A couple came to me for premarital counseling. I began by asking them how they met. They told me they were first introduced at their engagement party. “Are you serious?” I asked. “No joke,” they told me. “Our families arranged for our marriage, and we met at our engagement.” I had officiated at hundreds of weddings, but an arranged wedding was a first for me.
Marguerite of Navarre (1492-1547) married at seventeen. Her stepfather negotiated her wedding to a prominent duke for a hefty dowry. Marguerite wasn’t pleased and cried throughout the ceremony. Who could blame her! One of her contemporaries described the groom as “a laggard and a dolt.” The duke subsequently died in battle and Marguerite became something of a renaissance woman. She served as Queen of Navarre and successfully negotiated the release of her brother, King Francis of France, as a prisoner of war.
She became an early proponent of the Reformation, devouring Martin Luther’s writings and conducting a lively correspondence with John Calvin. She financed the printing of reformed tracts calling for church revitalization. She advocated for the poor and orphans. She protected Protestant pastors from persecution and wrote major theological works, displaying a thorough knowledge of Scripture. She embraced the cardinal tenet of the Reformation–salvation by grace alone. She described Jesus as our plaintiff and advocate before God, who paid our sin debt in full. One of her quotes resonates with me, “Some there are who are more afraid of confessing a sin than committing it.”
The following prayer is an extract from her poem “The Mirror of the Sinful Soul.”