Marguerite Porete
Marguerite Porete was a medieval mystic and writer, best known for her work "The Mirror of Simple Souls," which articulated a unique spiritual perspective that emphasized direct union with God. Although little is known about her early life, it is believed she was well-educated, potentially from an aristocratic background, and associated with the Beguine movement—a group of laywomen dedicated to a life of spirituality without formal vows. Porete's writing reflects her disdain for institutionalized religion and strict dogma, advocating instead for a personal and mystical understanding of divine love.
Her work, written in the vernacular, gained significant attention but also led to her condemnation by ecclesiastical authorities for its perceived heretical views. Porete was ultimately arrested, tried, and executed by burning in 1310 for refusing to renounce her beliefs. Despite her tragic end, "The Mirror of Simple Souls" continued to circulate and influence later thinkers, contributing to the broader movement of late medieval mysticism. Her ideas resonated with figures like Meister Eckhart and would later be admired by various religious reformers throughout the centuries. Porete remains an important figure in the history of mysticism and spirituality, representing the tension between personal belief and institutional authority in her time.
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Marguerite Porete
French writer and mystic
- Born: c. 1255-1280
- Birthplace: Probably the region of Hainaut (now in Belgium)
- Died: June 1, 1310
- Place of death: Paris, France
A religious mystic burned as a heretic, Marguerite Porete wrote a book of spiritual contemplation and mysticism called The Mirror of Simple Souls. The book was written not in Latin but in the vernacular, and, despite Church condemnation, it secretly circulated for centuries, attracting readers until at least the early seventeenth century.
Early Life
Despite a great deal of scholarly research, no historian has been able to learn many details concerning the early life of Marguerite Porete (po-reht). However, her book and the records of her trial for heresy tell us some details. Porete’s writing suggests that she was well educated in both religious works and the courtly literary tradition. Because of her education and because her book disparages the crudeness of peasants and merchants, some scholars think that she might have been raised in an aristocratic family.
The Inquisition classified Porete as a Beguine (probably from a Flemish word meaning “to pray”). The Beguines were composed of a variety of pious laywomen in northwestern Europe. The movement was organized in Flanders by Marie d’Oignies in the twelfth century, and it spread into northern France, Belgium, the Netherlands, and Germany. However, Porete never called herself a Beguine, and it is not certain that she formally belonged to the organization. Beguines lived a life of holiness without connection to an official, formal order, and they did not take perpetual vows. Living alone or with families, they devoted themselves to prayer, poverty, chastity, and charitable works. They wore an austere garb and lived by begging and doing menial work. For women not wishing to marry or enter a monastery, joining the sisterhood was one of the few life-options available.
Because Beguines were mostly unsupervised, it was common for members to develop heterodox or even heretical notions. Many members were women who did not hesitate to attack the materialistic values and corruption of the Church, attacks that greatly displeased the clergy. In Porete’s day, many people suspected that Beguines and Beghards, a corresponding association of men, were guilty of immorality and heresy. The two groups were frequently confused with the secret Free Spirit sect, whose members were rumored to practice sexual promiscuity without any sense of guilt.
Sometimes the term Beguine was used loosely to refer to an unmarried woman who practiced an ascetic lifestyle. Porete mentioned in her book that Beguines were among her severe critics. Given her strong religious inclinations, it would have appeared natural for her to be drawn into the sisterhood. Perhaps she was a solitary itinerant Beguine who expounded her message to anyone willing to listen. Certainly Porete’s persecutors believed that she was affiliated with the movement, which was detested in conservative circles. The inquisitors were ready to make an example of a Beguine with heterodox ideas.
Life’s Work
In the early 1300’, Porete was apparently living in the region around Valenciennes, a French town on the Schelde River near the border with Belgium. It is not known exactly when she wrote Le Miroir des âmes simples (The Mirror of Simple Souls, 1927), but it was sometime before 1306, the year in which the bishop of Cambrai ordered it publicly burned and prohibited its use under threat of excommunication. If the book had appeared only in Latin, it possibly would have been ignored. However, literary works in vernacular languages, like The Mirror of Simple Souls, found a large and growing readership.
The Mirror of Simple Souls, written for a spiritual elite rather than average Christians, articulates a religious viewpoint usually called mysticism, the belief that a person might attain direct spiritual union with God. The book poetically synthesized mystical ideas that were found in many previous writings, such as those of Pseudo-Dionysius, Joachim of Fiore, several women mystics, and the Franciscan Spirituals. It is written in the format of a play with dialogues, a form earlier used by Boethius. The allegorical characters include Soul, Love, Reason, Desire, Truth, and Discretion.
Committed to the values of faith and love, Porete had little use for strict reason. She expressed contempt for academic theologians because she believed they were incapable of understanding divine truth and spirituality. She asserted that only a person with an inspired and childlike soul could achieve the divine illumination necessary to understand such concepts. According to her scheme, the maturing person’s soul (or spirit) passes through seven states until it finally enters a state of perfection and becomes “annihilated” as a separate entity, just as a river empties into an ocean. An annihilated soul would actually become godlike while the person is still alive.
For Porete, love is the essence of God, and it is also the essence of the annihilated soul. Thus, she writes that an annihilated soul “is God by condition of love.” Her view of love is always highly abstract and relates primarily to contemplation rather than practice. She does not define love by reference to either altruistic behavior or erotic sexuality.
Porete never directly contradicted Catholic dogma, but she often made nonliteral and metaphorical interpretations of concepts such as the Trinity. She simply ignored those beliefs and practices not relevant to her mysticism and pantheism. For Porete, pantheism meant that the spirit of God was found everywhere, not just within the Church. Her pantheism implied that the Church was not necessarily the final authority in religious matters. Disparaging “Holy Church the Little,” which was governed by reason, she taught that annihilated souls belonged to “Holy Church the Great,” which was governed by divine love.
Although some modern theologians argue that her book was not actually heretical, her views on freedom were clearly inconsistent with medieval orthodoxy. Because she was convinced that The Mirror of Simple Souls was inspired by the Holy Spirit, she was simply unwilling to conform her teachings to the demands of bishops and councils. Unfortunately for her, and many others, this was the age of Pope Boniface VIII’ bull Unam sanctam (one holy catholic and apostolic church, 1302), which strongly affirmed the necessity of obedience to the clerical hierarchy in matters of religious doctrine.
The authorities were especially disturbed by Porete’s tendency toward antinomianism, the doctrine that an enlightened soul can ignore the laws of the Church and of the state. “Virtues, I take leave of you forever,” she wrote. “I was never more free, except as departed from you.” To orthodox ears, such statements seemed to advocate the radical libertinism of the Free Spirit heresy. Yet no one accused Porete of sinful behavior. She was probably simply emphasizing that the spiritual elite would be virtuous without the need for external rules. She did not deny that conventional rules are necessary for persons lacking spiritual maturity. Porete’s ambiguous rhetoric, however, was always susceptible to any number of different interpretations.
Other ideas in The Mirror of Simple Souls displeased the orthodox clergy. Porete denigrated outward religious practices, including the sacraments. Likewise, she expressed little concern about future judgment and the afterlife. In fact, she wrote that by participating in the worship of God, she was already in Paradise, which was “nothing other than seeing god.”
Ignoring the bishop of Cambrai’s condemnation of 1306, Porete persisted in her missionary activities. She even dared to send copies of The Mirror of Simple Souls to prominent members of the clergy. The bishop of Cambrai again threatened her with severe punishment, as did the inquisitor of Lorraine. Undeterred, she extended her work to Paris, where The Mirror of Simple Souls attracted the attention of the notoriously harsh inquisitor general of France, the Dominican master William of Paris, who was also the personal confessor of King Philip IV the Fair. At this time King Philip was preparing for war with neighboring kingdoms, he was in the process of destroying the Knights Templars, and he was also involved in a power struggle with the Papacy. Given these conflicts, Philip and his close associates were determined to act as vigorous defenders of the orthodox faith.
In late 1308, William had Porete arrested and imprisoned in Paris. About the same time, he also ordered the arrest of Guiard de Cressonessart, a mystical Beghard who was accused of defending Porete and of denying the authority of the pope. The two prisoners were ordered to appear before the Inquisition court. Both refused to swear an oath, and they were kept in inquisitorial dungeons for the next year and a half. To decide their fates, William convoked a panel of five law professors and eleven theologians from the University of Paris.
On April 3, the panel judged unanimously that Porete’s book was heretical and that the two defendants should be handed over to the government for execution unless they retracted. Guiard retracted and was sentenced to life imprisonment. Porete, however, refused to renounce her unorthodox doctrines. On May 31, 1310, William formally declared her a relapsed heretic and then turned her over to secular authorities. The next day, she was burned at the stake before a huge crowd at the Place de Grève (now l’Hôtel de Ville). This was a busy period for the Inquisition. Outside Paris that same month, at least fifty-four Templars were condemned to the flames as heretics.
Following Porete’s execution, controversy surrounding The Mirror of Simple Souls did not end. In 1312, the ecumenical council of Vienne condemned eight alleged errors of The Mirror of Simple Souls and also denounced the “faithless women commonly known as Beguines.” Yet, The Mirror of Simple Souls continued to circulate clandestinely, and during the next two centuries it was translated several times into English, Latin, and Italian. The Inquisition frequently confiscated the book, but it kept reappearing. Several church councils reaffirmed its heretical status. At least forty copies existed in the sixteenth century.
Significance
The movement of late medieval mysticism had an enormous influence on many thinkers, and Porete’s The Mirror of Simple Souls was a relatively significant part of that movement. Meister Eckhart, the most famous of the German mystics, expressed ideas similar to those in The Mirror of Simple Souls. He was in Paris soon after Porete’s execution, and he personally knew some of the theologians who condemned her book. If he read it, he unquestionably found reinforcement for his own work. During the next four centuries, numerous persons of mystical temperament, including Marguerite of Navarre, expressed admiration for The Mirror of Simple Souls. Some of the Lollards, Mennonites, and early Quakers were probably among its readers.
Bibliography
Babinsky, Ellen L. “Christological Transformation in The Mirror of Souls, by Marguerite Porete.” Theology Today 60, no. 1 (April, 2003): 34-48. Argues that Porete’s goal in The Mirror of Simple Souls is the reader’s spiritual transformation. Christology is the theological interpretation of the life and work of Christ.
Brunn, Emilie, and Georgette Epiney-Burgard. Women Mystics in Medieval Europe. New York: Paragon House, 1989. Following an introduction to mysticism and the Beguines, the book gives excellent descriptions of five mystic writers, including Porete, Hildegard von Bingen, Mechthild von Magdeburg, Beatrice of Nazareth, and Hadewijch of Antwerp.
Conn, Marie A. Noble Daughters: Unheralded Women in Western Christianity, Thirteenth to Eighteenth Centuries. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 2000. Looks at the history of women mystics and religious devotees, including the Beguines, from the time of Porete through the eighteenth century.
Dronke, Peter. Women Writers of the Middle Ages: A Critical Study of Texts from Perpetua to Marguerite Porete. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1984. A survey of feminist perspectives from the third to the beginning of the fourteenth century, with impressionist comments on Porete and other writers.
Holywood, Amy. The Soul as Virgin Wife: Mechthild of Magdeburg, Marguerite Porete, and Meister Eckhart. Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 2001. This book emphasizes the feminist perspectives of Mechthild and Porete, and argues that their writings directly influenced Eckhart’s ideas about divine love.
Lea, Henry Charles. A History of the Inquisition in the Middle Ages. New York: Macmillan, 1962. A standard work that includes a good summary of Porete’s trial and the full text of her condemnation by the Inquisition.
Lerner, Robert. The Heresy of the Free Spirit in the Later Middle Ages. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1972. A fascinating book arguing that Church authorities exaggerated the libertinism of the Free Spirits and even more the Beguines and Beghards.
McGinn, Bernard, ed. Meister Eckhart and the Beguine Mystics: Hadewijch of Brabant, Mechthild of Magdeburg, and Marguerite Porete. New York: Continuum, 1996. This book, edited by an outstanding scholar in the field, argues that Eckhart’s spiritual vision owed much to Porete and other women mystics.
Porete, Marguerite. The Mirror of Simple Souls. Translated by Ellen Babinsky. New York: Paulist Press, 1993. A readable translation with an interesting and scholarly sixty-one page introduction to Porete’s ideas and their historical context.
Robinson, Joanne Maguire. Nobility and Annihilation in Marguerite Porete’s “Mirror of Simple Souls.” Albany: State University of New York Press, 2001. A scholarly monograph that focuses on Porete’s doctrine of the soul’s annihilation.