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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 25 March 2011
‘C'est à vous, Madame, à qui je parle.’ So wrote the distinguished church statesman and reforming bishop of the Meaux diocese to Marguerite d'Angoulême, duchess of Alençon (later queen of Navarre), powerful sister of the Renaissance monarch François I, on 22 December 1521. The personal and emphatic form of address employed here by Guillaume Briçonnet arose from his concern that Marguerite should grasp firmly a neglected aspect of Christian doctrine: the role of the Spirit in the life of each believer as well as within the Ecclesia. By grace, came the episcopal injunction, Marguerite must recognise ‘le vray feu qui s'est logé, long temps a [i.e. il y a longtemps déja] dans vostre cceur’;and by this same grace French Christendom must acknowledge its state of desolation. An analysis of the 1521–4 exchange of letters between the duchess of Alençon and the bishop of Meaux reveals both the extent of Briçonnet's distress at what he saw as basic weaknesses in the French Church and his spiritual counsel aimed at rectifying a situation he held to be desperate.
Original spelling is retained for all quotations. In French texts, no accentuation has been used when there is none in the original document, but where it occurs in printed sources it is repeated here.
1 Briçonnet, Guillaume, d'Angoulême, Marguerite, Correspondance (1521–4) (hereinafter cited as Correspondance), Martineau, Christine and Veissière, Michel (eds), with Henry Heller, Geneva 1975–9, i. 112.Google Scholar
2 Ibid.
3 This exchange is widely quoted but little understood. It touches on many topics other than the state of the Church, including marriage and the Christian pursuit of high intellectual achievement.
4 Many of these sources have been gathered together in Veissière's, MichelL'Évçque Guillaume Briçonnet (1470–1534), Provins 1986.Google Scholar
5 Bassereau, Claude, Jean Briçonnet l'ainé (1420–1493) et Jean Briçonnet le jeune (?–1520), bourgeois de Tours et financiers au XVe siècle, 1951 (typewritten copy of 585 pp. held in Bibliothèque Municipale, Tours), 37.Google Scholar On Guillaume Briçonnet père's entry into orders, see Bibliothèque Nationale (hereinafter cited as BN), Paris, MS fonds français nouv. acq. 9661, fos 113, 114. He received his cardinal's hat in 1495 and became archbishop of Rheims two years later after the death of his son Robert, chancellor of France. Chevalier's, B.Tours, ville royale (1356–1520), Louvain-Paris 1975Google Scholar, cites many useful references for providing biographical details of this distinguished figure.
6 See G. Bretonneau, Histoire généalogique de la Maison des Briçonnets, Paris 1620. Family alliances are summarised by Febvre, L., Au Cour religieux du XVIe siècle, Paris 1957, 147.Google Scholar
7 Ibid.
8 Ibid. 18–19.
9 ‘E l'occhio dell'orechio di questo re’, cited in Desjardins, A., Négociations diplomatiques de la France avec la Toscane, Paris 1859–86, i. 341 and 261.Google Scholar
10 BN MS F. fr. 5105, ed. d'Auton, Jean in Chroniques, mémoires et documents de l'Histoire de France, Paris 1834, 303–64.Google Scholar Other editions of this ‘harangue de monseigneur de Lodeve proposée devant nostre sainct pere le pape’ are detailed by Veissière, Guillaume Briçonnet, 64–7.
11 Marino Sanuto, I Diarii di Marino Sanuto, Venice 1879–1903, xxii (1516), col. 732; xxiii (1516–17), col. 659; xxiv (1517), col. 769.
12 Archives Nationales MS K 81 (Monuments historiques), no. 14; cited also in Catalogue des Actes de François 1er i (1887), 92, no. 547.Google Scholar
13 See the different viewpoints of Delaruelle, Febvre and Veissière discussed in Veissière, op. cit. 115–20.
14 Bretonneau, Histoire généalogique, 210.
15 Rice, E. F., The Prefatory Epistles of Jacques Lefevre d'Étaples and Related Texts, New York-London 1972, 117, Jean Molinier to Lefevre.Google Scholar
16 Massaut, J.-P., Josse Clichlove, l'humanisme et la réforme du clergé, Paris 1968, i. 291–2; ii. 18.Google Scholar
17 Archives Nationales MS L 756 (Monuments ecclésiastiques), no. 15; Bretonneau, op. cit. 148–50 gives the Latin text with French translation.
18 Archives Nationales MS Xla (Parlement de Paris) 4849, fo. 538r ff.; summarised in Renaudet, A., Préréforme et humanisme à Paris pendant les premières guerres d'Italie (1494–1517), Paris 1916, 454.Google Scholar See also Veissière, , ‘Guillaume Briçonnet, abbé rénovateur de Saint-Germain-des-Prés (1507–1534)’, Revue d'Histoire de l'Eglise de France lx, 164 (1974), 65–84.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
19 Sandret, L., ‘Le concile de Pise de 1511’, Revue des Questions Historiques, xxxiv (1883), 451Google Scholar; Veissière, Guillaume Briçonnet, 91.
20 For a full account of his solemn entry into the city, see Dom Toussaints Du Plessis, Histoire de l'Église de Meaux, Paris 1731, i. 326.Google Scholar
21 Rice, Prefatory Epistles, 250.
22 Correspondance, i. 25.
23 Guillaume Farei, 1489–1565, par un groupe d'historiens, Neuchâtel-Paris 1930.Google Scholar
24 Veissière presents a body of formerly scattered sources on these diocesan activities in his Guillaume Briçonnet, ch. x.
25 Guillaume Briçonnet, ‘Duo sermones synodales Guillermi Briçonnet, Meldensis Episcopi (1519 et 1520)’, texte p.p. Veissière, Michel, Humanistica Lovaniensia xxvii (1978), 86–127.Google Scholar
26 Ibid. Veissière and H. Tardif have published a number of studies on these synodal discourses; see Veissière, Guillaume Briçonnet, 173–4.
27 Briçonnet, op. cit. 99; see also Veissière, Guillaume Briçonnet, 160.
28 Correspondance, i. 25.
29 Now published in two volumes. The MS is a contemporary copy of the letters made at Marguerite's direction by two secretaries; see above n. I.
30 Correspondance, ii. 18–19.
31 Ibid.
32 Ibid. 22.
33 Ibid. 23.
34 Ibid.
35 Ibid. i. 51–2.
36 Ibid.
37 In a letter of 31 Dec. 1521, ibid. 124.
38 Ibid.
39 See Becker, P.-A., ‘Marguerite, duchesse d'Alençon, et Guillaume Briçonnet, évêque de Meaux, d'après leur correspondance manuscrite, 1521–1524’, Bulletin de la Société de l'Histoire du Protestantisme Français lxix (1900), 393–477, esp. at p. 412.Google Scholar
40 Correspondance, i. 125–6.
41 Ibid. 128.
42 Ibid. 60.
43 Ibid.
44 See Hufstader, A., ‘Lefevre d'Étaples and the Magdalen’, Studies in the Renaissance xvi (1969), 31–60CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Mann, M., Erasme et les débuts de la réforme française, 1517–1536, Paris 1934, esp. at pp. 47–58.Google Scholar
45 Correspondance, i. 62.
46 Ibid. 60.
47 Ibid. 62.
48 Ibid. 81.
49 Ibid.
50 Ibid. 85.
51 Ibid. n. 105.
52 Ibid. 87.
53 Ibid. 87–8.
54 Ibid. 89–93.
55 Ibid. 105.
56 Ibid. 113 n. 157; Heller, Henry, ‘Reform and reformers at Meaux, 1518–1525’, unpub. PhD diss. Cornell University 1969, 242.Google Scholar
57 Correspondance, i. 113.
58 François stated this as his aim at the beginning of 1522. See Le Journal d'un bourgeois de Paris sous le règne de François 1er, 1515–1536, ed. Bourrilly, V.-L., Paris 1910, 87.Google Scholar
59 Correspondance, i. 166–7.
60 Ibid. ii. 29.
61 Ibid. 104.
62 Ibid. 105.
63 See Ibid. n. 142.
64 The spiritual city - see Herminjard, A.-L., Correspondance des Réformateurs dans les pays de langue française, Geneva-Yaris 1866–97, i, 188 n. 5.Google Scholar
65 Luke ix. 56; cf. John xii. 46, and Luke iv. 18 quoting Is. lxi. 1.
66 Veissière, Guillaume Briçonnet, 130–4.
67 Registre diet le Secretariat de Monseigneur Messire Guillaume Briçonnet Evesque de Meaulx, dressé par Messire Jean Lermite, son Secrétaire, cited by Bretonneau, Histoire généalogique, 164 ff. and 194–5.
68 Correspondance, ii. 132.
69 Ibid. 190.
70 Veissière, Guillaume Briçonnet expands on this, see pp. 423–4.
71 Bennassar, B. and Jacquart, J., Le XVIe siècle, Paris 1980, 90.Google Scholar
72 Pierre Imbart de La Tour, Les Origines de la Réforme, III. Evangélismi (1512–1538), Paris 1914, p. v.Google Scholar
73 BN MS F. fr. n. a. 6528; also Archives Nationales MS XIa 1528, 1529, 4877, 4878, 8342; Berger, Samuel, ‘Le procès de Guillaume Briçonnet au parlement de Paris, en 1525’, Bulletin de la Société de l'Histoire du Protestantisme Français xliv (1895), 7–22.Google Scholar Marguerite's influence on her brother (just released from Spanish captivity) cannot be discounted in the matter of Briçonnet's discharge. See my ‘Marguerite of Navarre: that “Righte English Woman”’, Sixteenth Century Journal xvi (1985), 315–33.Google Scholar