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A Sixteenth-century Assessment of the French Church in the Years 1521–4 by Bishop Guillaume Briçonnet of Meaux
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 25 March 2011
Extract
‘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.
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References
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.
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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.
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54 Ibid. 89–93.
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69 Ibid. 190.
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