The Mirror of Simple Souls

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This is a beautifully written fictional story surrounding real events in 14th century Paris, providing a vivid insight into the lives of the women of the Great Beguinage, “an oasis in the heart of the city”. For almost a hundred years widowed or unmarried women were able to live, work, pray and study, free from the control of men, free from marriage and the nun’s cloister, under royal protection. This follows the lives of several beguines living in and outside of the beguinage. Ysabel finds a young woman on the doorstep of the beguinage seeking refuge after escaping her cruel husband and from here the story unfolds mingling with the real events of The Templars, the King of France and Marguerite Porete, the mystic and author of The Mirror of Simple Souls who was burned at the stake for heresy. 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. Porete's status as a Medieval mystic has grown in recent decades, placing her alongside Mechthild of Magdeburg and Hadewijch in expressing the Love Mysticism of Beguine spirituality. [ citation needed]

This book is a dynamic conversation between the personifications of Love, Reason, and Truth. The mystic states that she believes there is a sevenfold annihilation of various components of the soul. They are also graces, she claims. The first and the seventh are explained: The first annihilation is the removal of sinfulness in the human soul. The final stage is perfect oneness with God in love. 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. The full, original title of the book is Le Mirouer des simples âmes anienties et qui seulement demeurent en vouloir et désir d’amour, or The Mirror of the Simple Souls Who Are Annihilated and Remain Only in Will and Desire of Love. There are English translations available in book form. There is a PDF of a 1927 edition online here and what seems to be an updated translation with commentary here. Paul Verdeyen, Marguerete Porete: Le Mirouer des Simples Ames, CCCM 69, (Turnholt: Brepols, 1986) [contains the text of the one surviving Middle French manuscript, and an edition of the Latin text] Miller, Tanya Stabler. The Beguines of Medieval Paris: Gender, Patronage, and Spiritual Authority (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2014) ISBN 9780812224115The story takes place between 1310 and 1317, during the final years of the béguinages of the middle ages. But the story is so vividly told that it feels immediate, even quite contemporary.

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. A travers de nombreux détails, l’autrice partage la vie non seulement de ces béguines mais aussi de ce Paris médiéval, sous la coupe d’un roi rigide, avec les finances d’un royaume totalement appauvri. Tra un rogo dell’Inquisizione e una pubblica gogna, mentre la Storia scorre e l’ordine dei Templari viene sciolto, incontriamo Ysabel, vecchia beghina, vedova, responsabile dell’ospedale e della produzione di medicamenti a base di erbe, Agnes, che la aiuta e alterna ammirazione e invidia, e Ade, anch'essa vedova, che fa scuola alle più giovani. Le loro abitudini vengono sconvolte dall’arrivo di Maheut la rossa, una ragazzina in fuga dal marito violento, prostrata, spaventata, inseguita da un inquietante frate francescano.

Why Was This Heresy?

Porete, Marguerite; Babinsky, Ellen (1993). The Mirror of Simple Souls. Paulist Press. p.104. ISBN 978-0-8091-3427-4. 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

come gli strarti delle cipolle, i momenti della vita non scompaiono, ma si depositano, gli uni sugli altri. Al centro della pianta che cresce, si arrotonda e si deforma, il germoglio, che ne determina la natura, resta lo stesso”. Unwittingly, Humbert and Ade will set in motion a chain of events that will alter the fabric of the beguinage forever, and all this has to do with the early writings of Marguerite Porete, a French speaking mystic, whose unconventional ideas of God and divine love put her in the crosshairs of the Church. She was charged with heresy and executed in 1310. Porete's message is liberating, as she speaks of the primal priority of love above virtue. She details for us how this way of Love unfolds to union with Love. Marguerite Porete, The Mirror of Simple Souls, trans. A.C. Spearing, in Medieval Writings on Female Spirituality, ed. Elizabeth Spearing (2002) p.133 Lccn 93014479 Ocr tesseract 5.0.0-alpha-20201231-7-gc75f Ocr_detected_lang en Ocr_detected_lang_conf 1.0000 Ocr_detected_script Latin Ocr_detected_script_conf 0.9387 Ocr_module_version 0.0.11 Ocr_parameters -l eng Old_pallet IA18565 Openlibrary_edition

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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. We don’t know how old Marguerite Porete was when she wrote The Mirror of Simple Souls, or how old she was when the Inquisitor of France arrested her for writing it. Inquisition records tell us she refused to withdraw or disown her book and was imprisoned for over a year. During that year she would not respond to the Inquisitor’s interrogations. Eventually a commission of theologians judged Mirror to be heresy. Marguerite Porete was burned at the stake on June 1, 1310. Some who watched her execution were moved to tears by her calm acceptance of death. About The Mirror of Simple Souls

The title of Porete's book refers to the simple soul which is united with God and has no will other than God's own. Some of the language, as well as the format of a dialogue between characters such as Love, Virtue and the Soul, reflects a familiarity with the style of courtly love which was popular at the time, and attests to Porete's high level of education and sophistication. [18] [19] So impressed by this read over a decade ago, will read again, now in Classics of Western Spirituality edition. This book is work to read, but worth the effort. And not a book for persons unready to fall over the precipice from dogmatic constraints, or possibly very good selection for those needing a push to let go and discover another so-called heretic that simply lived too intimate with truth for the hierarchy to consider how she was a light of hope, not a darkness threatening the present and future of the Catholic church. 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.Mais j’ai toujours été fan de la petite histoire qui se cache dans la grande Histoire, j’aime savoir comment on vivait, je veux des anecdotes croustillantes, bref du ludique et pas une liste interminable de noms pompeux et de lignages consanguins. Ruh, Kurt (1975). " 'Le Miroir des Simples Ames' der Marguerite Porete". In Fromm, H.; Harms, W.; Ruberg, U. (eds.). Verbum et Sugnum. Munich: W. Fink. pp.365–87.