Home > Renaissance and Reformation > of Navarre Margaret Biography

April 11, 1492
Cognac, France
December 21, 1549
Odos-Bigorre, France

Writer

"… and I will tell you nothing but the whole truth."

Simontault in Heptaméron.

Margaret of Navarre, duchess of Angoulême, is best known today as the author of Heptaméron. A collection of novellas (a form of short fictitious stories originating in Italy), Heptaméron is ranked alongside the books of François Rabelais (c. 1494–1553; see entry) and Michel de Montaigne (1533–1592; see entry) as one of the greatest prose works of the French Renaissance. The Renaissance was a cultural revolution that began in Italy in the mid-1300s. It was initiated by scholars called humanists who promoted the human-centered values of ancient Greece and Rome. Humanist ideals were soon influencing the arts, literature, philosophy, science, religion, and politics...