We all have people we admire. But who did Anne Boleyn admire? One person I was able to come up with was Marguerite of Navarre, Francis I’s sister.
Here’s a little info:
Anne Boleyn had been a lady-in-waiting to Queen Claude during her years in France before returning to England. There is conjecture that the court of Queen Claude and the court of Marguerite overlapped and that, perhaps, Anne was in service to Marguerite rather than to Claude, as well as that Anne may have become a friend, admirer, and disciple to Marguerite, who absorbed Marguerite’s radical views about Christianity. A written letter by Anne Boleyn after she became queen exists in which Anne Boleyn makes strong expressions of affection to Marguerite.

It is conjectured that Marguerite gave Anne the original manuscript of Miroir de l’âme pécheresse at some point. It is certain that in 1545, nine years after Anne Boleyn’s execution by her husband Henry VIII, that Anne’s daughter, who would become Elizabeth I (1533–1603), translated this very same poem by Marguerite into English when she was twelve years old and presented it, written in her own hand, to her then-stepmother, the English queen Catherine Parr. This literary connection among Marguerite, Anne, Katherine Parr, and the future Queen Elizabeth I suggests a direct mentoring link between the legacy of reformist religious convictions and Marguerite.
As a generous patron of the arts, Marguerite befriended and protected many artists and writers, among them François Rabelais (1483–1553), Clément Marot (1496–1544), Claude de Bectoz (d. 1547) and Pierre de Ronsard (1524–1585). Also, Marguerite served as a mediator between Roman Catholics and Protestants (including John Calvin). Although Marguerite espoused reform within the Catholic Church, she was not a Calvinist. She did, however, do her best to protect the reformers and dissuaded Francis I from intolerant measures as long as she could. After her death, eight religious wars occurred in France, marked notably by the notorious St. Bartholomew’s Day Massacre of 1572.

Eminent American historian Will Durant wrote: “In Marguerite the Renaissance and the Reformation were for a moment one. Her influence radiated throughout France. Every free spirit looked upon her as protectoress and ideal …. Marguerite was the embodiment of charity. She would walk unescorted in the streets of Navarre, allowing any one to approach her and would listen at first hand to the sorrows of the people. She called herself ‘The Prime Minister of the Poor’. Henri, her husband, King of Navarre, believed in what she was doing, even to the extent of setting up a public works system that became a model for France. Together he and Marguerite financed the education of needy students.”

Jules Michelet (1798–1874), the most celebrated historian of his time, wrote of her: “Let us always remember this tender Queen of Navarre, in whose arms our people, fleeing from prison or the pyre, found safety, honor, and friendship. Our gratitude to you, Mother of our [French] Renaissance! Your hearth was that of our saints, your heart the nest of our freedom.”

Pierre Bayle (1647–1706), French philosopher and critic, whose Dictionnaire historique et critique (Historical and Critical Dictionary, 1697) greatly influenced the French Encyclopedists and the rationalist philosophers of the eighteenth century, such as Voltaire and Diderot, esteemed her highly, writing: “… for a queen to grant her protection to people persecuted for opinions which she believes to be false; to open a sanctuary to them; to preserve them from the flames prepared for them; to furnish them with a subsistence; liberally to relieve the troubles and inconveniences of their exile, is an heroic magnanimity which has hardly any precedent….”

Are there any other women Anne admired? Would like to hear everyone’s opinions.