Note 485 — CXXX.—To the Queen of Navarre.[485]

The name of the Princess of Navarre has already appeared several times in this collection, pp. 36, 207, 342. Th. de Bèze does not hesitate to place her among the most illustrious witnesses for the truth in the sixteenth century. Endowed with the noblest and most brilliant qualities both of the head and heart, which rendered her the idol of her brother Francis I., and an object of admiration to all her contemporaries, she was long a steady friend of the Reformation, whose early representatives she protected in the persons of Lefevre d'Etaples, Bishop Briçonnet, and Gérard Roussel, and whose ministry she encouraged in the kingdom of Navarre. She died in 1549. In the later years of her life her piety gradually degenerated into a kind of contemplative mysticism, whose chief characteristic was indifference towards outward forms, uniting the external ordinances of the Romish Church with the inward cherishing of a purer faith. We find numerous proofs of this in her poems, published during her life, as well as in her letters, published for the first time in Paris by M. Genin, under the following title:—Lettres de Marguerite d'Angoulême; 8vo, 1841.—Nouvelles Lettres de la Reine de Navarre; 8vo, 1842.

Calvin corresponded at different times with this Princess, whose character and talents he admired, while, with holy boldness, he censured her infirmities. Unfortunately only one of these letters has been preserved, and is here presented to the reader as a testimony of the faithful courage of the Reformer.—Bèze, Hist. Eccl., tom. i. p. 49.