Page:Margaret of Angoulême, Queen of Navarre (Robinson 1886).djvu/9

vi as the youthful character of Raphael maintained an unceasing authority over the wilder spirits of his school.

It is in her influence that we must seek the prestige of the Queen of Navarre, and not in her faded literary laurels, or in a personality rather interesting than great. It was she who inspired the College of France; it was she who protected and guaranteed the Renaissance in France from the ignorant rage of the Sorbonne. She was, in Melancthon's phrase, the Divinity of the great religions movement of her time, and the upholder of the more natural rights of humanity in an age that only respected opinions.

It is thus, as an organic part of the history of her time, as an influence, as an inspiring spirit, that I have tried to depict her, and not as a sequestered individual. The task is intricate and large, and the space given me to fill is very narrow. But, so far as it goes, this little sketch may, perhaps, be of some service in indicating the movements of the earlier French Renaissance. I have tried to make it, as far as possible, correct. I have, in most instances, sought my facts in the many published volumes of original documents, rather than in any subsequent history; and where I have given an unusual date, it is, I hope, most often because recent research has disproved the earlier reading.

Recent research, ever so commendably critical and untiring in France, has happily disproved many last-century scandals, and one revived not many years ago. M. Lutteroth, in a Review called Le Semeur, and