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Updated 04-06-08
Marguerite Porete
/Porette /Marguerite of Hainaut (d.1310)
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"IT WAS HER WISH THAT HER NEIGHBORS WOULD FIND GOD IN HER,
THROUGH HER WRITINGS AND HER WORDS."
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Nothing is known about the life of Marguerite Porete except from the records of the heresy trial that resulted in her death. Her accusers labeled her a beguine, but they meant it as an insult; we simply don't know whether she considered herself a beguine (one passage in her book places beguines among her critics). Her writing suggests that she was well educated in courtly literature and in biblical and other religious texts.
In the early 1300s she was living in the area around Valencienne, in what is now the Hainaut province of Belgium. We know this because sometime before 1306, her book, Mirouer des simples ames, was condemned by the bishop of Cambrai and publicly burnt; its use was prohibited under pain of excommunication. In 1306 Mirouer probably consisted only of the first 122 chapters. Scholars believe that it after the book's condemnation that the last 17 chapters were added in order to explain and defend Porete's views. With these additions the complete book was submitted to and approved by three theologians (although two of the three were nervous about the work's being written in the vernacular and so available to a the non-Latin-reading public).
Despite this cautious approval, Porete apparently continued to be an annoyance to the authorities. By late 1308, she was in a Paris prison for repeatedly refusing to appear before an ecclesiastical court in order to swear to tell the truth. In April 1310, 21 theologians judged 15 excerpts from her book heretical. This was not itself a capital offense, but the canonists judged that she had not submitted to the bishop of Cambrai's injunction not to speak about her book. Since she still refused to take the oath and respond, she was condemned as a relapsed heretic at the end of May. On June 1, she was burnt at the stake.
Unless individual lines are taken out of context (which is exactly what happened at Paris), it is difficult today to see much in Mirouer that would bother any but the most sensitive defender of ecclesiastical honor. However, the early 1300s were not a good time in France to be questioning any authority, religious or secular. The book itself fared better than its author; it was translated into at least four languages and read for several centuries as an admirable text by "an unknown French mystic." (One of her later readers would be Marguerite de Navarre, who would praise Mirouer in her 1647-48 poem, Les prisons.)
On this page you'll find:
Links to helpful sites online.
Excerpts from translations in print.
Information about secondary sources.
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1. Translated excerpts from Mirouer des simples ames:
(a) Part of the verse prologue, "Theologians and other clerks," translated by Peter Dronke.
(b) The opening of Ch. 5, "Of this life, says Love, we wish to speak," translated by Ellen L. Babinsky.
(c) From Ch. 11, "The very marvelous one. The Not Understood," by Babinsky.
(d) From Ch. 88, "This Humility, who is aunt and mother," from Babinsky.
(e) At the end of a brief essay by M.D. Coverley, the verse ending of Ch. 97, "When I expressed these precious unspeakable things"; then, linking to "Recto" and to "Verso" will bring you to two other Coverley essays, with passages from Ch. 9 and from the prose prologue. The translations are by Sheila Hughes.
(f) All of Babinsky's version of all of Chapters 119-122, probably the original conclusion to the work (for more from Babinsky, see below, under "In print").
(g) Lines from Ch. 132, translated by Dronke, "Beloved, what do you want of me?
2. Essays:
(a) Ellen L. Babinsky's "Christological Transformation in The Mirror of Souls, by Marguerite Porete" (2003) develops a theme not discussed in the introduction to her 1993 translation of Mirouer: here she sees Porete describing the soul's becoming by grace what Jesus Christ is by nature, and the book an instrument of Divine Love that is to transform its readers.
(b) This 1987 essay by Babinsky, "The Use of Courtly Language in the Le Mirouer des simples ames anienties," contains material that would later be used in her 1993 translation; Babinsky provides translations of parts of the prose prologue, of chapters 86 and 131, as well as her summary of Porete's seven stages of the pursuit of perfection.
(c) Porete is one of the writers discussed in "'Who does she think she is?' Christian Women's Mysticism" (2003), by Amy Hollywood, which looks at the women's need to balance expression of humility with a belief in their privileged relation to God --- and at modern readers' reaction to that need; Hollywood quotes from several chapters of Mirouer, in Babinsky's translation.
(d) Barbara R. Walter's 2002 sociological study, "Women Religious Virtuosae from the Middle Ages: A Case Pattern and Analytic Model of Types," uses Porete as one of the author's examples of the variety of religious expression in the period.
(e) "Decreation: How Women Like Sappho, Marguerite Porete, and Simone Weil Tell God" (2002), by Anne Carson, discusses the contradiction involved in each writer's denying herself in the very act of writing about herself.
(f) A1993 essay by Margaret R. Miles on Mirouer as a religious classic; quoted passages are in Charles Crawford's translation (for information on Crawford's book, see below under "In print").
3. Reviews (for excerpts from the translation, see "In print"; for information on the other books' treatment of Porete, see "Secondary sources"):
(a) Suzanne Kocher on the 1999 translation by Edmund Colledge, J.C. Marler, and Judith Grant, The Mirror of Simple Souls.
(b) James A. Wiseman on Bernard McGinn's 1998 history, The Flowering of Mysticism: Men and Women in the New Mysticism (1200-1350).
(c) Cynthia Ho on Barbara Newman's 1995 study, From Virile Woman to WomanChrist: Studies in Medieval Religion and Literature.
4. Excerpts from Robert E.Lerner's 1972 book. The Heresy of the Free Spirit in the Later Middle Ages. Lerner discusses Porete's teachings and shows why the authorities reacted to her as they did (for information on Lerner's book, see "Secondary sources").
5. Contemporary documents on the trial and execution of Porete, translated by Richard Barton. To follow the actual chronology, read the four documents in this order: C, B, A, D.
6. Translations of the decrees of the Council of Vienne (1311-12): Go to Section 28 for the condemnation of eight propositions attributed to beguines and beghards (their male counterparts). Most of the condemned propositions appear to be derived directly from Mirouer des simples ames. At another page of the same site, look at Section 16, which illustrates the council's ambivalent view of beguine groups.
7. A 2008 bibliography of Mirouer editions, translations and studies.
8. On beguines:
(a) Abby Stoner's 1995 essay, "Sisters Between: Gender and the Medieval Beguine"; it includes passages from Porete, translated by Dronke.
(b) For a broader historical view, Kate P. Crawford Galea's 1993 essay, "Unhappy Choices: Factors That Contributed to the Decline and Condemnation of the Beguines."
(c) David Burr's translation of Bernard Gui's description of beguines, from Gui's 1324-1331 Practica Inquisitionis Heretice Pravitatis (Conduct of the inquisition of heretical depravity).
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[This translation of Mirouer des simples ames, by Edmund Colledge, J.C. Marler, and Judith Grant, is perhaps the most valuable for the general reader, because of the extensive notes and appendices which give the glosses of later copyists and translators, showing how they attempted to cope with passages that appeared heterodox. The introduction gives complete background on the historical situation and on the influences on Marguerite's book. (See the book's table of contents online.):]
The mirror of simple souls / Margaret Porette; translated
from the French with an introductory interpretative essay by
Edmund Colledge, J.C. Marler, and Judith Grant; and a foreword
by Kent Emery, Jr. (Notre Dame texts in medieval culture; vol.
6). Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, c1999.
(lxxxvii, 209 p.)
LC#: BV5091.C7 P6713 1999; ISBN: 0268014353
Includes bibliographical references (p. 195-200) and indexes
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"...in the manner in which she desired to find him in his
creatures."
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[On Porete's search and on her decision to write:]
Once there was a poor suppliant creature who for a long time sought God in his creatures, to see whether she would find him as she would have him be, and as he himself would be if the creature let him work his divine works in her without hindrance from her; and nothing did she find, but remained as she was, hungering for that for which she sought.
And when she saw that she found nothing, she reflected in herself; and her reflection told her that she should go to seek him, as she would have him be, in the very depths of the core of the understanding of the purity of her exalted reflection; and this poor suppliant creature went to seek him there, and she resolved that she would write of God in the manner in which she desired to find him in his creatures.
And so this poor suppliant creature wrote what you hear; and it was her wish that her neighbors would find God in her, through her writings and her words....and in doing this, and saying this, and willing this, a suppliant she remained, know this well, and burdened down by herself; and she was a suppliant because this was what she wished to do. [ch.96, p.120]
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"You may at least provide the glosses for this book!"
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[And again, speaking to the hearer/reader of her book :]
For zeal of love and the labor of charity, by which I was encumbered, have made me make this writing, so that you may be like this [a follower of perfect love] without delay, at least in will, if that is is still in you; and if you are already freed from all things, and are without will and living a life beyond your understanding, so that you may at least provide the glosses for this book! [ch.60, p.81]
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"Who they are..., neither you nor they know that."
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[A dialogue between Love and the virtues, on the impossibility of identifying the souls ruled by perfect love:]
"O Holy Trinity," say Faith, Hope, and Charity, "where are there such sublime Souls as this book describes? Who are they, and where are they, and what do they do? Reveal them to us by Love, who knows everything, and so they will be set at rest who, hearing this book, are dismayed. For all Holy Church, if she were to here it read, would be dismayed by it...."
"Truly, this is Holy Church the Less," says Love, "who is ruled by Reason, and not Holy Church the Great..., who is ruled by us."
"Now tell me," says Love to the three divine virtues, "why do you ask us who these Souls are, and where they are, and what they do?... All three of you know where they are, for you are with them at every moment of time, for it is you three who ennoble them. And what they do you also know. But who they are---to speak of their worth and dignity---neither you nor they know that, and so Holy Church cannot know it.... That God alone knows...." [ch.19, pp.38-39]
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"The Soul set Free has no will at all..., except only to
will the will of God."
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[Many passages of the book are dialogues between Love and an increasingly confused Reason. Reason leads souls to God in one way, Love in another; Porete uses the dialogues to try to explain the difference:]
"...Love," says Reason, "...my understanding and my intelligence and all my advice, as well as I can advise, all tell me that one should long for contempt, poverty, and every kind of tribulation, and Masses and sermons and fastings and prayers, and that one should fear all kinds of love, whatever they may be, because of the dangers which may be in them, and that one should long above all for Paradise and fear Hell, and that one refuse every kind of honor and temporal goods, and every ease, denying Nature what it asks, except only that without which it could not exist, following the example of the suffering and Passion of our Lord Jesus Christ. This is the best," says Reason, "which I can say and advise to all those who live in my obedience...."
"It is well asked" says Love, "and I shall satisfy all your prayers and questions."
"I assure you, Reason," says Love, "that these Souls who are guided by Perfect Love value shame as highly as honor, and honor as dearly as shame, poverty as highly as riches, and riches as dearly as poverty; suffering at the hands of God and his creatures as highly as consolation from God and his creatures, being loved as highly as being hated, being hated as dearly as being loved, being in Hell as highly as being in Paradise, and being in Paradise as dearly as being in Hell; lowly estate as highly as great, and great estate as dearly as lowly, whether it be for soul or for body....
"...[S]uch Souls do not know what is better for them, nor how God wants to provide their salvation nor the salvation of their neighbors.... And therefore the Soul set Free has no will at all to will or not to will, except only to will the will of God, and to submit in peace to the divine command." [ch.13, pp.30-31]
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"This is utter bewilderment!"
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[What Reason simply cannot accept is Love's apparent rejection of the mediation of the Church:]
"This Soul," says Love, "...no longer seeks God through penance or through any sacrament of Holy Church; not through reflections or words or works, not through any creature here below or through any creature there above, not through justice or mercy or the glory of glories, not through divine knowledge or divine love or divine praise."
"O God! O God! O God!" says Reason. "What does this creature say? This is utter bewilderment! What will those whom I nurture say? I could find nothing to say to them nor to answer them so as to excuse this."
"I am not at all amazed," says this Soul, "for these men have feet that tread no path, have hands that do no work, have mouths that speak no words, have eyes that see no light, have ears that do not hear, have reason but do not reason, body but no life, have hearts but do not understand, in everything that concerns this state of being. That is why those you nurture are amazed beyond all amazement."
"Truly, these are marvels," says Love, "most amazing to them, for they are too far from the land where these are the customs to have any sublimity. But those who are such, and who are of the land, such men in whom God dwells are not at all amazed." [chs. 85-86, pp.109-10]
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"And yet, elected daughter, you must know that Paradise
shall be their fill."
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[God, like Love, is less censorious about those who follow Reason and "Holy Church the Less" than is the Soul. The Holy Trinity later tells the Soul:]
"Dear daughter, now I beg of you,
My sister and the only love for me.
For love's sake if you will,
No more of our secrets that you tell
Which you know well.
For others would perdition find
Where your salvation is assigned.
Since none but Reason and Longing are their lords
And Dread and Will.
"And yet, elected daughter, you must know
That Paradise shall be their fill."
"Paradise?" says this elected one. "Do you not award differently to them? So murderers are to have this too, if they are willing to cry for mercy! But even so I will be silent, since that is your wish." [ch.121, p.149]
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[Ellen L. Babinsky's translation is accompanied by an extensive analytical introduction and a clearly organized bibliography. The book lacks only the later commentaries given with the translation by Colledge, et al., above. (See the book's table of contents online.):]
The mirror of simple souls / Marguerite Porete; translated
and introduced by Ellen L. Babinsky; preface by Robert E. Lerner
(The Classics of Western spirituality). New York: Paulist Press,
c1993. (viii, 249 p.)
LC#: BV5091.C7 P6713 1993; ISBN: 0809104644, 0809134276
Includes bibliographical references (p. 234-243) and indexes
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"Beguines say I err...."
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[From a prayer at the end of the pre-1306 text:]
O my Lover, what will beguines say
and religious types,
When they hear the excellence
of your divine song?
Beguines say I err,
priests, clerics, and Preachers,
Augustinians, Carmelites,
and the Friars Minor,
Because I wrote about the being
of the one purified by Love.
I do not make Reason safe for them,
who makes them say this to me....
I have said that I will love Him.
I lie, for I am not.
It is He alone who loves me:
He is, and I am not;
And nothing more is necessary to me
Than what He wills,
And that He is worthy.
He is fullness,
And by this I am impregnated,
This is the divine seed and Loyal Love.
[ch.122, pp.200-201]
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"I cannot help you."
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[The last chapters, probably written after the book's condemnation, for the most part rephrase what has gone before. But one passage suggests that Porete realized that all her attempted explanations would be futile:]
If you do not understand, I cannot help you. This is a miraculous work, of which one can tell you nothing, unless it is a lie. [ch.132, p.216]
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[Caution: Charles Crawford's is a partial translation of a Middle English version of a Latin translation of the French original: Part 2, according to Crawford, is "considerably shortened" from the Middle English text (p.18). However, the book is useful for the glosses made by the Middle English translator:]
A mirror for simple souls: the mystical work of Marguerite
Porete / edited and translated by Charles Crawford; introduced
by Anne L. Barstow (Spiritual classics). New York: Crossroad,
1990. (153 p.: ill.)
LC#: BV5091.CE M5713 1981; ISBN: 0824509951
[Originally published as : A mirror for simple souls / by an
anonymous thirteenth-century French mystic; 1981. ISBN:
0824500830]
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Secondary sources
[Joanne Maguire's Robinson's study is a discussion of the theological beliefs revealed in Mirouer. However, even readers uninterested in theology will find useful the last chapter's analysis of the metaphors used by Porete. Robinson uses Ellen Babinsky's translation but gives the original in the notes. The bibliography is thorough through 1998; an appendix gives documents from Porete's trial, some of which are not available online. (See the book's table of contents online.):]
Robinson, Joanne Maguire. Nobility and annihilation in Marguerite
Porete's Mirror of simple souls (SUNY series in Western esoteric
traditions). Albany: State University of New York Press, c2001.
(xvi, 178 p.)
LC#: BV5091.C7 R62 2001; ISBN: 079144967X, 0791449688
Includes bibliographical references (p. 161-174) and index
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[A.C. Spearing's essay in this collection, "Marguerite
Porete: Courtliness and Transcendence in The Mirror of Simple
Souls," discusses Mirouer as a dialogic text which
presents the same themes from different angles, as in its presentation
of heaven as both here and hereafter. (See
the book's table of contents online.):]
Envisaging heaven in the Middle ages / edited by Carolyn Muessig
and Ad Putter; with the assistance of Gareth Griffith and Judith
Jefferson (Routledge studies in medieval religion and culture;
6). London; New York: Routledge, 2007. (x, 258 p.: ill.)
LC#: BT846.3 .E58 2007; ISBN: 9780415383837
Includes bibliographical references and index
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[Robin Anne O'Sullivan's article discusses Porete's didactic intent in Mirouer, first describing the beguine method of education and the contemporary emphasis on meditation on the life of Jesus, and then showing how parts of Book 1 illustrate Porete's teaching method. O'Sullivan gives her translation of all quoted passage and provides the original in the notes. (See the issue's table of contents online; you can link to an abstract of the article.):]
O'Sullivan, Robin Anne. The school of love: Marguerite Porete's
Mirror of Simple Souls. Journal of Medieval History, 32
(2006) 2, 143-162.
LC#: D111 .J67; ISSN: 0304-4181
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[Stephanie Paulsell's essay in this collection, "Dreaming
the King, Writing God: Hope, Desire, and Fiction in Marguerite
Porete's Mirror of simple souls," analyzes those
parts of Mirouer which speak of the making of the book
in order to see the relationship between the character, "Soul,"
and the work's authorial voice. Paulsell gives her own translations
of cited passages. (See
the book's table of contents online.):]
Literature, religion, and East/West comparison: essays in honor
of Anthony C. Yu / edited by Eric Ziolkowski. Newark: University
of Delaware Press, c2005. (xi, 295 p.)
LC#: PN49 .L523 2005; ISBN: 0874138698
Includes bibliographical references and index
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[This collection includes an essay by Grace M. Jantzen, "Disrupting the Sacred: Religion and Gender in the City," which sees Mirouer questioning the political activities of Philip IV's court and which discusses the view of earlier critics of Porete's writing. (See the book's table of contents online.):]
Mysticism & social transformation / edited by Janet K.
Ruffing; with a foreword by Robert J. Egan. Syracuse, N.Y.: Syracuse
University Press, 2001. (xvi, 220 p.)
LC#: BV5082.2 .M58 2001; ISBN: 0815628765, 0815628773
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[Volume 3 of Bernard McGinn's history of western Christian mysticism
includes a thorough discussion of Porete (pp.244-265).
McGinn's notes give full bibliographic information on earlier
translations and studies; they also give the original of all
translated passages.
(See the book's table of contents online.):]
McGinn, Bernard.The flowering of mysticism: men and women
in the new mysticism (1200-1350) (The presence of God; vol. 3).New
York: Crossroad, c1998. (xiv, 526 p.)
LC#: BV5075 .M37 vol. 3; ISBN: 0824517423, 0824517431
Includes bibliographical references (p. [465]-505) and indexes
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[In Barbara Newman's study, one chapter, "La mystique Courtoise: Thirteenth-Century Beguines and the Art of Love," compares Porete's thought with that of Hadewijch and Mechthild of Magdeburg; the whole book is good on the background of the period. (See the book's table of contents online.):]
Newman, Barbara. From virile woman to womanChrist: studies
in medieval religion and literature (Middle Ages series). Philadelphia:
University of Pennsylvania Press, c1995. ( 355 p.: ill.)
LC#: BV639.W7 N48 1995; ISBN: 0812232739, 0812215451
Includes bibliographical references (p. [321]-343)
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[Peter Dronke discusses Porete in some detail (pp.217-228): he translates and gives the original of six passages of "lyrical moments" in Mirouer des simples ames. (See the book's table of contents online.):]
Dronke, Peter. Women writers of the Middle Ages: a critical
study of texts from Perpetua (d. 203) to Marguerite Porete (d,1310).
Cambridge [Cambridgeshire]; New York: Cambridge University Press,
1984. (xi, 338 p.)
LC#: PN671 .D7 1984; ISBN: 0521255805, 0521275733
Bibliography: p. 320-332. Includes indexes
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[This older study by Robert E. Lerner is still useful in explaining why Porete and her book created the furor that it did; Lerner also gives a clear summary of the content and structure of Mirouer. (See the book's table of contents online.):]
Lerner, Robert E. The heresy of the free spirit in the later
Middle Ages. Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press,
c1972. (xv, 257 p.)
LC#: BT1358 .L47 1972b; ISBN: 0268010943
Includes bibliographical references (p. 244]-246) and index
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[This anthology includes Nicholas Watson's essay, "Melting into God the English way: Deification in the Middle English version of Marguerite Porete's Mirouer des simples ames anienties," which describes the ways in which the English translator tried to make Porete's work palatable to his clerical readers:]
Prophets abroad: the reception of Continental holy women in
late-medieval England / edited by Rosalynn Voaden. Cambridge;
Rochester, NY, USA: D.S. Brewer, 1996. (xiii, 197 p.: ill.)
LC#: BV5077.E54 P76 1996; ISBN: 0859914259
Includes bibliographical references
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Updated 04-06-08