The woman in the sixty-seventh tale reads the Bible, prays, and finds in her religious practice the sustaining force that carries her through the ordeal.

The language is that of spiritual endurance — a woman tested by extraordinary suffering and finding in her faith the resources to endure.

This framing reflects the queen of Navarre’s own theological interests — she was a serious religious intellectual who engaged with questions of faith and grace throughout her writing life — but it also reflects a widespread sixteenth-century framework for understanding extraordinary survival.

The person who survives impossible conditions survives because of divine favor or divine testing; the survival itself is testimony to the quality of the survivor’s faith.