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Cathy Hampton, Marie Dentière: Epistle to Marguerite de NavarreandPreface to a Sermon by John Calvin. Edited and translated by Mary B. McKinley. Pp. xxx + 110. (The Other Voice in Early Modern Europe.) Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2004. isbn 0 226 14278 7 and 14279 5. Hardback n.p; paper $18/£13, The Journal of Theological Studies, Volume 57, Issue 1, April 2006, Pages 381–383, https://doi.org/10.1093/jts/flj036
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In the last fifteen years the voice of an early modern dissident French woman, Marie Dentière (1495–1561), has begun to be heard again in print, thanks to the curiosity of some Reformation theologians and the recent determination of feminist literary critics to revive female-authored works that serve to contextualize canonical ones. Mary B. McKinley's edition of Dentière's Epistle to Marguerite de Navarre (1539) and Preface to a Sermon by John Calvin (1561) represents an important contribution to scholarship in precisely this fashion. Dentière's two little texts speak volumes when set against the imposing oeuvres of Calvin and Marguerite de Navarre. McKinley, meanwhile, does a wonderful service in anticipating and prompting readerly enquiries, cross-referencing the core texts to wider intellectual and political discussions within the Geneva reform movement and within French Catholic evangelicalism, and exploring Dentière's personal, scholarly, and political profile in a detailed introduction.
To speak of the latter first, McKinley begins by providing her reader with the armoury to pursue an interest in Dentière via a richly referenced biography of the ex-nun turned protestant preacher, who married two prominent French reformers, Simon Robert and Antoine Froment. Little concrete is known of Dentière's life; McKinley uses extracts from extant contemporary accounts to justify her reputation as daring and outspoken. Dentière was not afraid to court controversy: ‘she invaded the Poor Clares convent in Geneva, urging the nuns to leave their order and renounce celibacy’ (p. 8) and preached in taverns and other such urban environments. Conscious of her precarious standing as a woman prepared to undertake such activities, Dentière's dedicatory cover letter and ‘Defense of Women’ (preceding the Epistle to Marguerite proper) engage with Pauline and other proof texts contesting or endorsing her right to speak out. McKinley is careful to show, however, that Dentière's apparent pro-feminism is nuanced in a number of ways. The Epistle's dedication to Marguerite de Navarre is the result of a long-standing acquaintance with the Queen, who is not simply appealed to with textual forelock-tugging to endorse a feminist campaign, but implored as a fellow religious thinker who wields power as sister of the King of France. Calvin's banishment from Geneva at the hands of the city's Council in 1538 is in fact the political catalyst for the letter, and the Epistle itself wrestles extensively with the problem of unsatisfactory abuses of power. Orthodox Catholicism is lambasted as the prime sinner, but evangelical reformers (including by implication Marguerite) and indeed the internecine struggles of Genevan protestantism itself also receive criticism. Dentière emerges as an able theologian convinced by the liberating power of personal faith. In the later Preface to a Sermon by John Calvin, she dares to ‘assume … the paradoxical position of teaching about a biblical passage that expressly forbade her to do so’ (p. 30).
