To What Extent Were the Charges of Heresy Against 's "Mirror of Simple Souls" Justified?

On 1st June 1310, a woman named Marguerite Porete was burned at the stake on the charge of being a relapsed heretic.1 She was the author of a book called The Mirror of Simple Souls, a work deemed “heretical, erroneous, and contemptuous of heresies and errors,”2 and which seems to have formed the basis for the condemnation of religious movement of Beguines by the ,3 but which managed to have an “improbably romantic”4 afterlife. In this essay, I would like to investigate how far the charge that the Mirror was heretical was justified.

Although Marguerite was “the first medieval woman writer burned for heresy,”5 we know surprisingly little about her, as all our information comes from “predominantly hostile documentation regarding her trial and death,”6 and from her Mirror. It is questionable whether “Porete” was her surname or a nickname,7 and whether she came from Hainault or Valenciennes.8 She was named in her trial documentation as a Beguine, a designation accepted by the majority of scholars, 9 though this, too, may be questionable.10

We do know that Marguerite had come under ecclesiastical condemnation before her trial of 1310. Between 1296 and 130611 she had been brought before Guy II of Colmieu, Bishop of Cambrai, who had judged The Mirror of Simple Souls to be heretical and had had it burned in her presence. He had also forbidden her “to again compose, possess, or make use of such a book (or another like it).”12 Despite this, Marguerite continued to circulate her book, sending it to John,

1 Marguerite’s condemnation reads “We condemn you, Marguerite, not only as one fallen into heresy but also as a relapsed heretic…[we] now want you to be excommunicated and burned.” (Quoted in Barton, Richard E. “The Trial of Marguerite Porete (1310)”. http://www.uncg.edu/~rebarton/margporete.htm. Accessed 13/03/2019.) 2 Marguerite Porete’s trial records, quoted in Barton, Richard E.. 3 Lambert, M. D. Medieval Heresy : Popular Movements from the Gregorian Reform to the Reformation. Second ed. Oxford: Blackwell, 1992, p187 4 McInerney, Magdalen. Flames Fed from Within: Medieval Women and Mystical Writing, 1994, ProQuest Dissertations and Theses, p116 5 Bussey, Francesca Caroline. "'The World on the End of a Reed": Marguerite Porete and the Annihilation of an Identity in Medieval and Modern Representations – a Reassessment." 2007. University of Sydney: http://hdl.handle.net/2123/3875, p2 6 Bussey, Francesca Caroline, p6 7 For the argument that “Porete” was a nickname, see Lerner, Robert E. "New Light On The Mirror of Simple Souls." Speculum: A Journal of Medieval Studies 85, no. 1 (2010): 91-116, p92 8 Ibid., p93 9 Bussey, Francesca Caroline, p12 10 While Lerner writes that Marguerite “was called a beguine by so many independent sources that the designation may be taken as certain” (Lerner, Robert E. The Heresy of the Free Spirit in the Later . Berkeley: University of California Press, 1972, p71) this is questioned by Bussey, who argues that Marguerite herself rejects the designation, which was given to her by people hostile to her, and which also reflects a fundamentally unstable category (Bussey, Francesca Caroline, p138) 11 Field, Sean L. "The Master and Marguerite: ' Praise of The Mirror of Simple Souls." Journal of Medieval History 35, no. 2 (2009): 136-49, p137 12 Marguerite Porete’s trial records, quoted in Barton, Richard E. Bishop of Chalons, and to “many other simple people, to Beghards, and to others of similar status.”13 This result of this was that Marguerite was called before Philip of Marigny, Bishop of Cambrai, and then handed over to the in Paris for trial.14 At some point,15 Marguerite gathered testimonials supporting her book from two clerics about whom little is known, and from Godfrey of Fontaines, “the single most eminent contemporary theologian of the Francophone Low Countries.”16 During her trial, “nearly the entire [theological] faculty of Paris”17 was consulted as to whether the Mirror was heretical, based on selected extracts from the text. They declared that the book “ought to be exterminated as heretical,”18 and Marguerite’s fate was sealed. Later, the bull Ad Nostrum was produced at the Council of Viennes (1311–1312) which condemned the “abominable sect of…faithless women, commonly called Beguines,”19 listing errors of which some seem to have been lifted from the pages of the Mirror.20

While Marguerite was herself ‘exterminated’, her book was not. It continued to circulate, and was translated into Latin, Italian, and Middle English, with its authorship attributed variously to an anonymous monk, to Margaret of Hungary, and to Jan van Ruusbroec.21 In 1927, an English translation even received an imprimatur,22 and it was only in 1946 that Romana Guarnieri announced that she had traced the authorship of the Mirror to the convicted heretic, Marguerite Porete.23

It is evident from the continuing publication of the Mirror after Marguerite’s death that, however obvious it may have been to the Parisian theologians or to the Inquisitor, the question of heresy in the Mirror is far from clear-cut.24 In the years since Guarnieri’s identification of the Mirror’s author, there has been “considerable debate regarding the validity of the ecclesiastical condemnation”.25 Perhaps particularly in a case like the Mirror, which has been deemed both orthodox and unorthodox at various times in its history, it can be difficult to define what heresy is.

13 Ibid. 14 Field, Sean L, p138 15 Scholarly opinion is divided as to whether Marguerite sought the testimonials before or after her book was burned by Guy II of Cambrai. For the argument that Godfrey of Fontaines gave his testimonial after the book had been condemned in order to assert his right, as a master of theology, “to weigh her ideas independently of any episcopal condemnation”, see Field, Sean L., p147 16 Field, Sean L, p141 17 Ibid, p149 18 Quoted in Barton, Richard E. 19 Tanner, Norman. “Decrees of the Ecumenical Councils”, quoted in Papal Encyclicals Online, “Council of Vienne 1311-1312 A.D.” http://www.papalencyclicals.net/councils/ecum15.htm. Accessed 14/04/2019. 20 Lerner, Robert E (1972), p81-2 21 Bussey, Francesca Caroline, p87 22 McInerney, Magdalen, p117 23 Bussey, Francesca Caroline, p102 24 Lichtmann, Maria. “Marguerite Porete and : The Mirror of Simple Souls Mirrored” in McGinn, Bernard (ed). Meister Eckhart and the Beguine Mystics : of Brabant, and Marguerite Porete. New York, [N.Y.]: Continuum, 1994, p69 25 Bussey, Francesca Caroline, p108 As Francesca Bussey notes, “heresy is, in the strictest sense of the word, a divergence of doctrinal opinion as declared so by ecclesiastical authorities…a category defined into deviance by ecclesiastical censure.”26 Discussion of Porete’s heresy requires “careful consideration of competing motivations and of inferences drawn from relevant events and socio-cultural structures,”27 and with that in mind, before discussing the text of the Mirror itself, I would like to give an overview of other possible reasons behind Marguerite’s condemnation.

A number of scholars have noted a possible connection between Marguerite’s condemnation and the trial of the Templars, which took place at the same time, and “culminat[ed] in the burning of fifty four of its members on the twelfth of May just twenty days prior to Porete’s own execution.”28 Many of the same officials were involved in both cases, and Robert Lerner has suggested that it is possible that, “with difficulties and doubt accumulating in the matter of the Templars, Philip and his officials wished to display their unwavering orthodoxy in a case against a controversial beguine in which no base motives could be suspected.”29

At her trial, Marguerite was identified as a Beguine, the name given to a loose grouping of laywomen who “sought to live the apostolic life without being members of any recognised order,”30 but who had “no fixed rule, no founding moment and no founding mother.”31 As pious women seeking to live out their faith in the world,32 they received praise for their service,33 but from the middle of the thirteenth century, they faced “rising public suspicion.”34 The name ‘Beguine’ itself seems to be a slur,35 and Beguines faced suspicion based upon their perceived lack of chastity,36 their undisciplined mendicancy,37 their potential for heretical teachings,38 and, altogether, came to “comprise a dubious category of females potentially outside of male control.”39 Ecclesiastical anxiety over the Beguines led, in 1311, to the Council of Viennes’ condemnation of

26 Ibid., p112 27 Ibid., p113 28 Bussey, Francesca Caroline, p159 29 Lerner, Robert E, (1972), p77 30 Murk-Jansen, Saskia. Brides in the Desert : The Spirituality of the Beguines. Traditions of Christian Spirituality. London: Darton, Longman and Todd, 1998, p15 31 Hollywood, Amy. The Soul as Virgin Wife: Meister Eckhart and the Beguine Mystics,Mechthild of Magdeburg and Marguerite Porete, 1991, ProQuest Dissertations and Theses, p18 32 Murk-Jansen, Saskia, p115 33 Hollywood, Amy, p34 34 Babinksy, Ellen, introduction to The Mirror of Simple Souls, by Marguerite Porete, ed. Ellen Babinsky, Paulist Press, 1993, p8 35 A number of scholars identify it as referring to the heretical sect of the Albigensians, see Murk-Jensen, Saskia, p27; Lerner, Robert E, (1972) p37 36 Hollywood, Amy, p35 37 Ibid., p36 38 Ibid., p38 39 McInerney, Magdalen, p139 them as “faithless women,”40 using elements from Marguerite’s Mirror as justification to that there was a duty to “exstirpate (sic) from the catholic church this detestable sect and the above execrable errors.”41 Marguerite may not have considered herself to be a Beguine,42 but her identification as such in her heresy trial helped to provide justification for the suppression of a movement considered undesirable by the Church hierarchy.

Connected to the suspicion of Marguerite as a Beguine is the issue of her gender. Unattached to any religious order, and “one of the few women whose words do survive without the interference of an amanuensis,”43 writing “to a female audience and with a feminine divine,”44 Marguerite “transgressed all the appropriate boundaries.”45 Caroline Walker Bynum has noted that women’s piety in this period was marked by “devotion to Christ's suffering humanity and to the eucharist,”46 something in which the Mirror conspicuously lacking, instead, Marguerite is an apophatic mystic, something more common in men. 47 It is perhaps significant that at her trial, she was described as a “pseudo-woman,”48 and it seems possible that, had Marguerite been enclosed in a convent, and in particular, had she not disseminated her teachings to “simple people”,49 then she would not have been prosecuted.50

As Bernard McGinn has noted, “the relation of the motivations behind the condemnation of Marguerite is unclear. Defence of orthodoxy, suspicion of the beguines, and possible political implications such as Philip the Fair’s desire to appear as a staunch proponent of correct belief in the midst of his quarrels with the papacy, all probably played a part.”51 Had Marguerite sent her book to the Bishop of Chalons at a different time in history, or had she been a member of a religious order, or a man, she may have faced a better reception, instead, as Maria Lichtmann writes, “the inquisitorial cards were stacked against her from the beginning.”52

40 Tanner, Norman. “Decrees of the Ecumenical Councils”, quoted in Papal Encyclicals Online, “Council of Vienne 1311-1312 A.D.” http://www.papalencyclicals.net/councils/ecum15.htm. Accessed 14/04/2019. 41 Ibid. 42 Beguines are listed among her opponents in Porete, Marguerite. The Mirror of Simple Souls, ed. Ellen Babinksy. Paulist Press, 1993, p200. Hereafter abbreviated MSS. 43 Bussey, Francesca Caroline, p9. Bussey notes that amanuenses for female religious writers were usually male. 44 Lichtmann, Maria, p69 45 Ibid., p70 46 Bynum, Caroline Walker. Holy Feast and Holy Fast : The Religious Significance of Food to Medieval Women. New Historicism ; 1. Berkeley, Calif. ; London: University of California Press, 1987, p26 47 Bussey, Francesca Caroline, p120 48 Quoted in Barton, Richard E. 49 From her trial narrative, quoted in Barton, Richard E. 50 Lambert, Malcolm, p185 51 McGinn, Bernard. ""Evil-sounding, Rash, and Suspect of Heresy": Tensions between and Magisterium in the History of the Church (Pope John Paul II on the Works of Meister Eckhart)." Catholic Historical Review 90, no. 2 (2004): 193-212, p195 52 Lichtmann, Maria, p68 Having explored non-doctrinal motivations for Marguerite’s condemnation, I would now like to discuss aspects of her Mirror which have been suspected of heresy.

The Mirror of Simple Souls (or, to give it its full title, the Mirror of Simple and Annihilated Souls and those who Remain only in Will and Desire of Love53) takes the form of a dialogue between Reason, representing the Church;54 Love, representing God; and the Soul. It operates as “a kind of handbook designed to assist believers with their spiritual quest,”55 as the three figures discuss what it means to reach the summit of spiritual life, and become an ‘annihilated soul’. In common with other mystical writing, the Mirror includes a series of stages in the ascent toward God, from the first stages, which involve keeping the commandments, good works, and evangelical poverty, to sacrificing those good works, dissolving the will, and finally annihilating the soul, concluding in a permanent56 “union without distinction between the loving soul and God.”57

The Mirror contains “a dialogue that is at times pedestrian, sometimes parodic and humorous, often obscure, and frequently moving and profound,”58 and, which, as she warns us herself, is “very difficult to comprehend.”59 Marguerite “situates her text within the most apophatic wing of the Neoplatonist tradition, according to which ‘nothing’ more adequately characterizes God than being”,60 and she uses “all the linguistic means at her disposal, particularly those of paradox and contradiction, to annihilate in language as in reality all understanding, will, love, and even the self itself,”61 using these techniques in order to force a collapse into nothingness.62 Marguerite’s use of “paradoxical, even shocking, phrases”63 in the Mirror makes its interpretation difficult, and modern commentators have disagreed about the extent of the book’s un/orthodoxy.64

Suspicion of the Mirror “seems to have centered on fears that she advocated antinomian freedom from the virtues and the moral law, as well as a form of ‘quietism,’ or indifference to the ecclesiastically mediated means of salvation.”65 Those fears are reflected in the

53 As quoted in Hollywood, Amy, p129 54 Kangas, David. "Dangerous Joy: Marguerite Porete’s Good-bye to the Virtues." The Journal of Religion 91, no. 3 (2011): 299-319, p302 55 Babinsky, Ellen, introduction to The Mirror of Simple Souls, by Marguerite Porete, ed. Ellen Babinksy. Paulist Press, 1993, p27 56 Marin, Juan. "Annihilation and Deification in Beguine Theology and Marguerite Porete's Mirror of Simple Souls." Harvard Theological Review 103, no. 1 (2010): 89-109, p95 57 Hollywood, Amy, p6 58 McGinn, Bernard. The Flowering of Mysticism : Men and Women in the New Mysticism (1200-1350). Volume III of The Presence of God: A History of . New York: Crossroad, 1998, p248 59 MSS p79 60 Kangas, David, p310 61 Lichtmann, Maria, p72 62 Turner, Denys. The Darkness of God : Negativity in Christian Mysticism. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995, p22 63 Lambert, M. D. Medieval Heresy : Popular Movements from the Gregorian Reform to the Reformation. Second ed. Oxford: Blackwell, 1992, p187 64 An overview of the discussion can be found in Bussey, Francesca Caroline, p108ff 65 McGill, Bernard, (1998), p245 errors listed in the bull Ad Nostrum which were condemned as ‘Beguine errors’, and of which the second,66 sixth,67 and eighth68 propositions seem to have come from the Mirror.69

The first two ‘heretical’ propositions taken from the Mirror are related; that the perfect person can give the body whatever pleases it, and that the perfect soul has been freed from the virtues.

In the seventeenth chapter of the Mirror, Love says, “This Soul gives to Nature whatever she asks. And it is true, says Love, that this Soul has neither care nor love for temporal things which she would know how to gain in refusing Nature her demand; but a guilty conscience would cause to be taken from her what is her own.”70 The chronicler William of Nangis responded to this by saying that it “manifestly rings forth as heresy,” and it triggered accusations of antinomianism and licentiousness which were already standard fears in cases of esoteric71 and Beguine72 groups.

As numerous scholars have pointed out,73 the Inquisition, and later the Council of Vienne extracted statements from the Mirror, divorcing them from their context. It is important to understand Marguerite’s view of what it means to be an ‘annihilated soul’. The annihilated soul has no will, no affections, and is completely united with God. It is completely free, and, “although the unencumbered soul can give to Nature what she will, such a soul is so fully united with the divine that she can never will anything contrary to what God wills.”74 A truly annihilated soul may have the freedom to do whatever it wishes – but its wishes will never be less than godly. While the Inquisitor saw an argument that any unvirtuous act performed by a freed soul was rendered virtuous because of the soul’s freedom, it seems that Marguerite was arguing for the passivity of the freed

66 That “it is not necessary to fast or pray after gaining this degree of perfection, for then the sensitive appetite has been so perfectly subjected to the spirit and to reason that one may freely grant the body whatever pleases it.” (Tanner, Norman. “Decrees of the Ecumenical Councils”, quoted in Papal Encyclicals Online, “Council of Vienne 1311-1312 A.D.” http://www.papalencyclicals.net/councils/ecum15.htm. Accessed 14/04/2019.) 67 “That the practice of the virtues belongs to the state of imperfection and the perfect soul is free from virtues.” (Ibid) 68 “That at the elevation of the body of Christ, they ought not to rise or show reverence to it; it would be an imperfection for them to come down from the purity and height of their contemplation so far as to think about the ministry or sacrament of the eucharist, or about the passion of Christ as man.” (Ibid) 69 Sargent, Michael G. "The Annihilation of Marguerite Porete." Viator 28 (1997): 253-80, p263. Sargent describes the eighth proposition as arguable. 70 MSS, pp99-100 71 McGinn, Bernard, (2004), p207 72 Hollywood, Amy, p35 73 For example, Bussey, Francesca Caroline, p15; McInerney, Magdalen, p119; Lerner, Robert E (2010) p113; and many others. 74 Hollywood, Amy, “Suffering Transformed: Marguerite Porete, Meister Eckhart, and the Problem of Women’s Spirituality” in McGinn, Bernard (ed). Meister Eckhart and the Beguine Mystics : Hadewijch of Brabant, Mechthild of Magdeburg and Marguerite Porete. New York, [N.Y.]: Continuum, 1994, p101 soul, unable to will anything unvirtuous because it has no will.75 The Mirror seems to be proposing something similar in the ‘goodbye’ to the virtues.

In chapter 6 of the Mirror, Marguerite writes, “Virtues, I take my leave of you forever…I was once a slave to you, but now am delivered from it…I am parted from your dominations, in peace I rest.”76 Jennifer Schuberth suggests that this ‘goodbye’ to the Virtues may have been the primary reason Marguerite was seen as heretical,77 as it may have been seen as “constitut[ing] a direct challenge to the Church —including its inquisitional arm—and to one of its privileged strategies of discursive control: the consolidation and demarcation of the virtues.”78

Saying ‘goodbye’ to the virtues is an example of one of Marguerite’s “outrageous”79 claims, for the “virtues were the cornerstone of medieval moral thought…[as they] granted the ability to live a moral life while on earth and enjoy eternal life afterwards.”80 In the text, Reason echoes this common medieval sentiment, suggesting the Soul has gone mad, because “without these Virtues none can be saved or come to perfection of life.”81 For her inquisitors, Marguerite’s rejection of the virtues was an antinomian statement “indicat[ing] a licentious and morally depraved will,” 82 but Love’s reply to Reason suggests no antinomian intent, for she says that “such Souls possess better the Virtues than any other creatures, but they do not possess any longer the practice of them, for these Souls no longer belong to the Virtues as they used to.”83

The freed soul has abandoned the virtues, but, in doing so, now possesses them. She has not become unvirtuous, but has ceased to will virtuous acts, in order that the virtues not “become self-aggrandizing acquisitions contaminating the soul with self-will.”84 Rather than practicing the virtues in order to reach God, Marguerite teaches the annihilation of the soul’s will by God, leading to such a loss of self-will that she becomes “virtuous without being virtuous—that is, without being able to see or know that she was virtuous.”85 Marguerite’s condemnation of the practice of the virtues may also be a participation in an entirely orthodox, scholastic discourse86 on the difference between the natural and supernatural virtues. Danielle Dubois has argued that

75 An interesting alternative interpretation is found in Bussey, Francesca Caroline, p12 n. 33, where she argues that this passage is actually “a critique of the intense popular in her period.” 76 MSS, p84 77 Schuberth, Jennifer. "“Holy Church Is Not Able to Recognize Her”: The Virtues and Interpretation in Marguerite Porete’s Mirror." History of Religions 52, no. 3 (2013): 197-213, p205 78 Ibid., p199 79 McInerney, Magdalen, p157 80 Dubois, Danielle C. "Natural and Supernatural Virtues in the Thirteenth Century: The Case of Marguerite Porete’s Mirror of Simple Souls." Journal of Medieval History 43, no. 2 (2017): 174-92, p174 81 MSS, p85 82 Kangas, David, p307 83 MSS, p86 84 Lichtmann, Maria, p80 85 Kangas, David, p308 86 Dubois, Dannielle C, p177 Marguerite’s ‘goodbye’ to the virtues was a rejection of the importance of cultivating the cardinal, or natural virtues as a means of access to God, instead, “as Soul explains, it is the theological and not the cardinal virtues…that lead the soul to the divine.”87 She points out that, while Marguerite abandons the natural virtues, she does not abandon the theological virtues of Love, Faith, and Hope,88 which can only be infused by God.89 Rather than rejecting being virtuous, Marguerite seems to reject the practice of being virtuous in favour of an automatic virtue arising from the annihilation of the human will in God.

In chapter nine of the Mirror, she writes that a freed soul “neither desires nor despises…mass nor sermon, neither fast nor prayer”90 and in chapter eighty-five that the soul “no longer seeks God…through any sacrament of Holy Church.”91 She seems to suggest that in the progress of the annihilated soul there comes a point where Sacraments are unnecessary, as the soul no longer needs their mediation.92 Chapter fifteen of the Mirror is entirely about the Eucharist, and she demonstrates that Christians cannot understand when the moment of transubstantiation happens by using an illustration of the Eucharistic elements being crushed in a mortar. As Michael Sargent points out, this “irreverent-sounding example”93 was probably sufficient for her to be accused of Eucharistic heresy,94 although he also points out that Stephanus Axters has identified an imprecise, if not heretical, Christology in her statements.95 The Mirror seems ambivalent on the topic of Sacraments, discussion of which was prohibited to Beguines,96 confining the need for them to the lower stages of religious life,97 yet she is careful to note that she does not ‘despise’ them.

As a whole, the Mirror of Simple Souls forms an argument that there is more to spirituality than works, virtues, and even the Sacraments. She urges her readers to move past these in order to reach a higher state, that of annihilation in God. In doing so, she challenges the Church, and, in the shocking and sometimes ambiguous nature of her statements, approaches unorthodoxy. The charges of antinomianism seem to be misplaced, however, because the freedom of the soul comes from its passivity, because it has no will of its own, and so Marguerite can say ‘goodbye’ to the virtues, and that can give to Nature whatever she asks, because she is incapable of willing anything outside God’s will. While some of Marguerite’s statements may be dubious, the socio-

87 Dubois, Danielle C, p186 88 Ibid., p184 89 Kangas, David, p305 90 MSS p87 91 MSS p160 92 Lerner, Robert E, (1972), p205 93 Sargent, Michael G. "The Annihilation of Marguerite Porete." Viator 28 (1997): 253-80, p263 94 He also suggests that her use of the vernacular rather than the precision of Latin may have increased suspicion of her (Ibid., p266) 95 Ibid., p263 96 Lerner, Robert E (1972), p48 97 Hollywood, Amy, p175 political background to her trial, and the continued circulation of the Mirror, albeit with explanatory glosses in some translations, suggests that its heresy was not obvious to its readers.98 Ultimately, as Francesca Bussey writes, “it is now generally agreed…that Porete did not espouse a deliberate heresy, and all but a few recognise that her propositions were taken out of context and that her Mirror does not represent heresy per se.”99

98 Lambert, Malcolm, p184 99 Bussey, Francesca Caroline, p15

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