Marguerite Porete

Marguerite Porete was a beguine, a lay religious woman, probably from Hainaut, and the author of The Mirror of Simple Souls. Written largely as a dialogue between Love, Reason and the Soul, the book describes how a soul can become 'annihilated': emptied of its own will so that only God's will acts in it. Church authorities condemned the book and had it burned, but she kept circulating it. After a long Inquisition trial in which she refused to speak, she was burned at the stake in Paris in 1310. Her book survived anonymously and was identified as hers only in 1946.

Key ideas

• The soul rises through seven stages towards union with God.
• The 'annihilated' soul has given up its own will entirely, so that God wills in it.
• Such a soul no longer seeks God through works, masses or virtues, to which it 'takes leave'.
• Love, not Reason, leads the soul to God, and Reason cannot understand the freed soul.

Major works

• The Mirror of Simple Souls (1290s)

In the Book corner

• The Mirror of Simple Souls c. 1290–1306 · Advanced
  A mystical treatise in Old French, written before 1306 by Marguerite Porete, a beguine from Hainaut. It takes the form of a…

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