THE NEW SCHAFF-HERZOG
in 1524. He was coerced into giving up his reforming projects; but Michel d'Arande, Lefevre d'Etaples, and Gerard Roussel remained in the private circle of the princess. In 1525 her husband died, and she spent the first period of her widowhood at Lyons, where D'Arande preached before large audiences. During the captivity of Francis I. the persecution of the Huguenots began. When Louise of Savoy was regent, although she had seemed unfriendly to the monastic orders and favorable to reforming ideas, she allowed the introduction into France of the Inquisition. Lefevre and Roussel, abandoned by Briconnet, took refuge at Strasburg, whither Michel d'Arande soon followed them. On June 24, 1527, Francis gave his sister in marriage to Henri d'Albret, king of Navarre, eleven years her junior. In her new position Margaret remained faithful to her Evangelical convictions, which were shared by her husband. With his assent she tried to reform the Church in their little kingdom. Gerard Roussel was made abbot of Clairac and later bishop of Oloron. Through her influence with Francis I., Lefevre was appointed librarian of the chateau of Blois, and when he was persecuted by the Sorbonne, she had him brought under her protection at Nerac. In Strasburg, where Lefevre and Roussel had praised her dispositions, great things were expected of her for the cause of reform in France. In 1527 Sigismund von Hohenlohe, dean of the cathedral there, imbued with Lutheran ideas, entered into communication with her, expressing the desire to come to France to help the cause. In May, 1528, Capito dedicated to her his commentaries on Hosea, saying " All eyes are turned toward you; you are the hope of all Reformers." As duchess of Alencon, she had done much in that neighborhood for the revival of letters and for reform in religion. In the duchy of Berry, which she had ruled since 1518, the university of Bourges flourished under her protection, and it was here that Calvin and Beza were inclined toward Protestantism under Wolmar's teaching. She intended to found a college in Beam, to which Sturm and Latomus were to be called (1533); but her plan was not destined to be realized until her daughter Jeanne d'Albret founded the Academy of Orthez. Staying in Paris with her husband in 1533, she caused Gerard Roussel to preach the Evangelical doctrine in the chapel of the Louvre, and his boldness of speech raised a storm not only against him but against his patroness. The Miroir de I'dme pecheresse (see bibliography) was condemned and prohibited by the Sorbonne, because it made no mention of the saints or of purgatory. Francis, exasperated by the insults directed against his sister, banished several of the most prominent reactionary clergy. By the help of his confessor Guillaume Petit, bishop of Senlis, he opened a process before the University of Paris for the reversal of the condemnation of the Miroir, and the sentence of the Sorbonne was annulled. To allay the popular excitement, Francis ordered both Roussel and his antagonists to keep silence on controverted points. Margaret took a lively share in her brother's correspondence with Melanchthon and Butzcr with the view of working out a plan which might promote the reunion of
Christendom by mutual concessions. When, however, Francis definitely took the side of the persecutors, Margaret lost all her influence over him in religious matters, and retired in disgust to Navarre where she and her husband devoted themselves to promoting the cause of reform.
Searching the Scriptures, she became far more advanced, in all that concerned dogma, than her teachers D'Arande, Roussel, and even Lefevre d'Etaples. This is manifest in her book Les Marguerites de la Marguerite, and in her last verses, Dialogue de I'homme et de Dieu and Les
Favoring Prisons. She adopted Calvin's docof the Ref- trines of salvation and the sacraments, ormation in and rejected confession, indulgences,
Navarre, and prayer to the saints. As to the external forms of religion, which appeared to her non-essential, she kept up at the same time most of the old rites, because, although opposed to clerical abuses, she had always hoped for a reform without a complete breach with Rome. But she did not wish to retain unity at the cost of renouncing the newly recovered truths or of employing compulsion. She ordered that justification by faith should alone be preached in the kingdom of Navarre. The service was held, and the psalms were sung, in the vernacular. Many monastic abuses were reformed, and only godly and Evangelical priests appointed to parishes. These improvements, established by Margaret in the churches of Beam and later introduced by Roussel in his diocese of Oleron, paved the way for a more thoroughgoing reform which was made later by Jeanne d'Albret, and explains the latter's success. The little mountain kingdom became the refuge of persecuted Protestants, for all of whose needs Margaret provided. As long ago at Alencon she had sheltered Sainte-Marthe, who had escaped from the gallows at Grenoble, so now she begged mercy from Francis I. for persecuted heretics, such as Louis de Berquin, Etienne Dolet, and the Waldenses of Provence. She spent most of her time either at Nerac with her court around her, or in the convent of Tusson, whither she retired during her mourning after Francis I.'s death (1547), and set an example of Christian virtue. At all critical conjunctures she prayed without ceasing. From this period of her life date most of her religious poems, many of which were printed in the Marguerites de la Marguerite des princesses, while some remain in manuscript in the Bibliotheque Nationale.
But her whole time was not given up to religious
pursuits. She was by nature a lover of mirth and
gaiety. She had comedies performed
Other at Nerac and at Mont de Marsan by
Interests Italian players, and wrote a series of
in Life. lively tales entitled Heptarntron des nouvelles, in the style of Boccaccio's Decameron, in which she drew from the example of human frailty the moral lesson that one can not rely on one's own strength but should have recourse in all circumstances to God. During the last illness of Francis I. she went to him, and her presence seemed to revive him; but scarcely had she returned to Ne>ac when she heard of his death (Mar. 31, 1547). The income of 24,000 livres which