Marguerite de Navarre

Marguerite de Navarre lived from 1492-1549 in Angouleme, France. Marguerite de Navarre was a writer and poet but she was not the only educated woman to write and publish verse during the first half of the sixteenth century, but she was the first woman of the French nobility who carefully compiled from her complete works a selection of poems, prayers, religious meditations, songs, biblical and secular plays. She was also the first woman to play an active role in the efforts of the Evangelical Circle of Meaux and to promote the study and the publication in French of Scriptures translated from Aramaic, Hebrew, and Greek, seeking the way to personal salvation only in the Bible rather than in the less reliable Latin translations and the often confusing interpretations of Scriptures by the Roman Church.