Marguerite de Navarre (1492-1549) was a woman of many talents. By marriage she became Duchess of Alençon, then queen of Navarre; by birth she was sister of the French King François I. Her status and intersecting official positions enabled her to build a vast network of ambassadors, magistrates, clergy, poets, and administrators. As early as 1521, an ecclesiastical correspondent, Bishop Guillaume Briçonnet, urged Marguerite to remain united to her brother and mother – the ‘trinity’ that would determine the course of French politics and diplomacy throughout the 1520s. In this paper, I will argue that Marguerite’s role within this trinity is superseded by her wider engagement in another trinity: administration, poetry, and theological reflection. This makes Marguerite not a ‘bureaucratic’ author, but one whose correspondence suggests a nuanced administrative _habitus_. Marguerite’s practice of diplomacy is oriented towards Christ the ‘Heavenly Administrator of the soul’, and it relies on earthly proxies of feeling: the letter bearer, and sometimes the very letter, or poem, itself.
*Jonathan Patterson* is a Departmental Lecturer at Oxford’s Faculty of Medieval and Modern Languages, and a Tutor in French at St Edmund Hall. His research currently focuses on early modern French literature and its intersection with law and bureaucracy. He is the author of _Villainy in France (1463-1610): A Transcultural Study of Law and Literature_ (OUP, 2021), and _Representing Avarice in Late Renaissance France_ (OUP, 2015).
*Jonathan Patterson* is a Departmental Lecturer at Oxford’s Faculty of Medieval and Modern Languages, and a Tutor in French at St Edmund Hall. His research currently focuses on early modern French literature and its intersection with law and bureaucracy. He is the author of _Villainy in France (1463-1610): A Transcultural Study of Law and Literature_ (OUP, 2021), and _Representing Avarice in Late Renaissance France_ (OUP, 2015).