Marguerite de Navarre was the queen consort of King Henry II of Navarre. She was an author and patron of the arts, called by Samuel Putnam "The first modern woman." The Heptameron is a collection of stories modelled after Giovanni Boccaccio's Decameron. Many of the stories deal with love, lust, infidelity and other matters romantic and sexual. "Never," she wrote, "shall a man attain to the perfect love of God who has not loved to perfection some creature in this world."

Author Biography

Marguerite de Navarre (1492 - 1549), also known as Marguerite of Angoul'me and Margaret of Navarre, was the princess of France, Queen of Navarre and Duchess of Alenon and Berry. She was married to Henry II of Navarre. Her brother became King of France, as Francis I and the two siblings were responsible for the celebrated intellectual and cultural court and salons of their day in France. Marguerite is the ancestress of the Bourbon kings of France, being the mother of Jeanne d'Albret, whose son, Henry of Navarre, succeeded as Henry IV of France, the first Bourbon king. As an author and a patron of humanists and reformers, she was an outstanding figure of the French Renaissance. Samuel Putnam called her "The First Modern Woman."