiment acquired poise, grandeur, and an air of dignity and reserve.
The period was one in which, during times of trial and misfortune, the presence of an underlying religious sentiment became unmistakable. In such an atmosphere,