The domestic life
of Margaret, however, concerns us but little, except in one way. Her
husband disliked administration, and she was the principal ruler in
their rather extensive estates or dominions. Moreover, she was able at
her quasi-Court to extend the literary coteries which she had already
begun to form at Paris. The patronage to men of letters for which her
brother is famous was certainly more due to her than to himself; and to
her also was due the partial toleration of religious liberty which for a
time distinguished his reign. It was not till her influence was weakened
that intolerance prevailed, and she was able even then for a time to
save Marot and other distinguished persons from persecution. It is
rather a moot-point how far she inclined to the Reformed doctrines,
properly so called. Her letters, her serious and poetical work, and
even the _Heptameron_ itself, show a fervently pietistic spirit,
and occasionally seem to testify to a distinct inclination towards
Protestantism, which is also positively attested by Brantome and others;
but this Protestantism must have been, so far as it was consistent and
definite at all, the Protestantism of Erasmus rather than of Luther, of
Rabelais rather than of Calvin.
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