The Mirror of Simple Souls

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It has recently been suggested that she was arrested in Châlons-en-Champagne in 1308, after she gave her book to the local bishop. [14] She was then handed to the Inquisitor of France, the Dominican William of Paris, also known as William of Humbert, on the grounds of heresy, in spite of her assertion in the book that she had consulted three church authorities about her writings, including the highly respected Master of Theology Godfrey of Fontaines, and had gained their approval. Je connaissais le terme de béguinage, sans savoir exactement de quoi il retournait. (Chez moi, on les appelle les béates)

The Mirror of Simple Souls recounts events happening in and around one of the last royal béguinages, in Paris. These communities housed independent women, neither fully civilian nor religious, but hardworking, educated, pious and reclusive, (comparatively) free of male control. They are free to decide for themselves whether they will live a life of work or contemplation, whether they will focus on study or devote themselves to serving the community. At the height of the Inquisition, these women are a thorn in the side of the Church and of male authority in general. Quand des historien.ne.s chercheur.e.s reconnus recommandent avec autant de chaleur un roman et prennent le temps de le discuter, ça attise la curiosité. Je me suis plongée dans ce livre et je ne l'ai pas regretté : il est vraiment bon. Neri Pozza non sbaglia un colpo, almeno per il mio gusto. Romanzi davvero interessanti, trame ben costruite, ottime traduzioni, testi di livello e ricerca storica esaustiva. Completamente appaganti, non manca nulla! Sono restata incollata alle pagine non sapendo cosa aspettarmi come conclusione. Piron, Sylvain (2017). "Marguerite in Champagne" (PDF). Journal of Medieval Religious Cultures. 47 (2): 135–156. doi: 10.5325/jmedirelicult.43.2.0135. S2CID 56011330. The text survives in six versions in four languages with thirteen manuscripts, making it among the more widely disseminated of the vernacular mystical texts of the Middle Ages. (McGinn, Flowering, p246, and n251 on p438).Field, Sean L. The Beguine, the Angel, and the Inquisitor: The Trials of Marguerite Porete and Guiard of Cressonessart (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2012). ISBN 0268028923 After Porete's death, however, the Mirror was circulated as an anonymous work. Originally written in Old French, it was translated into Latin, Italian, and Middle English and circulated widely. [24] In spite of its reputation as a heretical work it remained popular in Medieval times. At one point it was thought that John of Ruusbroec had written it. Porete's life is recorded only in the accounts of her Inquisition trial for heresy, at which she was condemned to be burnt at the stake. [12] This information about Porete is probably biased and certainly incomplete. She was said to have come from the County of Hainaut, a French-speaking principality in the Holy Roman Empire, but this is uncertain. Her high level of education means she is likely to have had upper-class origins. She was associated with the beguine movement and was therefore able to travel fairly freely. [13] Trial and death [ edit ]

La malédiction, dit-on, comme l’exorcisme ou les formules de guérison, procède de la répétition. Les mots prennent une vertu opérative dès lors qu’on les prononce et les prononce encore. More than one recent scholar has proposed also that Porete represented a threat to the male-dominated authority of the Church. Although Porete writes in her prologue that some learned clerics did read the book and approve it before she released it, the fact that a laywoman released such a book and in French, not even in Latin, was way overstepping boundaries of the time. R. Lahav, "Marguerite Porete and the Predicament of her Preaching in Fourteenth Century France," in Laurence Lux-Sterritt and Carmen Mangion (eds), Gender, Catholicism and Spirituality: Women and the Roman Catholic Church in Britain and Europe, 1200–1900 (Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 2011), Porete's vision of the Soul in ecstatic union with God, moving in a state of perpetual joy and peace, is a repetition of the Catholic doctrine of the Beatific Vision, albeit experienced in this life and not in the next. Where Porete ran into trouble with some authorities was in her description of the Soul in this state being above the worldly dialectic of conventional morality and the teachings and control of the earthly church. Porete argues that the Soul in such a sublime state is above the demands of ordinary virtue, not because virtue is not needed but because in its state of union with God virtue becomes automatic. As God can do no evil and cannot sin, the exalted/Annihilated soul, in perfect union with Him, no longer is capable of evil or sin. Church authorities viewed the concept that someone was above the demands of ordinary virtue as amoral. What I like about the storyline is that it centres not on the lives not of royalty or nobility, but of ordinary women, who live in a close community, helping and caring for one another. There is much that one can learn about their unencumbered lives of doing good and quiet reflection on the Scriptures.

Why Was This Heresy?

Ce roman nous fait entrer dans le plus grand béguinage de Paris en nous expliquant qui étaient ces femmes sans hommes (veuves ou pas encore mariée) non religieuses et dont certaines travaillaient.

To Porete, there are two kinds of revelation: there is normal revelation, which is easily accessible to the senses, which includes the religious ideas and traditions around Christianity, and there is a second one that pertains more to this book than normal revelation: divine revelation. The book is predicated on Porete's own ethos, because she is writing about her own personal, subjective understanding of some objective mystery that lies beyond the reach of her mind. She metaphorizes and personifies concepts to help communicate concepts that might be difficult to communicate directly. Oneness with God I found this edition of the Classics of Western Spirituality pretty difficult. Porete was a beguine who was denounced and burned as a heretic in 1310. The text is a running dialogue intended to describe the relationship between the individual and God, especially the relationship between the Soul and Divine Love. Porete’s spirituality is unique, especially with respect to Divine Love. She refers to five stages in which divine love makes a transition to act directly on the soul. The first stage involves grace working on the soul, removing sin, and commanding acts to love God. The second stage involves the abandonment of self, and the third stage involves love of works to perfect and multiply those works. In the fourth stage, the soul becomes consumed by the ecstasy of God’s love, and in the fifth stage the soul comes into mystical and existential union with God. These stages involve three kinds of “death” along the way, in similarly difficult language and concept. For those very serious students of ecclesiastical history and medieval mysticism I think there is much to study in this work. For me though, I must confess, most went straight over my head. Upon hearing Love's argument, Reason responds with skepticism. How could the soul be stripped of its moral goodness and still be good? Love responds that all of God's goodness can be enjoyed directly, without thoughts. She says that the truth of divine love is inaccessible through thought or philosophy and must be experienced directly as the soul purges itself of blinders. Update this section! Sells, Michael A. (1994). Mystical Languages of Unsaying. University of Chicago Press. p.117. ISBN 0-226-74786-7. Aline Kiner’s La nuit de béguines centers on a controversial group of historical women called beguines. Long a source of fascination for medieval historians, beguines are currently having a moment in historical fiction. La nuit des béguines interweaves a climate of suspicion of heresy into a story that centers on the Parisian women whose lives are imperiled by the unwanted scrutiny Marguerite Porete (the only medieval author to die for a book, in 1310) inadvertently drew to their status and community. Aline Kiner’s engrossing novel follows the Parisian beguines’ descent into obscurity (the “night of beguines” referenced in the title).Medieval manuals on "discretio spirituum" — the clerical judgement of mystical visions — called for the clergy to serve in an advisory role but nevertheless cautioned them about their own ultimate inability to make a definitive judgement on such matters (see late-medieval manuals such as Gerson's "De probatione spirituum" and "De distinctione verarum visionum a falsis"). Such manuals tell the clergy to provide learned guidance, not ultimate judgement, warning them that they might make a mistake and end up opposing the Divine Will. Les béguines étaient des femmes « hors normes », parmi lesquelles, on retrouve des jeunes veuves, soulagées de ne plus devoir répondre aux exigences d’un époux souvent brutal ; certaines d’entre elles ont été littéralement « vendues » par leur famille, où la vie d’une fille ne compte que dans la mesure où elle peut être offerte en alliance pour régler des dettes ou un litige. I have no joy of the one nor misease of the other, since my Beloved in this neither loseth nor winneth. All is one to me concerning him that is one; and this point maketh me one or else I should anon be twain. If my will were set on the one more than the other, whether of mercy or of righteousness, then were I ‘with’ myself, and so should I be twain. The Son of God is my mirror in this, for God the Father gave his Son our Saviour to be an ensample to us. The chief heresy seems to have been that such a union with God was possible. During Porete’s lifetime there was a widespread “Free Spirit” movement the Church was eager to stamp out. The Free Spirits didn’t all believe the same things. But a common proposal among them was autotheism, or the belief that a perfected soul was indistinguishably one with God. And, yes, Porete certainly was proposing that. The 14th century Church completely opposed the idea that a fallen, sinful, created being could be indistinguishable from God. Humbert, il frate francescano che fa una promessa al suo priore, quella di salvare un libro che la Chiesa considera eretico.