Earthly Treasures: Material Culture and Metaphysics in the Heptameron and Evangelical Narrative

Introduction: Objects of Desire: Reading the Material World Metaphysically in Marguerite de Navarre’s Heptaméron

1 Introduction Objects of Desire Reading the Material World Metaphysically in Marguerite de Navarre’s Heptaméron Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy, and where thieves break in and steal. But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where moth and rust do not destroy, and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also. Matt. 6.19–21 The early years of the sixteenth century were rich and complex, a time of extravagance, costuming, and courtly masques coupled with skepticism about worldliness due to theological reform movements.1 Marguerite de Navarre’s Heptaméron participates in this complexity:2 a collection of tales about often bawdy daily life, it is also a coherent, proselytizing work. As such, the text is a transitional document, both a reflection of its evangelical and Lutheran socio-cultural context and a harbinger of the Calvinist movement as manifest in narrative, art, and artifacts. The Heptaméron makes innovative use of the material objects produced by the commodity culture of François Ier’s court. Marguerite develops a materialistic as well as a metaphysical3 discourse. Her arguments are usually secularly prompted but often spiritually animated, composing a guide along the evangelical pathway to salvation. Marguerite represents herself to her time, and to us, as doubled. On the one hand, there is the devout poet, devoted sister, ardent member of the Cercle de Meaux.4 On the other hand, the author of the Heptaméron pens ribald stories about quotidian existence. Are there two Marguerites, or is there one? Marguerite’s self-depiction as two distinct manifestations epitomizes a technique that she frequently uses in textual 2 Introduction characters’ development. Façades, mirror images, pairings of apparently dissimilar attributes, redundancies, ornate surfaces, and rhetorical embellishments are tools that she uses to represent a disjunction between materiality and metaphysics. Her text strives to heal this schism by using, then surpassing, elements of the world to attain an other-worldly perspective. Marguerite’s work is still very much informed by medieval Catholic theology. Late medieval Catholicism read nature as God’s book, in which things were unambiguous markers of divine intention, and a transparent continuous communication flowed between creation and Creator. “The investment of [aspects of] nature [and culture] with unprecedented spiritual [weight] … could be undertaken with piety … because God was understood to have accomplished his most intimate internalization of the spirit within these apparently profane realms of the phenomenal.”5 However, Marguerite differs from how Catholic writers discern the impresa of the divine in the natural world—thereby holding up materiality as reminiscent of the divine; her evangelical focus instead scrutinizes narrative flow as evidence for the dynamic of the Logos. The Evangelical Dimension The evangelical movement of which Marguerite was part was a reforming impulse within the Catholic Church prior to the divisions caused by Lutheranism. Marguerite considered herself a good Catholic. Like other evangelicals, she sought to restore Catholicism by stripping away medieval distortions and accretions. In this respect, her thought is increasingly infused with Reformed theology, especially that of Luther.6 The method that Marguerite develops to handle the new emphases brought by such an evangelical perspective is innovative. Like Luther, Marguerite explores the dialectic between the world and God. While the late medieval notion of Teatrum mundi, for instance, dramatizes God’s plan through the representation of order in the world, Marguerite’s treatment of teatrum and text problematizes earthly existence. For Marguerite, translucency , rather than transparency, characterizes the relationship between materiality and metaphysics: divine light, when shone on earthly objects, will irradiate and shine through them. In and 3 Introduction of themselves, however, they are opaque. In a very practical way, Marguerite requires her reader to penetrate beneath opacity so that things hidden may be revealed. While the Heptaméron’s themes, and Marguerite’s choice of objects, remain medieval, and the tradition of seeing the divine through the material continues, Marguerite’s style evolves toward a more pronounced narrative emphasis on the depiction of the material world. Marguerite reads and applies St. Paul, as does Luther, but she also refers extensively to the Gospel of Matthew. St. Matthew’s message cautions that things of the earth are over-valued, as well as apocalyptically warning that this world will soon pass away. The Gospel of Matthew then becomes a lens through...