Epistle to Marguerite de Navarre and Preface to a Sermon by John Calvin

Renaissance Quarterly, Fall, 2005 by Jane Couchman

Marie Dentiere. Epistle to Marguerite de Navarre and Preface to a Sermon by John Calvin.

Ed. and trans. Mary B. McKinley. The Other Voice in Early Modern Europe. Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 2004. xxx 110 pp. index. bibl. $18. ISBN: 0-226-14279-5.

Madame de Maintenon. Dialogues and Addresses.

Ed. and trans. John J. Conley. The Other Voice in Early Modern Europe. Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 2004. xxxi 178 pp. index. illus. bibl. $22. ISBN: 0-226-50242-2.

These are two of the most recent volumes in the excellent series The Other Voice in Early Modern Europe, launched by the University of Chicago Press in 1996 to respond to the need for reliable, reasonably-priced English-language (or bilingual) editions of important texts by European women writers, to make them accessible to English-speaking students and scholars. At last count, thirty-four titles have appeared and some forty more are in preparation. The quality of the translations and of the critical apparatus has been uniformly high; several have won awards from the Society for the Study of Early Modern Women. Each volume in the series includes the introduction by the series editors, Margaret L. King and Albert Rabil, Jr. Solidly grounded in current scholarship, this introduction provides a succinct yet thorough review of the situation of women in early modern Europe. Each individual volume editor's introduction provides a general overview, biographical and bibliographical information, an analysis of the work(s) translated, and a discussion of issues relating to the translation. Annotations and footnotes are well-designed for students or non-specialists.

Each of these two volumes presents works by a French woman. Both express deeply-felt piety, both had strong views about the role of women, and each exercised effective, if informal, political and spiritual influence. Each aroused strong admiration or scorn among her contemporaries. But the differences far outweigh the similarities.

Marie Dentiere was an outspoken Protestant, born in 1495. A former nun, she worked with her first husband, Simon Robert, and her second husband, Antoine Froment, to spread the reformed Gospel. She lived in and around Strasbourg and Geneva from the 1520s until her death in 1561. In her introduction, Mary B. McKinley weaves together the sparse information available about Dentiere's life (most of which comes from her opponents) and leads the reader deftly through the controversies among the strong-minded leaders of the Calvinist reform in Strasbourg and Geneva. McKinley discusses the question of authorship: did Dentiere herself write the Very Useful Epistle ... to the Queen of Navarre ... (1539), did her husband Froment do so, or was it a collaborative effort? McKinley supports the latter view, arguing that the Epistle "clearly expressed doctrinal and political positions that the couple shared" and that "collaboration was standard practice for spreading the word of the reformed religion" (15).

McKinley's translation is excellent; it retains the rhetorical energy of the original, while making the text accessible to a modern reader. The Epistle was apparently written in response to a request from Marguerite de Navarre for a report from Dentiere on a struggle, which pitted Calvin and Farel against the Council of Geneva, about the governance of the reformed churches. Modern scholars have focused on the short, introductory section of the Epistle in which Dentiere defends the rights and responsibilities of women to speak out on matters of faith and doctrine. For the less-familiar body of the Epistle, McKinley's identification of the specific controversies to which Dentiere was responding is extremely useful. Dentiere's and McKinley's treatments of the nature of the Mass/the Lord's Supper, of the relative importance of faith, works, and grace to salvation, and of the paradox that "many are called but few are chosen" (31), echo the debates among reformers as well as between the reformed and the Catholic churches. For the Preface to a Sermon by John Calvin on How Women Should Be Modest in Their Dress, as McKinley points out, Dentiere's argument is "less feminist" than in the Epistle (33); nonetheless, Dentiere "assumes the paradoxical position of teaching about a passage [from 1 Timothy 2] that expressly forbade her to do so" (30).

Francoise d'Aubigne, Marquise de Maintenon, born in 1635, frequented the Parisian salons during her marriage with the poet Paul Scarron. After Scarron's death, she became, first, the governess of the illegitimate children of Louis XIV, and subsequently his morganatic wife, living at Versailles until her death in 1719. She founded St.-Cyr, a school for the daughters of impecunious nobles, and devoted herself to developing curriculum and pedagogy suitable to her charges' situation in life. Initially, Maintenon favored a broad liberal arts education; however, she concluded that this did not prepare them for the difficult lives they would inevitably have to lead as the wives of provincial nobles or as nuns. Maintenon rejected arguments for the equality of the sexes put forward by Marie de Gournay and others. Instead, she proposed a differentiated education for women, one that stressed piety, moral virtues, and politeness.