King's College London

In her contribution to ‘Une Renaissance dissidente?’, Professor Butterworth highlights that ‘dissidence’ only appears in French at the end of the sixteenth century and is rare until the eighteenth century. The authors, political actors, and religious reformers of the sixteenth century had different words to think about their relation to prevailing ideologies. Most of these were negative – rébellion, sédition, désordre – so not many in the French sixteenth century claimed the position of dissident.

However, reformers like Marguerite de Navarre could find their own ways to justify their dissent, by appealing to God’s justice above the imperfect and fallible justice of the world.

Marguerite was the author of spiritual poetry and songs, plays, and the collection of short stories – and Renaissance masterpiece – The Heptameron. Sister to King Francois I of France, she was one of the very few women writing and publishing in France in the sixteenth century. She has often been associated with dissidence – openly criticising a dominant ideology – due to her support and patronage of French reforming Catholics (known as ‘evangelicals’) and the evangelical perspective of her own writing.

In the article, Professor Butterworth returns to the Latin root dissideo, its etymology – ‘to sit apart’ – and its various definitions and translations in 16th-century dictionaries as separation, dissension, and discord. These translations provide ways of reading accounts of protest and contestation that trace a kind of pre-history of modern dissidence.

With this conceptualisation of ‘dissidence’, Professor Butterworth explores three instances of women’s resistance and rebellion in The Heptameron to evaluate their response to crisis and their potential for reconciliation. There is a virtuous nun who sets herself against a predatory prior and subsequently a host of church authorities; a wife who dares to mirror the behaviour of her unfaithful husband and challenge him on his double standards; and a daughter who defies her father and her queen in defence of her clandestine marriage.

Ultimately these temporary rebellions settle into a re-established social order: these moments of separation aim for eventual reconciliation. But that order has shifted – perhaps slightly, perhaps only for the women in question – in the pressure of their challenge.

Discover more about Professor Butterworth's research on Marguerite in the video below.