Marguerite Porete

Backstory

Marguerite was a Beguine, a name associated with people living a religious life outside of the religious orders. Although in The Mirror she refers to the Beguines as “opponents'. It is thought that was perhaps due to the mainstream Beguines accepting the “official status” under official orders. She was associated as being one of the first apostles of the German Sect, Brethren of the Free Spirit - a grouping that has been put into question as it really seems to encompass the philosophy of non-ecclesiastical piety. Solitary Beguines, usually from the Middle or Upper Classes and educated, were therefore often part of this movement.

Scholars have found evidence that the determined annihilation of the Templars was also scooping up any other orders that may be of a threat to the Church in Rome. It is considered that Marguerite, whose books had been approved by three respected church scholars, was entangled in this same action.

She was imprisoned for 18 months, routinely refusing to swear the inquisitor's oath and to refuse absolution. The canonists at her first “consultation” hearing “deemed her contumacious, rebellious and deserving to be condemned as a heretic.”

Burned alive in the main public square of Paris in 1310 was the final action after being forced to watch the public burnings of her book and to be told that any redistribution would mean serious consequences. She ignored those warnings and was indeed rearrested to face either recanting or death. She chose death.

• Annihilated - Submission of the soul to the awareness of the will of God, leaving the ardor and drive for abject humility, to allow the existing light of god to be perceived

• Mortification - the action of subduing one's bodily desires.

• Knowledge - has a different meaning at each stage of spiritual development - explained in Teaching Highlights

• Nothing and Nothingness - generally she uses to describe the stage 5 experience of will. Nothing is what God created all from. The nothing is therefore connected to the soul’s experience before they willed themselves into independence from God. Therefore shifting from “nothing” into “another thing”. I would love to know what “thing” is in archaic French as I wonder about the translation choice. The second way of using nothing is as of meaning no value compared to the divine. She shifts between these without warning

• The soul received the image of the Trinity at creation and spiritual progress is about learning the distinctions within the soul that reflect the Trinity. The introduction to this version points out that this teaching is spread throughout the text.

  1. “God as Power, Wisdom and Goodness”

  2. “One power, one Wisdom, one Will. One God alone in three persons. Three persons and one God alone.”

  3. The One Divine Will - the Father maybe but I think of this through the Prism of Secret John as the One, the divine trinitarian unity, a source without source

  4. The Holy Spirit contains the other two

These features are radical for the time as they allow Marguerite to purport the divine union of the Perfect Soul, the soul is itself a Trinity

• The Soul’s progress is a journey through Knowledge to Love and is a reciprocal relationship

KNOWLEDGE

• Knowledge and the essential distinguishment between the Trinity of the Soul, ability (engin), intellect (entendement) and understanding (cognoissance). The relationship of the soul’s use of ability and intellect to gain understanding is key to the journey. She clearly defines the interaction between the Will and the level of ability and therefore intellect on the consequent understanding. Interestingly she defines intellect from ability alone and understanding this relationship is key to the soul’s “understanding”

  • She spends time on identifying three different terms for knowledge that link to the intellect of the soul and therefore the nature of will- this differentiation is important in the text:

    • The intellect is able to know ( Savoir ) the world of things - Stage 1 links

    • This then allows one to reason and grasp/perceive ( entendre ) their meaning through this process - Stage 2 links

    • To understand / cognisance ) emerge once the soul can perceive the divine, the shift from “lost” to “sad” soul

• Annihilation of the Soul - to understand the will is to realise the divine and to render/release it back to God is Stage 5 of the path and sees the annihilated perfect soul result. Without any will independent of God ( if the Soul wants to stay with the Divine - the choice is always active and volition clear ) God wills the soul.

• Volition - the importance of choice remains prescient in the text as the Soul has to will the annihilation or I would suggest acceptance of the essential union

• Reason and Love are personified in the text with their own intellect connected to their function and ability.

  • Reason, with the Virtues are essential to the path of the Soul and without them, no progress would be made. You can’t skip it. It is however limited in its intellect as it is constrained by the natural world.

  • Reason must become servant to Love once the Annihilation has occurred allowing for the wider intellect leading to the knowledge of the Divine Union

  • Love has many forms in the text depending on the stage of development with ardent love taking form in the fourth stage and desire forming when awareness of what could be, is formed.

There are so many features outlined that were controversial however the most dangerous for the church at the time was passages like this:

“… This Soul who is such no longer seeks God through penitence, nor through any sacrament of Holy Church; not through thoughts, nor through words, not through creatures here below, nor through creatures above; not through Justice, nor through mercy. Nor through glory of glory, not through divine understanding, not through divine love, nor through divine praise.“

– chapter 85

• Either

  1. Connection to Johannite tradition

     1. Gospel of John

     2. Connection to Saint John

     3. Connection the Templars

  2. Was an Exemplar

     1. Acquired spiritual realisation / Divine Union / Theosis / Gnosis

     2. Communicated in some way how to do it

     3. Encouragement to do it yourself

• The Stages, deaths and souls journey that she describes are a clear spiritual path to “knowing”. There is a strong assumption that this path takes courage, pain and action as a solo practitioner, working only with the Trinity as it appears in the Soul.

“ ...such folk, says this Soul, whom I call donkeys, seek God in creatures, monasteries for prayer, in a created paradise, in words of men and in the Scriptures...it seems to novices that such folk, who seek him on the mountains and in the villages, insist that God be subject to their sacraments and their works...very well then, O high born one, says Reason, tell us for God’s sake where do you seek and where do you find him? O find him everywhere, says this Soul, and He is there. He is one deity, One sole God in three persons, and this God is everywhere. There I find him.” Chapter 69

• “Next I considered the supreme saint, that is the very sweet Baptist...when he baptized Jesus Christ, and in doing this he held God the Son, and so he heard the voice of the Father and he saw also the Holy Spirit. TO whom did he show this? Did he not hide it? Did he take pride in himself in this? Not at all. He had no concern about it except to please the One who accomplished such work by His goodness.”

• Core to her teachings is a fundamental awareness of the Divine Light and Union that is and was always within the soul. The path is to move through the stages of will and reasoning to recognise the existing union and free the soul from reason and virtue to be knowing through love.

• Wisdom is linked with the Holy Spirit as the Sad Soul is filled by the spirit/wisdom and is able to perceive the Divine and achieve Knowing, Knowledge. Joined with the Trinity the Soul is transparent so that God only sees Godself.

Suggested date in the Calendar - Death date - 1 June