Collaboration and Coercion: Marguerite Porete, mendicants and

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Collaboration and Coercion: Marguerite
Porete, mendicants and devout women
in northern France in the late thirteenth
century
by
Rina Lahav
A thesis submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy
School of Philosophical, Historical & International Studies
Monash University
2011
6
Declaration
This thesis contains no material that has been accepted for the
award of any other degree or diploma in any university or other
institution. This thesis, to the best of my knowledge, contains no
material previously published or written by another person, except
where due reference is made in the text.
Signature
……………………
Rina Lahav
Date
……………………
7
Abstract
In this thesis I explore the multi-layered interaction between the
members of the mendicant orders, in particular the Franciscans, and
women of various backgrounds in northern France in the late
thirteenth century, with particular attention to the figure of
Marguerite Porete. My starting point has been guided by the need to
situate her activity and subsequent condemnation in 1310 in terms
of two main areas of activity, the intellectual centre of Paris, and
more creative and loosely controlled area of the southern Low
Countries. In particular, Porete‘s career must be situated in terms of
flourishing of networks of religious renewal in the first half of the
thirteenth century, supported by the mendicant Orders.
When the inquisition started delineating the boundaries of
orthodoxy, there developed increasing tension between forces of
constraint and of creative devotion. I reflect on the intriguing figure
of Marguerite Porete, asking to what extent her theology was a
reaction to this struggle. I argue that her turning away from
individual will, articulated so beautifully in her treatise, was a
statement, not of withdrawal from this combat, but an articulation
of her contribution to it.
This thesis examines a series of texts that illustrate this tension
between dynamism and control, including Hadewijch‘s little studied
‗List of the Perfect‘, the writing of Gilbert of Tournai for Isabelle of
France and the Speculum dominarum, written by Durand of
Champagne, Franciscan chaplain to Jeanne of Navarre, wife of Philip
IV of France. Jeanne‘s death in 1305 deprived the Franciscan
movement of a significant female supporter. The support Porete
gained from figures like master Godfrey of Fontaines, the
unidentified Franciscan called John, and Franco, Cistercian monk of
Villers (whose authority she claimed in her support) were unable to
8
prevent her being executed in a show trial in Paris in 1310, largely
driven by inquisitors from the Dominican Order. By the beginning of
the fourteenth century, I argue, it no longer mattered whether or
not women‘s spirituality was in line with the accepted theology of
their age. If their obedience was not absolutely certain, their way of
life was banned.
9
Acknowledgments
I would like to thank Prof. Constant J. Mews, who taught me to
strive for greater things than I could ever imagine; I would not be
the person that I am today without his guidance. Many thanks go to
Dr Clare Monagle, for being my sounding board and encouraging me
to proceed, and my friends and colleagues, whose belief in me
illuminated my way, Dr Tomas Zahora, and Natasha Robin
Amendola. I would also like to thank the staff of the School of
Philosophical, Historical & International Studies for providing a
remarkable space for learning and development.
I have also been fortunate to be included in research projects,
which have given me the opportunity to share my research in
various conferences, resulting in various publications: ‗Marguerite
Porete and the Predicament of her Preaching‘, in Gender and
Catholicism in Europe, 1200-1900, ed. Laurence Lux-Sterritt and
Carmen M. Mangion, London: Palgrave, 2010, pp. 38-50, ‗A mirror
of Queenship: The Speculum dominarum and the demands of
justice‘, in Virtue Ethics for Women, 1250-1550, ed. Karen Green
and Constant J Mews, Leuven: Springer, 2011 (forthcoming), in
2011, resulting from an ARC funded project on virtue ethics for
women led by Prof. Constant J. Mews, Associate Prof. Karen Green
and Dr Janice Pinder; ‗Ambitions of faith: Mystical Instruction from
Gilbert of Tournai to Isabelle of France‘, published within
Interpreting Francis and Clare of Assisi. From the middle ages to the
present, ed. Constant J. Mews and Claire Renkin, Melbourne, 2010,
PAGES
I am grateful to Dr Janice Pinder for allowing me to consult her draft
text of La Sainte Abbaye, and to Associate Prof. Karen Green for her
support. I would also like to acknowledge the wonderful opportunity
10
created by the collaboration between Prof. Constant J. Mews and
Prof. Eva Schlotheuber, which enabled me to visit Paris and
Germany and benefit from interaction with the best scholars in my
field.
These projects, conferences and seminars, that I was lucky enough
to participate in, as well as conversations and debates inspired,
challenged and contributed to this thesis.
11
Table of contents
Introduction........................................................................... 13
Chapter one - Alternative Spiritual Networks in the Thirteenth
Century ................................................................................. 23
Chapter two - Ambitions of Faith: Mystical Instruction from Gilbert
of Tournai to Isabelle of France ................................................ 53
Chapter three - Dialogue of the Soul ......................................... 77
Chapter four - A mirror of Queenship: The Speculum dominarum
and the demands of justice .................................................... 102
Chapter five – Closing Ranks ................................................. 126
Chapter six – Preaching Her Way............................................ 150
Conclusion - Enforced order ................................................... 178
Bibliography ........................................................................ 190
12
Introduction
Around the feast of Pentecost a certain pseudo-woman from
Hainault, named Marguerite Porete, was found guilty of
producing a book filled with errors and heresies. Her ideas
were exposed in the common field of La Grève through the
deliberation of learned men who found them heretical and she
was handed over to the secular court, to be executed on the
next day by fire.1
Marguerite Porete was condemned by the inquisition under Philip
the Fair and executed in Paris on 1 June 1310. Apart from very brief
reports such as this, in the chronicle of Guillaume de Nangis, our
main sources of knowledge concerning Marguerite Porete are the
book she wrote, The Mirror of Simple Annihilated Souls, and the
records of her trial made by the royal ministers of Philip the Fair,
William of Nogaret and William of Plaisians.2
Marguerite‘s book and the records of her trial raise many questions.
Was she an isolated individual or was she a part of a network of like
minded individuals? Most studies of the Mirror are literary and
theological rather than historical. They concentrate on what
Marguerite conveys in her Mirror. I have chosen Marguerite Porete
as the fulcrum of my thesis because she articulates a paradox that
was developing in France towards the end of the thirteenth century
1
The continuator of the Chronicle of Guillaume de Nangis, in Paul Verdeyen, „Le Procès d‟inquisition
contre Marguerite Porete et Guiard de Cressonessart (1309 – 1310)‟, Revue d’histoire ecclésiastique,
81 (1986), 47-94, pp. 88-9.
2
Margarite Porete, Speculum Simplicium Animarum, ed. Paul Verdeyen, in Corpus Christianorum.
Continuatio Mediaeualis, 69, Turnhout, 1986. I have also used two translations of the texts: Marguerite
Porete, The Mirror of Simple Souls, trans. Ellen L. Babinsky, New York, 1993, and Marguerite Porete,
The Mirror of Simple Souls, trans. Edmund Colledge, J.C. Marler and Judith Grant, Notre Dame, 1999.
13
and into the fourteenth. The spiritual renewal of the beginning of
the thirteenth century was morphing into discussions about
boundaries, control and validity of religious lives. What started as
the need for greater realization of personal desire to be closer to
God and removed from temporal corruption, turned into an
argument about practices, behavior and proper observance: all
temporal issues, even if they are concerned with religion. I would
like to examine these issues through the intriguing figure of
Marguerite Porete and her tragic end.
The Mirror was re-discovered in 1867 by Francesco Toldi, but the
book was only attributed to Marguerite Porete by Romana Guarnieri
in 1946.3 The only surviving copy of the original version of The
Mirror in Old French was made in the fifteenth century for the nuns
of the Madeleine Convent at Orleans.4 All the other medieval
translations of The Mirror came from a Latin version, translated
from Old French original sometime in the fourteenth century.5
Robert Lerner has presented a compelling argument for the Middle
English translation as the closest to the original French Marguerite
wrote.6 The records of Marguerite‘s trial are available in the original
Latin and comprise the sentencing of Marguerite Porete and the
consultation given by the Canon Lawyers and the masters of the
University of Paris.
Marguerite‘s first encounter with the law, related by her inquisitor,
was her condemnation sometime during the episcopate of Guy,
bishop of Cambrai. Guy had the book burned very publicly in her
presence in Valenciennes, forbidding her to advocate her ideas and
3
Emilie Zum Brunn and Georgette Epiney-Burgard, Women Mystics in Medieval Europe, trans. Sheila
Hughes, New York, 1989, p. 143.
4
Zum Brunn and Epiney-Burgard, Women Mystics in Medieval Europe, p. 150.
5
Robert E. Lerner, The Heresy of the Free Spirit in the Later Middle Ages, Berkeley, 1972, p. 73.
6
Robert E. Lerner, „New Light On the Mirror of Simple Souls‟, Speculum, 85 (2010), 91-116.
14
disseminate her book.7 This bishop, ‗Guy of Happy memory‘ or Guy
of Colmieu, ruled the see of Cambrai between 1296 and 1306.8
Cambrai was a connecting point between the educational centres of
Paris and the Low Countries. The Dominican, Thomas of Cantempré
(1201-1272) and the Franciscan, Gilbert of Tournai (circa 12001284) studied there before moving to Paris to complete their studies.
It was also an important seat politically and the bishops tended to
be close to the government in Paris. The second time Marguerite
was caught and brought before the bishop of Cambrai it was Philip
of Marigny, half brother of Enguerrand de Marigny, chamberlain and
minister of Philip IV, who apprehended her, accusing her of having
sent her book to John, bishop of Châlons, and of propagating it
among simple people. She was then arrested and handed over to
William Humbert, the Dominican inquisitor of Paris, late in the year
1308 and brought to Paris to be imprisoned.
For the bishop to become aware of the book and its writer they had
to be widely known in his diocese. Assuming Marguerite was aware
of the controversial character of her book she would have circulated
it cautiously. The Mirror was probably made known in a small
number of hand copied manuscripts, read aloud at private
gatherings. It is reasonable to assume that if the bishop tried her
around 1300 in Valenciennes, she had started to advance her book
in the county of Hainault in the 1290s, having perhaps written it in
the 1280s.
Marguerite refused to speak to any of her inquisitors during her
imprisonment and trial. In 1310 the Inquisitor, for want of direct
testimony, extracted a list of articles from her book and presented
them for examination to twenty-one theological masters of the
7
8
Verdeyen „Le Procès‟, p. 82
Conrad Eubel, Hierarchia Catholica Medii Aevi, , Editio Altera (Regensburg, 1968), vol. 1, p. 160.
15
University of Paris. On April 11 these examiners unanimously
declared the articles to be heretical, and since Marguerite refused to
recant, or even to make a formal statement to the inquisitors, she
was condemned as a relapsed heretic and handed over for
execution. On the following day, 1 June 1310, she was executed by
fire at Place de La Grève.9
Marguerite‘s treatise, The Mirror of Simple Souls, is a guide to and
an example of a soul who undergoes a transformation from a
normal earthly existence to an empty vessel filled by God. The
Mirror is essentially an attempt by the author to address an
everlasting question of salvation. Since the intentions and the
thoughts of men carry the same potential of sin as deeds, there is
no assured salvation.10 Every day has the potential of endangering
the salvation of even the most devout person. Marguerite‘s theology
attempts to solve the problem entirely by replacing human ego with
Divine Goodness. The Mirror encourages the listeners to surpass the
regular Christian devotion and adopt a way of emptying oneself of
all spiritual essence so that God might fill that void with His being.
Since the rediscovery of the Mirror, modern scholarship has been
fascinated with the case of Marguerite Porete, both as an historical
figure and as a writer of an extraordinarily innovative theological
treatise. 11 In 1969 Ernest McDonnell briefly discussed her case in
9
Lerner, The Heresy of the Free Spirit, pp. 71-2.
For example Matthew 5, 27.
11
Bernard McGinn, The Flowering of Mysticism, Men and Women in the New Mysticism (1200-1350),
The Presence of God: A History of Western Christian Mysticism, III , New York, 1998, pp. 246-65;
Maria Lichtmann, „Marguerite Porete and Meister Eckhart: The Mirror for Simple Souls Mirrored‟;
Amy Hollywood, „Suffering Transformed: Marguerite Porete, Meister Eckhart and the Problem of
Women‟s Spirituality‟; Michael Sells, „The Pseudo-Woman and the Meister: “Unsaying” and
Essentialism‟, in Meister Eckhart and the Beguine Mystics, Hadewijch of Brabant, Mechthild of
Magdeburg and Marguerite Porete, ed. Bernard McGinn, New York, 1994, pp. 65-146; Ellen L.,
Babinsky, „Christological Transformation in the Mirror of Souls by Marguerite Porete‟, Theology
Today, 60, 2003, 34-48.
See also: Maria Lichtmann, „Marguerite Porete‟s Mirror for Simple Souls: Inverted Reflection of Self,
Society and God, Studia Mystica, 16, No. 1, 1995, pp. 4-29, Emma Johnston, „Marguerite Porete: A
10
16
his comprehensive study. He accused her of discrediting the whole
feminine movement and sharpening the antagonism of ecclesiastical
and secular authorities to extraregular associations in general.12
In 1972 Robert Lerner claimed that the trial of Marguerite Porete
and Guiard de Cressonesart, a self-appointed defender of
Marguerite, was closely linked to the suppression of the Templars in
1308. The documents of both trials were found in the collected
papers of William of Nogaret and William of Plaisians, who were
confidants of the king and played a large role in the procedures
against the Templars. The fact that these royal ministers had kept
the documents pertaining to both processes, argued Lerner, allows
the presumption that there is some connection between the trials of
Marguerite and the actions against the Templars. With difficulties
and doubts accumulating in the matter of the Templars, he further
claimed, 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.13
In 1986 Paul Verdeyen offered a slightly different explanation for
the great interest the Inquisitor took in the case of Marguerite. He
maintains that her trial was a part of a political struggle between
Philip the Fair and the Papacy. The King, through the Inquisitor, set
out to demonstrate to the Papacy that the inquisition maintained
tight control over the correct doctrine and ecclesiastical discipline in
his Kingdom. In addition, Verdeyen asserts, the condemnation of
Marguerite was ‗given‘ to the mendicant orders in order to obtain
Post Mortem‟ and Melissa Brown, „Marie D‟Oignies, Marguerite Porete and „Authentic‟ Female
Mystic Piety in the Middle Ages‟, in Worshipping Women, Misogyny and Mysticism in the Middle Ages,
ed. John O. Ward and Francesca C. Bussey, Sidney, 1997, pp. 187-235.
12
Ernest W. McDonnell, The Beguines and Beghards In Medieval Culture with special emphasis on
the Belgian Scene, New York, 1969, p. 490.
13
Lerner, The Heresy of the Free Spirit, p. 77.
17
their support in the actions taken against the Templars.14 Verdeyen
attributes the presence of twenty-one of the best theologians in the
trial of Marguerite to the approval Marguerite secured for her book
from Godfrey of Fontaines, a very important theologian.15 Paul
Verdeyen includes the complete registers of the trial of Marguerite
and of Guiard in his article. He presents part after part of the
records and discusses them. He gives much information about the
judges, the masters and the inquisitors.
Bernard McGinn (1998) agrees with Lerner and Verdeyen that the
trial and execution of Marguerite Porete should be seen in the
context of the tension between Philip IV of France and the papacy.
The pursuit of Porete, he says, was engineered by the Capetian
court as another expression of ‗the most Christian king‘s zeal for the
defense of orthodoxy at the time of the highly controversial
destruction of the Templar Order under the guise of their ‗heretical
depravity‘. However, he implies that in the light of later
condemnations of the Council of Vienne in 1311, her condemnation
might have been due to the growing fear of heresy, especially
mystical heresy, at the time.16
Kent Emery (1999) has concentrated on the social definition of
Marguerite Porete. He has claimed that she was not a beguine in a
strict sense of the term. He justifies his claim by saying that there
are some broadly shared characteristics and themes in the writings
of the late medieval religious women, which are completely missing
or only faintly present in the Mirror.17 Kent Emery also agrees with
Peter Dronke that Margaret‘s deepest inspiration was poetic: the
14
Verdeyen, „Le Procès‟, p. 85.
Verdeyen, „Le Procès‟, pp. 52-3.
16
McGinn, The Flowering of Mysticism, , pp. 245-6.
17
Kent Emery, Jr, Forward to Margaret Porete, The Mirror of Simple Souls, trans. Edmund Colledge,
O.S.A., J.C. Marler and Judith Grant, Notre Dame, 1999, p. xi.
15
18
literary ideals of ‗fin amor‘ were the ‗raison d'être‘ of her inner life,
her hopes and despairs, fears and sorrows, moments of ecstatic
fulfillment and aching emptiness.18 He identifies the main reason for
the condemnation of Marguerite in her statements about the virtues
and sacramental practices of the Church. The judges of Marguerite,
he says, surely recoiled at the thought of her book falling into the
hands of enthusiastic, unschooled lay-folk, and served to undermine
the established popular dogma of the Church.19
Edmund Colledge, J.C. Marler and Judith Grant (1999) rationalize
the detailed and accurate documentation of the trial of Marguerite
by the proximity to the affair of the Templars. This process, they
say, had been given so little semblance of legality that it had
provoked general revulsion. The inquisition therefore, had decided
to present its case concerning Marguerite with greater care than
had been used in acting against the Knights.20 Like Kent Emery,
these scholars do not accept Marguerite as a beguine. In addition to
not finding the distinctive beguine piety in her work, they put
forward the repeated claims of Marguerite that she and her kind
belong to the few.21 Regarding the three approvals Marguerite
Porete received and included in her book, they assert that she
added them after her first trial in an attempt to avert the initial
verdict.22
Amy Hollywood has offered an explanation for the way Marguerite
Porete chose to present her narrative as a discussion between three
major protagonists, The Soul, Love, and Reason. Hollywood claims
that this way of telling the story represents the fluidity of these
18
Emery, Forward to Margaret Porete, The Mirror of Simple Souls p. xii.
Ibid., p. xvii-xviii.
20
Colledge, Marler and Grant, Introduction to The Mirror of Simple Souls, p. xxxv.
21
Colledge,. Marler and Grant, Introduction to The Mirror of Simple Souls, p. il.
22
Ibid., , p. xlii.
19
19
three persons in the state of a transformed soul, in whom love
operates and uses to tell the story in the only way possible, with no
regards to human concepts of linear progress of narrative.23
Zan Kocher‘s study (2008) strips the Mirror‘s protagonist and object,
the soul, from its temporal flesh, from gender and subjectivity, to
claim that Marguerite‘s intention was to disengage from the wish to
understand, to love, or to want anything at all.24 Marguerite Porete,
Kocher argues, wanted to exemplify what happens when the soul
abandons the social preconceptions and personal desires. This, he
claims, retracts the soul to its precreational condition.
Both Hollywood and Kocher mention the debate Marguerite
conceivably alludes to by choosing Love and Reason as opposing
parties in their dialogue with the Soul. This allusion echoes many
lines in contemporary debate, mysticism and its communication to
the general public, the debate on women‘s ability to comprehend
and participate in general discussion on Scripture and dogma, the
place of embodied visionary experience, just to mention a few.
During the thirteenth century, when this process of religious
exploration took place, the peripheral areas of northern France,
southern France and the area of the Low Countries attracted some
of the more radical spiritualities. These peripheries became centres
of religious experimentation. In what follows I shall look at the large
area of Northern France, from Paris to what can be called the
southern Low Countries, in the thirteenth century. I shall look at the
men and women who distinguished that area at that time, bringing
forth examples of saintly women, to venerate. The counties of
Hainaut and Cambrai, where the earlier part of Marguerite‘s story
23
Hollywood, The Soul as Virgin Wife, p. 119.
Suzanne (Zan) Kocher, Allegories of Love in Marguerite Porete’s Mirror of Simple Souls, Turnhout,
2008, p. 183.
24
20
took place, were situated in the central south of the Low Countries.
The southern Low Countries were largely multilingual, but
predominantly French speaking. Most of the population lived in
powerful and to some extent autonomous cities and was
predominantly literate. The rough language divide skirted the
northern border of Hainaut and Liège, with Hainaut and Cambrai
being predominantly French speaking.25 This was the area
Marguerite Porete lived and operated in, according to the
documents. This was also the area James of Vitry described as
brimming with saintly women, who loved God with exemplary zeal
and who he thought ought to be encouraged by the authorities.
When the inquisition started delineating the boundaries of
orthodoxy, this area also became a battlefield between forces of
constraint and forces of creative devotional energy. I shall reflect on
the intriguing figure of Marguerite Porete and ask to what extent
her theology was a reaction to this continuing tension. I shall ask
whether her turning away from individual will, articulated so
beautifully in her treatise, was a statement of withdrawal from this
combat or an articulation of her contribution to it.
Extending this question to a bigger issue, I shall follow the
collaboration between scholasticism and the ‗common theology‘, as
Anneke Mulder-Bakker puts it.26 I shall ask how two treatises
written for royal women, Isabelle of France and Jeanne of Navarre,
encouraged collaboration, blurring the lines between the route of
purely logical progress of the human soul to God and the affective
one. How far did this dialogue, taking place in court, between
25
Walter Simons, Cities of Ladies, Beguine Communities in the Medieval Low Countries, 1200 – 1565,
Philadelphia, 2001, p. 3.
26
Anneke B. Mulder-Bakker, introduction to the volume she has edited, Seeing and Knowing, Women
and Learning in Medieval Europe 1200-1500, Turnhout, 2004, p. 9.
21
mainly Franciscans and royal women, contributed to the broader
exploration of religious expression.
With the death of Jeanne of Navarre, Queen of France (1285-1305),
the relative balance of power between the mendicant Orders within
the royal court changed. The Franciscans lost their most ardent
supporter, while and the Dominicans gained more influence by their
association with the king in his struggle with the papacy. I shall look
at Marguerite Porete and her book, from the perspective of the
period of her trial, the early fourteenth century, for what it can tell
us about the shift in clerical views on spirituality, lay religion and
most of all creative input from women on matters of faith. Her
arrest and execution, I would argue, marked a change of the
political situation. The decrees of the Council of Vienne (1311-2)
echoing Marguerite‘s theology as markers of heresy, will further
demonstrate that the question was no longer about the right dogma,
or theology. The new order of the day was obedience. Whoever
failed to obey was crushed, regardless of their outlook on the union
between the human soul and God.
22
Chapter one - Alternative Spiritual Networks in the
Thirteenth Century
You saw many bands of holy virgins in different places
of the lily gardens of the Lord and you rejoiced. They
had scorned carnal enticements for Christ, despised the
riches of this world for the love of the heavenly kingdom,
clung to their heavenly Bridegroom in poverty and
humility, and earned a sparse meal with their hands,
although their families abounded in great riches.
Forgetful of their people and the home of their father,
they preferred to endure distress and poverty than to
abound in riches that had been wrongly acquired or to
remain in danger among worldly pomps. You saw holy
and God fearing matrons and you rejoiced. With what
zeal did they preserve their maidenly modesty, arming
themselves in their honorable resolve by salutary
warnings, so that their only desire was the heavenly
Bridegroom. Widows served the Lord in fasts and
prayers, in vigils and in manual labor, in tears and
entreaties. Just as they had previously tried to please
their husbands in the flesh, so now the more did they
attempt to please their heavenly Bridegroom in the
spirit.27
27
„Vidisti enim (& gavisus es) in hortis liliorum Domini multas sanctarum Virginum in diversis locis
catervas, quae spretis pro Christo carnalibus illecebris, contemptis etiam amore regni caelestis hujus
mundi divitiis, in paupertate & humilitate Sponso caelesti adhaerentes, labore manuum tenuem victum
quaerebant, licet parentes earum multis divitiis abundarent. Ipsae tamen obliviscentes populum suum &
domum patris sui, malebant angustias & paupertatem sustinere, quam male acquisitis divitiis abundare,
vel inter pomposos seculares cum periculo remanere. Vidisti (& gavisus es) sanctas & Deo servientes
matronas, quanto zelo juvencularum pudicitiam conservarent, & eas in honesto proposito, ut solum
caelestem Sponsum desiderarent, salutaribus monitis instruerent. Ipsae etiam viduae in jejuniis &
orationibus, in vigiliis & labore manuum, in lacrymis & obsecrationibus, Domino servientes, sicut
maritis suis prius placere nitebantur in carne, imo ita amplius Sponso caelesti placere studebant in
spiritu.‟ Jacques de Vitry; Vita Mariae Oigniacensis ed. Daniel Papebroeck Acta Sanctorum Iunius 5
[June 23], Paris, 1867: 542-72. Trans. by Margot H. King, The life of Mary of Oignies by James of
23
In this manner James of Vitry (c. 1160/70 – 1240) described a
phenomenon, of women in the early thirteenth century living lives
of devotion and piety. Using the example of Mary of Oignies (1167 1213), he established a new devotional tradition and propagated its
acceptance, describing it as a local activity taking place in the duchy
of Brabant in the diocese of Liège. James of Vitry was the first
prominent cleric to bring the phenomenon to papal attention. Later
in life he became a bishop of Acre, and a cardinal in the Roman
curia. 28 He made Mary of Oignies a living example of true religiosity,
and dedicated a large portion of his life trying to structure
acceptable forms of life, in which such women could pass on their
insights.29 James of Vitry describes a meeting between two
authorities as a non conflict. Mary received instruction from God,
she did not push for acceptance of this instruction because of her
humility, but coercion was not needed in any case, since these
instructions perfectly coincided with the ones given to the male
clerics in Holy Scriptures.
Although she inwardly experienced the intimate counsel of the
Holy Spirit and although she was sufficiently instructed in Holy
Scriptures, yet from the extreme abundance of her humility,
she did not disdain to subject herself willingly and devoutly to
the counsels of others by renouncing her own will, lest she
appear to be wise in their eyes.30
Vitry, 3, in Mary of Oignies Mother of Salvation, ed. Anneke B. Mulder Bakker, Turnhout, 2006, p. 42.
Based on King‟s translation with small changes.
28
Thomas of Cantempré, Prologue to the supplement to the life of Mary of Oignies, trans. Hugh Feiss
OSB, in Mary of Oignies Mother of Salvation, ed. Mulder Bakker, p. 137.
29
Anneke B. Mulder-Bakker, Ibid., pp. 27-8.
30
Vita Mariae Oignacensis 76, in Mary of Oignies, Mother of Salvation, p. 103: „Licet autem familiari
Spiritus sancti consilio interius uteretur, licet divinis Scripturis sufficienter instrueretur; prae nimia
tamen humilitatis abundantia, ne sapiens in oculis suis videretur, aliorum consiliis, propriae voluntati
abrenuntiando, seipsam libenter & devote subjicere non dedignabatur‟.
24
Thomas of Cantimpré, James of Vitry‘s student and admirer, was
responsible for three other Lives and a supplement to the Life of
Mary of Oignies. Thomas was probably born in Bellingen, near
Brussels, into the lower nobility. He studied in Cambrai before
entering the Victorine abbey of Cantimpré. In 1237, five years after
moving to the Dominican community in Leuven, he was sent to
study further at St Jacques, in Paris. His best known works are Lives
of devout women of Liège. In addition to the supplement to the Life
of Mary of Oignies, he wrote the Lives of Christina Mirabilis ((1150 –
1224), Margaret of Ypres (1216-1237) and Lutgard of Tongeren or
Aywières (1182- 1246).31 Christina the Astonishing died and came
back to life at her funeral mass, levitated to the roof of the church,
and would not come down until she was exorcized by the priest.32
In the course of her life she threw herself into baking ovens, boiling
cauldrons, and icy rivers, just to mention a few of the miracles
associated with her.33 But more importantly she presented herself
as an authority to be reckoned with, but who ceded to the more
appropriate primacy of male clerics:
Although she had been completely illiterate from birth, yet
she understood all Latin and fully knew the meaning of Holy
Scripture. When she was asked very obscure questions by
certain spiritual friends, she would explain them very openly.
But she did this most unwillingly and rarely, for she said that
31
Barbara Newman, Introduction to Thomas of Cantimpré: The Collected Saints’ Lives, Abbot John of
Cantimpré, Christina the Astonishing, Margaret of Ypres, and Lutgard of Aywières, ed., Barbara
Newman, Turnhout, 2008, p. 8.
32
Life of Christina the Astonishing, in Newman, Thomas of Cantimpré: The Collected Saints’ Lives, p.
130.
33
Ibid., p. 133-4.
25
to expound Holy Scriptures belonged to the clergy and not to
the ministry of such as her.34
Margaret of Ypres, had been sheltered and reclusive, and very
attached to her confessor Zeger of Lille. She lived a short and
tormented life, in which she practically starved herself to death,
before her twenty-first birthday. Lutgard of Aywières became
Thomas‘ spiritual mother. Lutgard became an exemplary num,
celebrated for mystical gifts, which included the powers of healing,
exorcism and releasing multitudes of souls from purgatory through
prayers and fasts.35 These were not the only notable spiritual
women operating in the area. Other women left their mark in the
history of devotion. Juliana of Mont-Cornillon (1193 - 1258),
Beatrice of Nazareth (d.1268) and many others were described as
leading outstanding lives of devotion.
As Barbara Newman puts it, ‗the new evangelical spirit fostered the
growth of a supple but vulnerable network of mulieres religiosae
and viri spiritualis, including secular clerics like James of Vitry,
Dominicans such as Thomas of Cantimpré, and Cistercians such as
Caesarius of Heisterbach and Goswin of Villers.‘36 Scholars are
divided on the question of the perception of this phenomenon by
the contemporaries. Dyan Elliot has argued that such stories, post
mortem, were used by the church authorities as a strategy in the
battle against the influence of heretical teachings. When the Church
authorities found it difficult to sway the common folk from admiring
34
Ibid., p. 148: „Intelligebat autem ipsa omnem latinitatem, et sensum in Scriptura divina plenissime
noverat, licet ipsa a nativitate litteras penitus ignoraret, et earum obscurissimas quaestiones
spiritualibus quibusdam amicis, cum interrogaretur, enodatissime reserabat. Invitissime tamen [ac
rarissime] facere voluit; dicens Scripturas sanctas exponere, proprium esse clericorum, nec ad se
hujusmodi ministerium pertinere.‟
35
Newman, Introduction to Thomas of Cantimpré: The Collected Saints’ Lives, pp. 9-10.
36
Ibid., p. 14.
26
extraordinary examples of devotion exhibited by heretics, they
presented these stories of extraordinary women, who disregarded
the risk to their health, and provided proof of unwavering faith.37
Veneration, and exemplification, rather than call for imitation, was
their aim. Karras, concentrating more on the scholastic milieu, has
argued that the masters of the University of Paris used women to
think with, treating them as objects for their greater observations.
Women themselves in that setting did not matter.38 By contrast,
John Coakley has argued that when the friars came in contact with
such visionaries, they became aware of the different authority they
represented from their own, and therefore were not threatened by it.
The friars, increasingly ordained to holy orders as the century
progressed, acted from the privileged standing of their office.
Women visionaries had more immediate access to authority, via
their claimed direct connection to God, source of all things, but the
friars felt confident in their own power, especially in view of
women‘s ready submission to their authority.39
In this chapter I shall argue that these perceptions of the relative
authority of men and women need to be nuanced, by exploring how
these women categorized the religious men they came in contact
with in the Northern France and Low Countries. I shall argue that
encounters of religious men with devout women shaped a sense of
commonality within certain circles, but not others, based on a
different set of criteria from the normal church establishment. I
shall look into several women mystics as to their perception of their
37
Dyan Elliot, Proving Woman, Female Spirituality and Inquisitional Culture in the Later Middle Ages,
Princeton and Oxford, 2004, p. 65.
38
Ruth Mazo Karras, „Using Women to Think With in the Medieval University‟, in Seeing and
Knowing, Women and Learning in Medieval Europe 1200-1500, ed. Anneke B. MulderBakker,Turnhout, 2004, pp. 21-33.
39
John Coakley, „Friars as Confidants of Holy Women in Medieval Dominican Hagiography‟, in
Images of Sainthood in Medieval Europe, ed. Renate Blumenfeld-Kosinski and Timea Szell, London,
1991, pp. 222-246, and more fully John Coakley, Women, men, and spiritual power : female saints and
their male collaborators, New York, 2006.
27
own authority in this social setting in the context of their religious
experience and how they identified their difference and shaped their
own sense of community with their supporters and against the
‗other‘. I use the term ‗alternative‘ to define that sense of different
criteria of admittance to these groups.
The region between Northern France and the southern Low
Countries in the thirteenth century encouraged development of new
ideas and forms of life. Highly educated and urbanized and lacking
in institutions of organized religious expression, this region shared
in a wider spiritual renewal during this period. David Nicholas has
offered a very detailed description of Flanders that, although
excluding the duchy of Brabant, helps elucidate the broader
character of northern France and the southern Low Countries. He
describes a society in which industrial interests were always
stronger as a social navigator than the church establishment. This is
not to say that people there were less religious, but that the
impetus for their decisions was often based on trade rather than on
considerations of the soul. The cities, where most of the population
resided, had strong governments. Even monastic orders preferred
the lay courts when official action was needed.40 The population of
the region was highly literate, especially in the central Low
Countries. Education was in principle an ecclesiastical monopoly,
but it was being contested everywhere during the thirteenth century.
By 1300 private instruction was available also in the vernacular.41
In Flanders, monastic life was mainly Benedictine and noble in
character. The wealthy older abbeys increasingly became religious
establishments controlled by wealthy local families and out of touch
40
41
David Nicholas, Medieval Flanders, London, 1992, p. 139.
Ibid., p. 142.
28
with the spiritual needs of most believers.42 Even the mendicants
made their impact mainly in the urban upper classes. Not only the
Franciscans and Dominicans but also the Augustinians, the Brothers
of the Sack, and the Carmelites, along with several smaller groups,
found a strong reception in the Flemish cities. Most mendicant
foundations were in urban locations and mainly in purely industrial
environments. Of twenty-six convents founded before 1350 fifteen
were in Bruges, Ghent and Ypres.43 However, most mendicants, just
like most monks, came from the urban upper classes of society.
There was never a question of absolute poverty in the Flemish
mendicant orders. Even by the mid-century Franciscans were
relaxing their practice of poverty, and by 1270 they were acquiring
rents and other properties.44
Walter Simons has provided a survey on the condition of women in
the Southern Low countries. Household structure, he argues,
created a fertile ground for the flourishing of religious communities
of women in the cities. As opposed to the south of Europe, women
in the north did not marry young, nor join their husband‘s family
arrangements. Couples usually married when they could support
themselves, including the income the wife could generate for the
household. This cultural difference, he very usefully points out,
caused many women to move to the cities in search of employment
and explore various religious options when they got there.45
Episcopal control of the land was not very tight in this period. Just
as political influence was divided between France and Germany, so
two archbishoprics, one French in Rheims, and the other German in
Cologne, were responsible for all the area, from Liège to
42
Ibid., p. 140.
Ibid., p. 141.
44
Ibid., p. 142.
45
Simons, Cities of Ladies, p. 9.
43
29
Thérouanne. Throughout the thirteenth century Flanders became
more and more dependent on France, which the French kings very
enthusiastically encouraged.46 They controlled royal marriages,
gave money fiefs, and sometimes took by force control over specific
situations. But on the ground neither royal nor bishopric control
were very dominant.
Women‘s spiritual needs were very poorly met by religious orders in
Flanders of the thirteenth century. Nunneries were never strong in
Flanders. Only four convents of Poor Clares and two Dominican
nunneries were established in Flanders during the thirteenth century.
They were patronized by the counts and were even more
aristocratic than the male mendicant houses.47 By necessity, Walter
Simons, tells us, women in northern France created networks in
which the women could get help and support in their first steps
toward their vocation, whether as beguines, anchorites or enclosed
nuns.48
The desire of women to live a more religious life has been treated
by Herbert Grundmann to be a powerful drive that affected
multitudes of women in northern Europe in the thirteenth century
and led them to actively realize their religious ambitions. Such
women shared with the religious movement in general the goal of a
Christian way of life in the sense of the gospels, which they believed
could be achieved particularly through voluntary poverty and
chastity.49 He claimed that this movement was gaining strength
46
Nicholas, Medieval Flanders, p. 150.
Ibid., p. 141.
48
Simons, Cities of Ladies, p. 45.
49
Herbert Grundmann, Religious Movements in the Middle Ages, The Historical Links between Heresy,
the Mendicant Orders, and the Women’s Religious Movement in the Twelfth and Thirteenth Century,
with the Historical Foundations of German Mysticism, trans., Steven Rowan, Notre Dame, London,
1995, p. 82.
47
30
from the beginning of the thirteenth century, partly within orders
and religious houses and partly in irregular heretical circles.50
It has been traditionally assumed that women who were unable to
enter a cloister adopted instead the ‗semireligious‘ status of
beguines. John B. Freed, however, has very successfully argued
that it was not a lack of room in the nunnery that caused some
women to become beguines rather than nuns. Rather, they became
beguines for the same reason their male counterparts entered the
Franciscan and Dominican orders. The life of a beguine, whose
everyday activity combines the ideal of care for the poor and sick,
with withdrawal from normal social constraints, came much closer
to the ideal of evangelical perfection than the severely restricted
and more traditional life of the cloistered nun.51
Contemporaries used the term ‗beguine‘ quite liberally to indicate all
female religious practice outside of nunneries in the northern
countries of the thirteenth century. However, the description of
their lives often centered on what they were not, rather than what
they were.52 Chastity and extraregular status were said to be
unique to the diverse manifestation of the beguine movement and
separated them from all other female categories of the thirteenthcentury: nuns and married women.53 Historiography has attempted
to divide the beguine movement into two distinct groups. These
groups correlate to the popular divisions made for all women at the
time. One section of the beguinal movement is described as having
been thoroughly orthodox and of impeccable morals, whereas the
other part slipped into heresy and moral aberration. The orthodox
50
Grundmann, Religious Movements, p. 77.
John B. Freed, „Urban Development and the „Cura Monialium‟ in the Thirteenth-Century Germany,
in Viator, 3, (1972), 311-27, p. 324.
52
Carol Neel, „The Origins of the Beguines‟, in Signs, 14/2, Winter (1989), 321-41, Working together
in the Middle Ages: Perspectives on Women’s Communities, p.323.
53
Neel, „Origins of the Beguines‟, p. 325.
51
31
beguines are not usually credited with the invention of new
theological ideas, since most of them were simple uneducated
women coming from modest backgrounds. These orthodox beguines
were sharply distinguished from others, who did not achieve a tight
organization but lived isolated in the world, scattered about the city,
or roaming about the country, begging for their livelihood.54
The meaning of the word ‗beguine‘ does not hold a better clue to
the different kinds of feminine religious devotion. James of Vitry, in
his second sermon to virgins reported that the name was used in a
derogatory manner:
If a young maiden wishes to preserve her virginity and her
parents offer her a wealthy suitor in marriage, she despises
and rejects him… But secular prelates and other malicious
men try to destroy her and convince her to give up her sacred
purpose; they say: look, she wishes to be a beguina’ (because
that is what they call them in Flanders and Brabant), or
papelarda (that is what they call them in France), or humiliata
(their name in Lombardy), or bizoke (their name in Italy), or
coquennunne (as they are called in Germany). It is with such
nicknames and insults that they intended to dissuade them
from pursuing a life of purity.55
Indeed, in 1215 it still raised suspicion of heresy for a woman to be
called a ‗beguine‘, since it hinted at the name of the heretics of
Southern France, ‗Albigensis‘. Yet as early as 1223 the Cologne
town council records spoke without hesitation of religious women as
54
Anke Passenier, „”Women on the Loose”: Stereotypes of Women in the Story of the Medieval
Beguines‟, in Female Stereotypes in Religious Traditions, ed. Ria Kloppenborg and Wouter J.
Hanegraaff, Leiden, 1995, pp. 62-3.
55
Simons, Cities of Ladies, p. 121, note 7, p. 213-4, cited from Greven, „Der Ursprung‟, 44, and
Philippen, De Begijnhoven.
32
‗beguines‘, and after 1245 the women called themselves that name.
The old meaning of the word had been forgotten and its new use
had lost all hint of heresy.56 Contrary to previous assumptions that
the word was derived from ‗Albigensis‘, or indicated the undyed
color of the women‘s habit, it is now accepted that these terms,
beguina, paperlard and lollaert, originally stood for a person
involved in a private prayer. So private, that his or her speech could
not be understood. Therefore the individual could claim to be
devout but the observer was never sure whether she was indeed
praying, and could, therefore, conclude that she was a hypocrite.57
The term beguina did not, therefore, distinguish between the
different groups of women and did not carry any specific
characterization of a woman who was called that.
The women described in the vitae, did anything but conform to
specific criteria laid out by the church for women. They provided a
fulcrum of alternative devotion. Not only did they attract to their
circles people who were interested in experimenting with ways of
life, but they went out to instruct people on their own volition. This
is especially significant since such behavior is passed on to us by
their clerical male admirers, which indicates the acceptance and
even admiration of the said behavior. Mary of Oignies is reported as
preaching: ‗resisting death, she would prick up her ears, prepare
her heart, and speak a few words about the sermon to those
standing around her‘58 and ‗many of her intimate friends who had
frequently had experience of her divine prudence did not dare to do
anything important without her counsel.‘59 Christina Mirabilis, a
56
Grundmann, Religious Movements, pp. 81-2.
Simons, Cities of Ladies, p. 122.
58
The Life of Mary of Oignies 3, in Mulder Bakker, Mary of Oignies Mother of Salvation, p. 99: „aures
invita morti erigebat, cor praeparabat, circumstantibus etiam de sermone aliqua verba referebat‟. Vita
Mariae Oigniacensis, IV, 68.
59
„Multi etiam de familiaribus amicis ejus, qui divinam ejus prudentiam frequenter experti erant, sine
ejus consilio nihil magnum facere audebant.‟, Vita Mariae Oigniacensis‟, IV, 77.
57
33
strong and opinionated woman, lived her life guided by her visions
of Christ and nothing else. She must have seemed insane or at the
very least very annoying to people around her. She offered her help
and advice most willingly, ‗she assisted the dying most willingly and
gladly and exhorted them to a confession of their sins, to the fruit of
penance, to a hope of everlasting joy and to a fear of the destroying
fire‘, ‗when she spoke in this way of Christ the Lord, she was filled
with wondrous grace of speech‘.60 ‗When Louis, count of Loon and a
most noble man, learned of her famous sanctity through hearsay,
he began to love her in his heart and to follow sincerely her
counsels and advice… she would go to him in his palace and
reprimand him with a mother‘s confidence, and obtain from him
whatever was owing for the satisfaction of justice.‘61 The approval
of these women‘s actions is seen clearly in the way these male
clerics describe their actions, which in other women could be seen
as reprehensible.
Hadewijch of Antwerp
Positive and encouraging descriptions of the religious authority and
leadership of these women are further demonstrated by writings of
women themselves. It is interesting to examine how they saw their
lives in relation to the various male religious, and how they saw
their own network or community. No vita of Hadewijch was ever
written. Her writings provide the only source of information about
her life. They were originally written in Medieval Dutch and copied
60
Thomas of Cantempré, Prologue to the supplement to the life of Mary of Oignies, trans. Hugh Feiss
OSB, in Mulder Bakker, Mary of Oignies Mother of Salvation, p. 142: „Libentissime ac benignissime
morientibus assistebat, exhortans ad peccatorum confessionem, et poenitentiae fructum, ad spem
perennis gaudii, et horrorem exitialis incendii … Et perfundebatur mira oris gratia, quando de Christo
Domino hoc dicebat‟, Vita de Christina Mirabili III, 27’, Acta Sanctorum, Julius 5 [July 24], Paris,
1868, cols 650 – 656.
61
„Cujus sanctitatem vir nobilissimus Ludouicus scilicet comes de Loen celebri fama cognoscens,
coepit eam ex corde diligere, et ejus consiliis ac colloquiis sinceriter inhaerere. Ubicumque vidisset
eam, assurgebat, et occurrebat ei, matremque vocabat. Cum autem aliquid idem comes contra justitiam,
vel ecclesiam Christi aut ministros ejus exercuisset, ipsa quasi mater de filio dolebat pro eo. Adienque
eum, in palatio consistentem, materna illum fiducia arguebat, obtinebatque ab eo quidquid pro
satisfactione et justitia debuisset‟, Vita de Christina Mirabili, IV, 41.
34
sometime in the fourteenth century. By the middle of the sixteenth
century they were largely forgotten, until they were rediscovered by
the three Belgian medievalists, J. F. Willems, F. J. Mone, and F. A.
Snellaert in 1838.62 Her works include Letters, Poems in Stanzas,
Visions and Poems in Couplets.
Hadewijch lived a life of great social awareness and interest in
theological developments of her day. She wrote her letters to a
group of women, without mentioning a formal community, which
invites an assumption that at some point of her life she was she
evicted from her Beguine community and exiled. Her education can
be glimpsed from her writings, which reflect familiarity with the
Latin language, the rules of rhetoric, medieval numerology,
Ptolemaic astronomy, the theory of music and the rules of letter
writing and versification. She also uses a number of French words,
which hints at French proficiency.63 Her knowledge of Scripture is
profound, and underlies her whole writings, and her familiarity with
the centeral figures and affairs of the church is astounding and
allows a glimpse of her world especially through her list of the
perfect.
In the manuscript of her writing, the Visions are followed by a
supplement known as ‗The List of the Perfect‘.64 This little studied
account presents an opportunity to examine the sense of social
hierarchy these women had, and how they saw themselves within it.
Although the authenticity of the ‗The List‘ is not doubted, it has
been largely ignored by scholars as insignificant for understanding
her literary heritage or her mystical message.65 ‗The List‘ has been
used only to offer conjectures about the dates of her life. In this
62
Columba Hart, Introduction to Hadewijch, The complete works, trans. Columba Hart, New York,
1980, p. 1.
63
Ibid., p. 5.
64
Hadewijch of Antwerp, De visioenen van Hadewijch, Middelnederlandse tekst, vertaling en
kommentaar, ed. Paul Mommaers, Nijmegen, 1979, pp. 163-6; „The List of the Perfect‟, trans. Sr.
Helen Rolfson, in Vox Benedictina: Women and Monastic Spirituality, 5 (1988), pp. 277-87.
65
Columba Hart, notes to introduction, n. 6, p. 360.
35
document, she presents to the reader a list of devout people from
her own past and from the Christian past in general. Among the
people of her personal past is ‗a beguine whom master Robbaert put
to death on account of her true love‘.66 Master Robert has been
identified by Bernard McGinn as Robert le Bougre, a Dominican who
was the leader of the investigation of heresy in northern France and
Flanders between 1234 and 1245 and condemned a beguine named
Aeleis in Cambrai in 1236.67 A convert to Christianity from
Chatharism and subsequently a Dominican, Robert was known for
supporting mass executions. On 29 May, 1239, at Montwimer in
Champagne, Robert burnt about a hundred and eighty persons,
whose trial had begun and ended within one week.68 Later, when
Rome found that the complaints against him were justified, he was
first deposed and evicted to a remote abbey where his nature was
soon known to everyone and he was ostracized for the rest of his
life. Therefore it seems sensible that when she is writing about him
she still refers to him as Master Robert, and not former master, or
in otherwise derogatory terms.
Hadewijch also speaks of certain hermits in Jerusalem, both male
and female: ‗ among the still living [perfect] there dwell seven as
hermits on the walls of Jerusalem, and three live in the city. The
latter are women, two virgins and a third who was a sinful woman
and had herself enclosed in a wall.69 Immuration was a western
tradition. In the East hermits chose to withdraw to the desert, not a
mile away from the walls of Jerusalem with its many natural caves
66
Hadewijch of Antwerp, „The List of the Perfect‟, p. 285.
Bernard McGinn, The Flowering of Mysticism, Men and Women in the New Mysticism – 1200-1350,
New York, 1998, p. 221.
68
Michael Lower, „The Burning at Mont-Aimé: Thibaut of Champagne‟s Preparations for the Barons‟
Crusade of 1239, in Medieval History, 29 (2003), 95-108, p. 105.
69
De visioenen van Hadewijch, ed. Mommaers, 166: „die xxixste Vanden levenden legherder. vij op
die mure te jherusalem alse heremiten. ende iij woenter ni die stat. die sijn wilf .ij. Joncfrouwen ende
die derde was een sonderse ende es vermaect in enen mure.‟ Translated by Rolfson, Hadewijch of
Antwerp, „The List of the Perfect‟, p. 285.
67
36
and a long tradition of desert fathers. More than likely these hermits
came from the West joining Frederick‘s crusade in 1228/29. She
says that they are living on the city walls. As the walls were only
there prior to the destruction of the city in 1244 by Khorasmian
Turks, she must have received news about them during these years
or slightly after.70
Among the fifty-six people she mentions in her list there are both
men and women. She includes women about whom we know
nothing, alongside well known figures such as St Augustine and St
Bernard. She does not favor any particular group, and the reader
gets the sense of a mixed gendered group of people valued for what
can be best described as a life of Love. The only quality that they
are measured against and which decided their inclusion in the list is
their perfection in the life of the spirit. Heightening the profile of
several women, she created a sense of a group in which all
members were as valuable as the several high profile male saints
she included.
From the timeline of her writing she looks back as far as the
scriptures, then moves to her immediate past, and finally to the
present. In the past, she recounts and enumerates every person.
When she reaches the present she starts to describe them in small
groups of males and females living in a certain area. Starting from
the twenty-third, Mina, she describes how she participates in their
lives in a sense that she either 'sent' someone, talked to, or had a
personal visit from the people mentioned, aside from
Hildegard, ‘who saw all the visions being the twenty eight'. Then
she moves to people who are still living when she writes her list.
Therefore it seems that between twenty-two and twenty-nine had
70
Andrew Jotischky, Crusading and the Crusader states, Harlow, 2004, p. 231.
37
died before she wrote this list, but between thirty and fifty-seven
are still alive.
Many of the devout people Hadewijch knew personally and even
assisted in their spiritual quest. She exchanged visits with them,
both physical and spiritual, shared ideas and sent help when help
was needed. Moreover, the relationship Hadewijch describes was
not only between herself and these people, but existed as a network
of connections between the members: ‗Mina, a recluse who dwells
far away on craggy rocks and to whom I sent Master Henry of Breda,
is the twenty-third.‘71 Not only did she have a connection with these
people, including what seems to be a master of the schools, but she
introduced them to others, creating a wider network of spiritual
support.
The way Hadewijch describes the people in her list shows that she
did not see them as single individuals who live alone with large
distances between them but a large community of similar minded
people covering the known lands. She mentions places like
Jerusalem, Thuringia, Brabant, England, Flanders, Zeeland, Holland,
Friesland, Bohemia, Paris, and the Rhine. Not only were lay men
and women part of this community, but also clerics. ‗In Zeeland, six:
a priest, two beguines, a recluse in Middelburg and a very powerful
widow. The sixth is an unknown man.‘ In fact the one person she
says knows her better than anyone is a forgotten master of Paris.
‗In Paris there is a forgotten Master [of the schools], who lives alone
in a little cell. He knows more about me than I know about myself,
as far as goodness is concerned.‘72 Unfortunately, we are never told
the identity of this Parisian master, but the remark implies that her
teaching was known in Paris. Prior to Hadewijch‘s account this
71
72
Hadewijch of Antwerp, „The List of the Perfect‟, p. 285.
Hadewijch of Antwerp, „The List of the Perfect‟, p. 286. Helen Rolfson adds „of the schools‟.
38
Master, having left the teaching career, immured himself, and
before or after had contact with Hadewijch to the extent of her
feeling he knows her very well.
Among these perfect beings Hadewijch mentioned a defrocked
priest and a priest, one after another, followed by a preacher. She
describes nuns, beguines, virgins, widows and recluses. Their
profession seems unimportant compared to their perfection in faith
and their devotion to the contemplative way of life. They span a
great region, including the kingdom of Jerusalem, which was (until
1244) an extension of Western Europe.
In contrast to the great acceptance and inclusion Hadewijch shows
all these diverse individuals, her feelings towards the official clerics
of the church are of distrust at best. Much like Angelo Clareno, a
‗spiritual‘ Franciscan rebel about a century later, she refers to them
as a group that does not meet with her approval. She criticizes the
persecution and inquisition of the friars, as a general body of official
church persecution. She thinks of them as the enemy of true God
lovers and calls for resistance. ‗God knows‘, she says, ‗the greatest
perfection of all is to suffer from false brethren who seem to be
members of the household of the faith.‘73 The mendicants, who are
supposed to share the ideology or the ‗faith‘ of the devout women,
do something so appalling that they are described as false brethren.
Their interference or persecution of others is the reason Hadewijch
calls them false brethren. ‗Those we had chosen to rejoice with us in
our Beloved are beginning to interfere with us here.‘ The ones that
were supposed to share the women‘s devotions, suddenly to
Hadewijch‘s chagrin, started enforcing their own concepts on the
people Hadewijch sees as her community. The fact that the inflictors
73
Hadewijch, The complete works, Letters, p. 55.
39
of the misery are the ones supposed to share the same goal
implicates the brethren in the gravest of sins: the sin of betrayal.
After expressing her outrage at the controlling behaviour of the
brethren, Hadewijch opens the subject of persecution and
inquisition and discusses it: ‗I wish to put you on your guard this
time against one thing from which much harm results… Everyone
wishes to demand fidelity from others and to test his friend and
continually complains on the subject of fidelity...the man who fails
in fidelity or justice toward another is the one who suffers the
greatest harm; and the worst of it is that he himself lacks the
sweetness of fidelity‘.74 Hadewijch does the unimaginable and
questions the legitimacy of religious persecution. She argues that
demanding from another person to prove his or her faithfulness is
unjust and proves the aggressor as unfaithful. In so saying
Hadewijch launches a rigorous attack on an established church
authority of inquisition into heretical depravity, which reflects not
only on the executors but also on the originators and the planners
of the persecution.
A similar motif is repeated in a list of traits Hadewijch warns the
recipients of her letters against. Of course, one could understand
them literally as bad traits or habits the women in her group are
warned against. However, another interpretation may be more
accurate. ‗Many of them… creep in among your group disguised in
fancy dress… baseness is dressed up as humility; anger as just zeal;
hate as fidelity and reason…‘.75 False friars that come to investigate
the devote individuals pretend to support their devotion when in
fact they consumed with contempt and hatred towards them. They
hide their true feeling behind false humility. These friars imply by
74
75
Hadewijch, Letters, p. 56.
Hadewijch, Letters, p. 72.
40
that that the women lack humility and presume in their arrogance
to have the right to travel to the divine. Their anger towards the
women, who achieve connection which is denied to them, is then
presented as justified a wish to protect the faith against these
women, who contaminate it. The hatred the friars feel for these
obstinate women who claim to know God intimately manifests itself
in the punishment which is being presented as proof of fidelity and
reason. Therefore Hadewijch claims that their anger is disguised as
just zeal and hatred as fidelity and reason.
The authority for their actions is then attacked: ‗They scorn the
works of Love; they do so indeed with great worldly wisdom‘.76 The
justification for their actions comes from the learned reasoning that
originates in this world. The way of love on the other hand is a
direct connection between a soul and God. She undermines the
claimed authority for persecution as nothing more than a worldly
wisdom, asserting her way of life as the only true way to God. The
illegitimacy of their conduct is further enhanced by the use of the
word ‗aliens‘. The Bible uses ‗aliens‘ to distinguish all the peoples
from the people of Israel. As ‗aliens‘, they do not have an exclusive
bond with God. Their authority and their actions are therefore
unauthorized. After establishing the activity of the persecutors of
the true Christians as illegitimate Hadewijch calls for quiet
resistance: ‗…to neglect the commandments of Love, some issue
contrary commands. But a noble person who wishes to keep his rule
of life… does not fear the aliens‘ commands or counsels, no matter
what torment befalls him in consequence, be it scandal, disgrace,
indictments, insults, desertion, imprisonment, homelessness,
nakedness…He is not afraid to be ready to show obedience to Love
76
Hadewijch, Letters, p. 87.
41
in all…‘.77 In times when obedience determines one‘s social status
her call for a quiet resistance is very strong.
Personal authenticity of devotion is considered more important than
ordination in Hadewijch‘s mind. She feels that the church, as an
official body, sends undeserving individuals whose love for God is
not their strongest feature. Their earthly devotion to lust, jealousy
and fear causes them to persecute these women, whose devotion
irritates them. And it irritates them, Hadewijch implies, because in
their heart of hearts they know these women are holy, but their
earthly pride would not allow them to admit this. Hadewijch does
not enjoy the support of a church officials. Her writings reflect an
opinion of an outsider looking in for deficiencies in practice. Her
criticism also identifies the enemy of the group of people, she feels
she belongs to. Regardless of their gender, she sees them as the
targets of the official church persecution.
Beatrice of Nazareth
Another option of dealing with uncompromising authority is evident
in the case of Beatrice of Nazareth (1200-1268). She presents an
opportunity to look at the mechanics of creating a saint, while
changing the voice of the woman. Beatrice enjoyed collaboration
while alive, and her vita was written after she died. She lived and
wrote most of her life in the Dutch speaking part of the Low
Countries in the middle of the thirteenth century.78 At some point
the community moved to Nazareth, which is in the diocese of
French speaking Cambrai. Beatrice‘s biographer used her diary or
autobiography, some later notes, her treatise on the Seven
Manieren or The Seven ways of Love, or Minne, and information
gained from the nuns who lived with her, to write her vita, which
77
78
Hadewijch, Letters, p. 88.
Roger De Ganck trans., The Life of Beatrice of Nazareth, 1200 – 1268, Kalamazoo, 1991.
42
thereafter was ‗lost‘.79 The treatise was critically edited in 1926 by
Leonce Reypens and Joseph Van Mierlo. Her biography was edited in
1964 by Leonce Reypens as well.80 Therefore we have two versions
of The Seven ways of Minne, one original and, and another which
appears in the last part of her vita, used by her biographer and
changed almost beyond recognition.
The biographer, identified as a chaplain of the community of
Nazareth, stripped the treatise of all theological components. All
interaction between God and human soul, as an understanding of
the mystic while still alive, was obliterated. And as part of Beatrice‘s
vita it became a motivational piece on charity, love and the
description of a devout and conforming nun. Her writing in The
Seven ways of Minne contains some motifs that will be developed
later by Marguerite Porete. When Beatrice‘s biographer composed
her vita he changed her treatise so that it was no longer a treatise
on spiritual development. Instead of an outline of the changes the
soul undergoes to become united with God, losing on the way her
will, becoming God, and loosing any need of the church
establishment to help her communicate, it becomes instead a story
of one woman‘s charity and devotion. All the burning fire is lost in
translation, so to speak.
Beatrice uses anima, soul, to describe the emptying the mystic
undergoes to reach out for the Divine Love. She clearly identifies
that part in herself that is God‘s and wants to return to God, by
change, or spiritual development. This is not as clearly outlined as
in The Mirror of Simple Souls of Marguerite Porete, but the elements
are there. The soul that is consumed by love sees nothing that isn‘t
God, wants nothing that isn‘t God, and God wants all that He wants
79
80
De Ganck, Introduction to The Life of Beatrice of Nazareth, p. xxi.
De Ganck, Introduction to The Life of Beatrice of Nazareth, p. ix.
43
in her. This can be seen in various passages omitted or changed by
the biographer. For example, Beatrice says: ‗… she acts and she
refrains from acting, as she wills. So it is with such a soul. It is love,
and love within it rules strongly and powerfully. The soul rests, acts
and refrains from acting, without and within to Love‘s will.‘ 81 The
biographer skipped this part entirely. In another part Beatrice writes:
‗… until the soul shall have mounted higher and been made wholly
free from itself and until love reigns powerfully within it.‘ 82 And the
biographer: ‗and established in a sublime summit of perfection, yet
living in the body, she led an angelic life on earth and dwelt on the
threshold of the future life, renewed by heavenly joys.‘83 Beatrice:
‗Then love makes the soul so bold and free that in all its actions and
restraints at work and at rest it fears neither men nor the demon,
neither angel nor saints, nor God himself.‘
84
And the biographer: ‗in
this state her holy mind had arrived at such liberty of spirit,
constancy of heart and purity of conscience that she feared neither
man nor demon, not the angelic or even the divine judgment, since
that divine Love which dominates everything, expelled this fear and
preserved her liberty of conscience.85
According to Roger DeGank the original version of the
autobiography that Beatrice wrote was destroyed after it was used
81
„… et ut vult facit et omittit. Ita fit cum tali anima: amor est, et amor intra eam fortiter regnat et
potenter; ad voluntatem eius quescens, faciens et omittens, ad extra et ad intra.‟ The Seven ways of
Minne, in De Ganck, The Life of Beatrice of Nazareth, p. 314.
82
„attamen vehementiam suam animae celavit donec in altiora ascenderit et a seipsa penitus libera facta
sit, et amor intra eam potenter regnet.‟ The Seven ways of Minne, in De Ganck, The Life of Beatrice of
Nazareth, p. 316.
83
„ in sublimi quodam perfectionis vertice constituta, viuens in corpore vitam angelicam in terris ageret,
et celestibus gaudijs innouata, in quodam future vite confinio arto resideret.‟ The Seven ways of Minne,
in De Ganck., The Life of Beatrice of Nazareth, 258, lines, 449-55, p. 316.
84
„tunc amor tam audacem et liberam eam facit, ut in omni sua actione vel omissione, in opere et
quiete, nec homines pertimescat nec daemonem, nec angelum, nec sanctos, neque ipsum Deum.‟ The
Seven ways of Minne, in De Ganck, The Life of Beatrice of Nazareth, p. 316.
85
„ ad tantam quoque libertatem spiritus, cordis constantiam et conscientie puretatem in hoc statu mens
sancta peruenerat. vt non hominem vereretur, non demonem, non angelicum etiam vel diuinum
iudicium in omni facto siue cogitatu suo pertimesceret; presertim cum ipsa dominatrix omnium, diuina
caritas, hunc timorem foras expelleret, et in omni quod patrabat opere, conscientie libertatem, immotam
et stabilem in suo robore conseruaret.‟ The Seven ways of Minne, in De Ganck, The Life of Beatrice of
Nazareth, 258, lines 456-71, pp. 316, 318.
44
by her biographer as one of his sources, complementing it with
stories from her still living sisters and blood sisters. De Gank claims
that this was probably done to protect the community from the
threat of inquisition that was gaining force after the council of Lyon.
Be that as it may, it does not explain the preservation of the
treatise in the original vernacular that Reypens translated into Latin
in 1926. it seems more likely that the nuns decided to preserve the
original because the vita did not reflect the intent behind the
mystical treatise, as written by Beatrice. They were happy enough
to promote her cult, and encourage her vita to be written. But after
the vita was completed, they realized that the last part, the part of
the treatise was changed drastically. The nuns I believe were as
aware as the chaplain of the dangers the original version presented,
and agreed to release her vita as is, saving and preserving the
original treatise at the same time.
This interaction, I believe, exemplifies one method of presenting a
relationship between a woman mystic and a male cleric to the
general public. The woman‘s visions or teachings were modified to
meet with the church expectations of proper dogma and behavior.
Her community accepted that as a way to venerate the woman,
while keeping the true legacy hidden in their attics. There were
probably other interactions of this kind in the north during the
thirteenth century. Cooperation between men and women was
unavoidable. In some instances of collaboration women needed to
sacrifice some of their understanding of the Divine truth. Even when
the interaction was favorable to women, it was neither all accepting,
nor always following where women wanted to lead.
Mechthild of Magdeburg
In Germany in the second half of the thirteenth century lived a
woman mystic writer Mechthild of Magdeburg. There is no written
45
vita about her and the few facts we have about her life come from
her own writings. In her writings the criticism is extremely subtle,
yet discernable. She exemplifies, I believe, the feelings of a fully
supported woman, who nevertheless harbored some resentment but
dared not voice it clearly. Mechthild was born in 1208 and died in
1282 or 1294, starting to write after 1250 and completing her last
book in the nineties.86 The original text of The Flowing Light of the
Godhead in Middle Low German has been lost. Her first six books
were translated into Latin shortly after her death and into German
by a secular priest from Basel named Heinrich of Nordlingen.87
A superficial reading of the text provides a formal version of
Mechthild on St Dominic and the Order of Preachers. It is consonant
with the fact that the personal confessor and writing assistant of
Mechthild was a Dominican and that her brother was accepted to
the Dominican Order due to the excellence attributed to Mechthild
by the Order of Preachers.88 Recent scholarship has even attributed
to her a perception of herself and her book as a part of the
mendicant mission against false Christians.89 Her outward
glorification of the Order and its founder is thus not surprising.
Among many other examples, Mechthild says from the lips of the
Lord: ‗My son Dominic had four things about him while on earth that
all priors should have about them…‘, and: ‗I love two things in the
Order of Preachers so much that my divine heart unceasingly smiles
upon it.‘90 Rich in such remarks, the book conveys a relaxed
affection between the writer and the Dominican Order. A closer look,
however, reveals a hidden, sometimes opposite, meaning. Mechthild
86
Frank Tobin, introduction to Mechthild of Magdeburg, The flowing light of the Godhead, trans.
Frank Tobin, New York, 1998, p. 4-5.
87
Ibid., p. 7.
88
Ibid., p. 5.
89
Sara S. Poor, Mechthild of Magdeburg and Her Book, Gender and the Making of Textual Authority,
Philadelphia, 2004, p. 43.
90
Mechthild of Magdeburg, The flowing light, p. 164-5.
46
criticises certain activities often associated with the Dominicans.
She reflects on two distinctive functions of the Order, the
persecution and learning.
Mechthild of Magdeburg deals with the persecution of the
Dominicans in a chapter named The Way to Suffer Pain Willingly for
God’s Sake.91 The name of the chapter forwards the first clue of
what will come next. Her intention is to teach how to endure pain
that will be inflicted to the righteous students of her book. The
righteousness is assumed as the reason for willingly enduring the
pain: suffering for God‘s Sake is definitely good. The infliction of
that pain presents the inflictors as necessary evil. She builds this
idea in steps. First she describes the path. God‘s children did not
choose their path; they were guided towards it by God, who set an
example by choosing this path for himself. The path was one of
suffering pain, though being free of sin and guilt. The Lord, she says,
‗was sent by his heavenly Father to be tormented by the heathens
and martyred by the Jews despite his innocence.‘ After establishing
that God‘s children were not only sent to this road by God himself,
but also were repeating his path, she is ready for the next step. She
repeats the motif of the persecution of the righteous, but this time
not in the past but in the present: ‗Now the time has come when
some people, who have the appearance of being religious, torment
the bodies of God‘s children and martyr their spirits.‘ The religious
people who torment the bodies and spirits are probably the ones
who inquire after the deeds and thoughts of the people in order to
determine whether their religious conduct is correct. They are no
other than Inquisitors. If the victims, God‘s children, are necessarily
good and their deeds are undisputedly appreciated by Him, then the
wrongness of their persecutors is entrenched. Furthermore, if they
persecute God‘s children, they cannot love God, for if they did, they
91
Ibid., p. 52.
47
would not have done so. Because of this she does not say that they
are religious, but only have the appearance of being so. The final
line of the paragraph closes this issue, proving her a true child and
disciple of God, in her view. She accepts their suffering as desirable
to God: ‗For He wants them to resemble his beloved Son who was
tormented in body and soul.‘ Her acceptance does not diminish their
wrongness. On the contrary, her forgiveness makes their
vindictiveness even more prominent.
In another instance Mechthild describes herself as a victim saying:
‗I have had to drain many a chalice of gall because, alas, the devil
still has many a one among religious people willing to pour it out.
They are so full of poison that they cannot drink it all up by
themselves, but must pour it out maliciously for God‘s children.‘92
The ones to cause trouble for God‘s children are religious people.
They can be either secular clergy or the mendicants. Her next
paragraph, however, describes them as her closest supporters.
‗Those who appear to be good people stone me from the back and
run away and do not want me to know anything about its having
befallen me because of them: but God saw it.‘93
She next sets to denigrate some intellectual activity characteristic to
the Order of Preachers as being undesirable in the eyes of God.
Speaking about the book she says to the Lord that had he given the
book to be written by ‗a learned religious man‘ he would have
received ‗everlasting honor for it.‘ Who would listen, Mechthild
laments, to ‗a filthy ooze‘, meaning herself. The question Mechthild
asks creates polarity between herself and such learned men. If she
would be proven valuable, then the other side would be intrinsically
worthless. She then builds on this polarity saying from the lips of
92
93
Ibid., p. 90.
Ibid., p. 90.
48
God that it honours him and strengthens Holy Christianity that ‗the
unlearned mouth, aided by my Holy Spirit, teaches the learned
tongue.‘ If the teachings of the unlearned to the professors, learned
in scripture, are good in the eyes of God, then by implication the
unmediated divine truth is more valuable than the scripture and lay
preaching of the truth, which was received during unmitigated
interaction with the divine, is better than the sermons of learned
clerics. She does not leave the above understated. There is an
explicit statement, from the lips of the Lord: ‗One finds many a
professor learned in scripture who actually is a fool in my eyes.‘94 As
the Dominicans were the most obvious students and preachers of
scripture, this clearly hints their inferiority against the mystically
inspired women.
In one of her visions Mechthild saw a man suffering after death. He
was not allowed to proceed to heaven because of his learning. He
appeared to Mechthild pale and weeping while reading from a book.
‗All the words were screaming at him with all the books that he had
ever read chiming in. He said: ‗In my life on earth I was too fond of
ideas, words and deeds‘‘.95 Then in the next paragraph she
continues, explaining: ‗since he for no reason wanted to live
according to his own will rather than according to the
determinations of his superiors.‘ The proximity of the two sentences
suggests them to be an outcome and intent. The outcome of a
decision to be a sole master of himself was overindulgence in
learning. Therefore the practice of learning is depicted as the
antithesis of obedience. The lack of obedience places the learned
person in an intense suffering after death, and the practice of
learning is presented as an impediment of entering heaven. He was
known to Mechthild, not just in passing but throughout his life.
94
95
Ibid., p. 97.
Ibid., p. 125.
49
‗During his life I had a high opinion of him.‘96 In light of the close
relationships Mechthild was known to have with several Dominicans,
including her brother and her confessor, the one she knew ‗during
his life‘ must have also been a Dominican. On top of that he says
himself that he is of a religious order, ‗Because of the dignity of my
order no devil was ever able to touch me.‘ More likely than not she
described a Dominican, who was not allowed to heaven because of
his learning.
These subtle remarks are the most Mechthild dares to write.
However, she trusts her intended reader, a religious intelligent
person of the same area, to be able to understand her true meaning.
The generalization of the negative traits of the large group suggests
that it were the Orders that were being criticised, not the individual
members of these orders.
The network
Distrust and alienation towards outsiders as defining elements of a
group was not exclusive to devout women of northern France.
Another group, more visible in the south of France as another
centre of creative activity, had the same elements of definition.
David Burr has demonstrated that one feature that distinguished
the groups termed ‗Spiritual Franciscans‘ was their common distrust
of the authorities in general and the leadership of their Order in
particular. This loose group of people also resembled the group
Hadewijch is talking about by its inclusion criteria. Just like devout
people in the north of France, the ‗spiritual Franciscans‘ did not
stress official church ranking as being high in their selection criteria.
On the contrary, since the official church and the leaders of their
orders seemed objectionable to them, counting a person as one of
their group required extra proof of his worth. Many groups claiming
96
Ibid., p. 124.
50
to follow Francis shared a common a belief that the Franciscan vow
bound friars not only to renouncing possession but also to observing
usus pauper, even though they differed on other issues. These
groups also believed that the leaders of the Order, in the words of
David Burr, ‗were impeding observance rather than demanding it‘.97
Some people living lives of devotion in Northern France also felt that
the clerics impeded their devotion. Theirs was not a poverty
oriented religion; mystical union was more at the centre of their
devotion. However, they felt that officials of the church not only did
not share their intentions, they saw them as contradictory to
accepted religion. Therefore choosing to live out their lives in their
chosen manner, they either moderated their exposure and hid it to
some extent, or withdrew and gathered around a different set of
values, describing the non accepting church officials as erring
outsiders.
The positive images of female saints, initiated by James of Vitry and
followed by Thomas of Cantimpré and others, may not represent
necessarily a more positive attitude towards lay mysticism. The
image of the female saint was used extensively in the early
thirteenth century in the north by the clerics, but these images were
of women who were already dead. Their life stories, as understood
by the men who followed them, were used to counterbalance the
evident devotion of the heretics. The stories of these experiences
come from the lips of the clerics, who came in contact with these
women, when they were still alive, or stories about them post
mortem. Yet, they felt the need to tell their stories after the saintly
woman was already dead.
97
David Burr, The Spiritual Franciscans: From Protest to Persecution in the Century After Saint
Francis, Pennsylvania, 2001, p. 49.
51
This was the social background encountered by women wanting to
enter a religious life in Northern France during the thirteenth
century. There was a sense of community spread over great
distance, with devotion rather than ordination as unifying factor. Its
identity was powered also by opposition to the other. Sometimes
official representatives of the church were considered as the other;
their official ordination did not assure their religious leadership
among these groups of people. Every person needed to earn her/his
inclusion by example of his devotion or support of such devotion.
Even though some clerics promoted examples of specific women as
evidence of an extraordinary devotion among the Catholic Church
they did not necessarily encourage the laity in general to take up
creative outstanding lives. Such opposition, however, did not stop
the network from developing and supporting new arrivals into their
midst. Women as well as men could act as centers of piety, support
and sanctity, especially in the first half of the century. From the
assignment of the first inquisitor, Robert le Bougre, and the
tightening of ranks of the clergy, the persecution became more and
more insistent, however, distrust and alienation were present at the
same time as individual women‘s examples were used to combat
the heretics.
There was a huge difference, however, between the fates of devout
women from the royal families and that of women of unknown
origins from the north of France. To understand what might have
inspired Marguerite Porete to go public with her teachings I shall
look first at the case of Isabelle of France sister of Louis IX.
52
Chapter two - Ambitions of Faith: Mystical Instruction from
Gilbert of Tournai to Isabelle of France
Sometime between 1253 and 1255 the Franciscan Gilbert of Tournai
(circa 1200- 1284) wrote a letter to Isabelle of France, a sister of
Louis IX and daughter of Blanche of Castile. 98 The letter directs the
princess on a spiritual development journey alongside the
admonition for virginity and rejection of the temporal world. Like
Bonaventure‘s Itinerarium Mentis in Deum, Gilbert‘s letter to
Isabelle combines a gradual climb through reason, with emphasis
on the heart being necessary for the final leap to the Godhead.99
Involving both rational and affective approaches to divinity in the
same way as the mystical treatise of Bonaventure, this letter also
indicates a period of creative flexibility and the meeting point of
men and women, love and reason, in the mainstream of the
Franciscan order. This flexibility, I believe, was responsible for the
eventual collaboration between the Franciscan order and the
princess Isabelle of France, and resulted in the most
accommodating rule for the Franciscan women that had ever been
produced.
Gilbert of Tournai was a preacher, scholar and moralist. He became
a master of arts in the 1230s, before joining the Franciscan order
around 1240 and he served as their regent master at Paris 1259-61,
succeeding Bonaventure in this role. A prominent Franciscan in Paris
in the 1250s and 1260s, Gilbert undoubtedly knew and cooperated
with Bonaventure.100 He composed the Eruditio regum et principum
98
Sean Field, „Gilbert of Tournai‟s Letter to Isabelle of France: an Edition of the Complete Text‟,
Mediaeval Studies, 65 (2003), 57-97, p. 59-60.
99
St. Bonaventure, Itinerarium Mentis in Deum, ed. Philotheus Boehner, O.F.M, trans. Zachary Hayes,
O.F.M, in Works of St. Bonaventure, Saint Bonaventure, 2002.
100
Field, „Gilbert of Tournai‟s Letter to Isabelle of France‟, pp. 59-60.
53
for Louis IX, De pace et animi tranquillitate for Marie de Dampierre,
daughter of William de Dampierre Count of Flanders and De modo
addiscendi to Jean the son of Guy de Dampierre, also Count of
Flanders. He also wrote the Collectio de Scandalis Ecclesiae, for the
second council of Lyon held in 1274. The Collectio is an interesting
document, very critical of the conduct of the church.
Isabelle of France (1225 – 1270) was a devout and holy woman in
her own right, with an evident attachment to Franciscans and
Franciscan ideals. She rejected all attempts to arrange her marriage,
choosing instead a life of virginity. Sean Field dates Gilbert‘s letter
to her to 1253-5. She was then becoming increasingly known but
had not yet founded Longchamp, established in 1259. Only
subsequently would she compose its new rule with a team of
Franciscan masters, Bonaventure, William of Meliton, William of
Harcombourg and her confessor Eudes of Rosny.101
Isabelle‘s rule played an important part in the battle between the
nuns and monks of the Franciscan order. Between 1261 and 1263
there was an attempt by the friars to shake off their obligation to
the women‘s houses. They claimed that care for nuns interfered
with their mission. The women fought against this with varying
success during the years. One of the pinnacles of this struggle was
in 1266, when they appeared before Clement IV with the demand to
adopt Isabelle‘s rule. This move should have expressly attached
them to the Franciscan friars, as part of a unified order.102 Knox has
shown that Isabelle‘s rule was very inclusive of the women into the
Franciscan order, as opposed to the rule composed by Urban IV in
1263. Sean Field has argued that she had a strong impact on the
101
Field, „Gilbert of Tournai‟s Letter to Isabelle of France‟, p. 61.
Lezlie Knox, „Nuns: Institutionalizing the Franciscan Order of Saint Clare‟ in Church History, 69
(2000), 41-62, p. 58.
102
54
development of female Franciscanism.103 Her rule advanced women
to the status of fellow Franciscans, as it now called them sorores
minores, something no other rule offered. It was not restricted to
Longchamp. Many female Franciscan houses adopted her rule in the
ensuing centuries. I will argue in what follows, that Gilbert‘s letter
initiated the collaboration between the princess and the Franciscan
order, creating a place for her to feel a part of the male discourse of
mystical spirituality. Instead of seeing them as her opponents, this
letter offered a possibility of a common ground with them.
In order to describe a union of the finite and the infinite, mystics
were forced to employ ordinary language to create an awareness of
what is by definition ineffable.104 Focusing on the senses to analyze
the development of the mystical process and its description is a
very useful tool. It can tell us how these mystics and their followers
perceived their inner faculties in relation to God: what in them could
strive to God and what could experience God. It can also tell us
about the convention of mystical experience and expression and
explain some of the reasons for acceptance of some mystical
reports and rejection of others, as well as acceptance and rejection
of the mystics themselves. In an article dealing with the friction
between mysticism and magisterium McGinn argues that some
elements of the mystical experience and description are mainly
responsible for clashes with the establishment in Catholicism.105 He
calls them pressure points. In other monotheistic religions, he
further explains, such accounts and practices were more easily
tolerated because in them orthopraxy is more important than
orthodoxy. Therefore it is not a too far fetched a statement to make,
103
Sean L. Field, Isabelle of France, Capetian Sanctity and Franciscan Identity in the Thirteenth
Century, Notre Dame, 2006, p. 168.
104
Michael D. McGuire and John H. Patton, „Preaching in the Mystic Mode: The Rhetorical Art of
Meister Eckhart‟, in Communication Monographs, , 44 (1977), 263-72, pp. 264-5.
105
Bernard McGinn, „‟“Evil-Sounding, Rash, and suspect of Heresy”., Tensions Between Mysticism
and Magisterium in the History of the Church‟, in The Catholic Historical Review, 90 (2004), 193-212,
pp. 204-5.
55
that if one wants to belong to a certain social group one will use a
certain way or form of discourse and promote a certain way of
mystical experience, to express one‘s own social standing and to
signal one‘s ambition to join those who share these particular
conventions.
Bernard McGinn has put forward a developmental framework in the
descriptions of the mystical process throughout the Middle Ages.106
In early Christianity, he argues that there was a total separation
between the physical and the spiritual senses. The goal, McGinn
conveys, is described in terms of pure intellectual vision. Origen,
Gregory of Nyssa, Augustine and Gregory the Great all felt the need,
to a greater or lesser degree, to emphasize the distinction, between
outer sensory experience and the inner workings of the spiritual
senses dynamized in Bible study.107 The mystic turned away from
the external feelings and sensations, turned inward and then up to
God, every step of the way led by a very specific use of the Bible,
which was considered the divine Word, understood by those who
knew how to read it properly.108
According to McGinn, there is a distinction between the mystical
language of this earlier period and that of later periods.
In many later medieval mystics, the sharp distinction between
the two sensorial, the outer and the inner lessened and
sometimes even vanished so that transformational
consciousness of God, although still a mystery beyond human
comprehension, is described as being directly felt in what
106
Bernard McGinn, „The Language of Inner Experience in Christian Mysticism‟, in Minding the Spirit,
The Study of Christian Spirituality, ed. Elizabeth A. Dreyer and Mark S. Burrows, Baltimore, 2005, pp.
135–51.
107
McGinn, „The Language of Inner Experience‟, p. 140.
108
Ibid., p. 137.
56
Bernard of Clairvaux called ―the book of experience‖ (liber
experientiae).109
McGinn distinguishes between male and female mystical discourse
in this latter stage. Men used their experience of external sensation,
both the physical senses and the physical passions, to affirm their
understanding of the Bible. The way to God was expressed as
meditation on the experience afforded by senses. They used the
sensation and the understanding of it to articulate a mental way to
God, but ultimately, sensation was not the goal, but consideration
and meditation on that sensation. Women, on the other hand, used
the Bible sometimes to affirm spontaneous knowledge given to
them by God, which they felt in their external senses and physical
passions. They received God‘s message in their external senses and
then the change in their bodies affected their understanding. The
pinnacle of this development, from the beginning of the fourteenth
century, was to turn away from any experience of God. Having
arrived at an understanding that striving to grasp God either by
feeling or by understanding is either inaccurate or presumptuous,
the mystics turned to theologies of total annihilation of any sensual
experience, McGinn argues.110
While the treatises I am examining in this chapter fit into the
second stage of McGinn‘s developmental framework, I will argue
that they stand on the border of male and female expression of the
mystical union. I will isolate and highlight two aspects of the
mystical journeys and their descriptions. The affective approach is
one that uses feelings and sensations to experience and express the
mystic‘s interaction with the divine and the rational approach that
uses the spiritual senses of the mind, to contemplate the
experiences afforded to them by their senses, as a way to reach
109
110
Ibid., p. 141.
McGinn, „The Language of Inner Experience‟, p. 147.
57
God. Both use everything they can to reach God, but the focus
varies. The affective approach will see the emotional fusion,
intuitive gravitation of the mystic and God towards each other, and
a change of the mystic her/himself, as the focus or the aim of the
journey. The mystic will use her/his mind to start on the journey, or
contemplate on their own condition and relationship with the world,
but thinking is not the aim of the exercise, nor means of
communication of the journey to others. In this instance the mystic
will describe the emotional fusion and transformation as the goal
that was reached and ascribed to others. In the rational approach,
the intention of the mystic is to think his way to God, using feeling,
experience and even love, just to the extent it helps the mind to
understand its way to God. As the understanding happens and the
mystic transcends closer to the divine the physical sense experience
no longer holds any significance. Each way has roots in the
traditional perceptions of gender, and in turn these perceptions
created the distinct ways men and women expressed their mystical
experiences. When both ways are present to some extent in a
treatise it signifies a choice of the author.
Assessing two prominent Franciscans, Bonaventure and his student
and successor Gilbert of Tournai, and the relative significance of
external sensation and reason in their treatises, will reveal the
perception of the accepted mystical process in the Franciscan
mainstream. Their relative focus on both thinking and feeling as a
path to God, will indicate where in the spectrum of religious
experience they were, or aimed to be. More importantly as these
two Franciscan writers were very prominent and active within the
French royal milieu, their place in the evolution of mystical thought
will allow me to say something about the acceptable religious
flexibility within the Franciscan official establishment, in the mid
58
thirteenth century Paris, and their social and political ambitions in
this setting.
The letter to Isabelle
Gilbert opens with a conventional approach to female spirituality,
the sense of enclosure, stasis, and preservation of virginity as
internal innocence: ‗all the glory of the daughter of the king is
within in golden fringes, clothed around with variety.‘ 111 This is a
static condition of an honorable and glorious place where a woman
is praised and symbolically adorned in beautiful garments. No one
but God can see these beautiful garments and this is in itself a
purpose and a reward. Only the one, who cares only for him, will
keep her glory only for God. This part of the letter is conventional in
praising enclosure and virginity.
Barbara Newman has argued that advice to women concentrated
mainly on preserving an existing state of physical purity and
perfection, thus encouraging a static condition over spiritual
growth.112 Even when a treatise dealt with celestial matters it just
aimed at creating a picture for the woman to focus her mind on.
She was not advised to strive or to accomplish any active deeds. A
very good example of this approach would be the Speculum anime,
written for Blanche of Castile, mother of both Louis IX and Isabelle
of France (d. 1252).113 The treatise stresses the importance of
keeping the mind fixed on the joys of heaven. It provides glittering
images of the wonders of heaven, gruesome depictions of hell and
111
„Gilbert‟s Letter‟, ed. Field, 286r-rb, p. 80. „omnis gloria eius filie regis ab intus in fimbriis aureis
circumamicta varietatibus‟.
112
Field, „Gilbert‟s Letter‟, p. 74. Barbara Newman, From Virile Woman to Woman Christ, Studies in
Medieval Religion and Literature, Philadelphia, 1995, p. 29.
113
Sean L. Field, „Reflecting the Royal Soul: The Speculum Anime composed for Blanche of Castile‟,
Mediaeval Studies 68, (2006), 1-42, p. 5.
59
the disgusting nature of the human body‘s origins, functions and
ultimate end.114 Most of this treatise was taken, as Sean Field has
noted, from the Meditationes piissimae de cognitione humanae
conditionis, erroneously attributed to Bernard of Clairvaux, and
written for monks. The selections, rejections and rearrangements of
the original text in the Speculum anime show what the author
believed was important and appropriate for a royal, lay and female
readership.115 Field acknowledges the problematic nature of a piece
about renunciation of the world written to a woman at the centre of
government, a true domina, as he puts it.116 He hints that perhaps
the Speculum anime indicated an early and important chapter in the
articulation of royal piety at the Capetian court; part of the interplay
between the circle of churchmen who acted as advisors and the
royal family that wielded political power.117 Even though it was
written for a particular active and prominent woman, the Speculum
anime does not step out of a tradition of rejection of the world
(contemptus mundi) traditional in the literature of the edification for
women like the Speculum virginum, written in the first half of the
twelfth century.118
Gilbert of Tournai‘s letter does include praise of virginity and
preservation of purity, but its main part presents an interesting
mystical spiritual journey of the soul in ten steps. The first three
steps describe in great detail the condition of the soul before it
attempts this spiritual growth, leaving only seven steps for the
actual journey. As Field has noted these steps are not original. They
are a compilation and rearrangement of earlier texts of mystical
nature. The adaptation of these mystical treatises of assent to his
114
Ibid., p. 21.
Ibid., p. 16.
116
Ibid., p. 22.
117
Ibid., p. 21.
118
Constant J. Mews ed., Listen, Daughter, The Speculum Virginum and the Formation of Religious
Women in the Middle Ages, New York, 2001.
115
60
female recipient is what makes this treatise so special. Not only had
Gilbert addressed a mystical development manual to a woman, he
also did it using materials that were composed specifically for
religious men.
Gilbert of Tournai begins his journey with the description of the
state of a person before the journey. Describing misery, labor and
suffering of the fallen soul, Gilbert uses words like animus (spirit),
or mens (mind). This is the state a mind can understand, because
the mind of the reader has created and lives in this state. He
insinuates that the rational approach to life leaves the human being
in this world forever. A person who uses only his mental capabilities
perceives this world as the only existing reality and lives only to
battle constraints. Therefore we toil, we are miserable, and only
think about accumulating wealth as a means of assuring our
survival.119
Only when attention is shifted from the immediate physical reality
to the divine inheritance does it become evident that this way of
survival is not what we need. The vector of progress becomes love
rather than intellect. Gilbert of Tournai switches to the term anima
as the faculty that experiences the following stages. When anima
becomes his protagonist in the dialogue he recruits another
language.
Let her not say that the kingdom of God is food and drink, but
let her place the experience of the heavenly kingdom in
justice with respect to rectitude of the will, both by the peace
of serenity and by the holy spirit, and by the most excellent
joy of the most vehement charity, and if she does this by
tasting a little beforehand, she will be doing it by immersing
119
„Gilberti‟s Letter‟, ed. Field, 286va, l. 58, p. 82 and 286vb, l. 76, p. 83.
61
herself in that torrent from the inside. Oh when will come that
time when we can be, with eternal joy, immersed internally in
that very spring of divinity, so that a wave may be joined to
wave without interpolation or interruption, so that that which
cannot be grasped by space may glow, that which time cannot
capture may sound, that which breath cannot scatter may
smell, that which gluttony does not diminish may bring
satisfaction, and that which satisfaction does not rend asunder
may be had: namely our God the light, sound, smell, food and
embrace of spiritual senses.120
Gilbert describes a feeling of bliss. The metaphors of sensual
pleasure are used to stimulate a feeling of delight in a reader, not a
better understanding of the divine. He or she may imagine
themselves immersed in a pond of clear spring water and the
feelings of joy it brings to the body. That person is then further fed
by images involving his/her experience of delight when their
physical senses are positively stimulated and their passions aroused.
The connection with God is described as a sensual delight. Gilbert is
using the spiritual senses as the faculty that experiences this, but
the stimulus is one of sensual joy and the reader‘s physical senses
and passions are employed to experience this joy of the elevated
soul from memory and experience.
120
Ibid., 287ra, 96-105, pp. 83-4. „regnum Dei cibum et potum esse non dicat, sed regni celestis
experienciam ponat in iusticia, quantum ad rectitudinem voluntatis, et pace serenitatis, et Spiritu Sancto,
superexcellenti gaudio vehementissime caritatis, et si hoc facit tenuiter prelibando, quid se illi flumini
penitus immergendo. O quando veniet tempus ut perhemnibus gaudiis in ipso divinitatis fonte penitus
immergamur, ut unda unde sine interpolatione sine intercarpedine coniungatur, ut plenius anime fulgeat
quod non capit locus, sonnet quod non rapit tempus, oleat quod non spargit flatus, sapiat quod edacitas
non minuit, habeat quod sacietas non divellit, Deus noster scilicet sensibus spiritualibus lux, vox, odor,
edulium et amplexus!‟
62
Then when Gilbert shifts back to the mind it is not the same mind.
It is a mind that is connected to the soul. It understands and
accepts that the soul has other needs than just the immediate
physical ones. ‗since the eyes of the heart are pure‘.121 This is a
mind that is employed to the advantage of the soul. The mind is a
portal through which messages to the soul are conveyed. In this
respect Gilbert‘s treatise can be seen as in tune with the male
mystical discourse that turns the anima (soul) into animus (spirit)
by relinquishing the sensorial faculty of the soul. William of StThierry described it as: ‗when the soul begins to be not only capable
but also in possession of perfect reason, it immediately renounces
the feminine gender… for as long as it is anima it is quick to slip
effeminately into the carnal; but the animus or spirit thinks only
what is virile and spiritual.‘122 The physical senses are used to
maintain the workings of the anima with her emotive functions. As
soon as the mystic starts acquiring better understanding of the
divine, the physical senses give way to the spiritual senses and then
disappear completely to leave a mind or spirit alone. The aim there
is to gain understanding, which is in a way a representation of God
in the human mind.
In Gilbert‘s treatise understanding is not the end but a means to
move to further stages of closeness. In these last stages Gilbert
stresses that the understanding the soul gains aids her to bear the
separation from her creator for the years of her life: ‗at the ninth
step all of creation seen to be nothing more or less than a sign of
121
Ibid., 287vb, 173, p. 87, „Si tamen puri sint oculi cordis‟.
Barbara Newman, From Virile Woman to Woman Christ, Philadelphia, 1995, p. 22. William of St.
Thierry, Epistola ad fratres de Monte Dei 198, ed., Jean Déchanet, Lettre aux frères du Mont-Dieu,
Sources chrétiennes 223, Paris, 1975, p. 253: „Quae ubi perfectae rationis incipit esse, non tantum
capax, sed et particeps, continuo abdicat a se notam generis femine, et efficitur animus particeps
rationis, regendo corpori accommodatus, vel seipsum habens spiritus. Quamdiu enim anima est, cito in
id quod carnale est effeminatur; animus vero, vel spiritus, non nisi quod virile est et spirituale
meditatur‟.
122
63
and a path back to God…‘.123. This understanding is identified by
Sean Field as taken from Hugh of Saint-Victor, ‗and thus the heat of
love… brings abut a sharpening of knowledge‘.124 And had the
treatise been all about gaining this understanding it would not have
been different from any written in this period, by men to men.
However, this treatise combines other approaches to God, as well.
The embodiment
Gilbert starts with the senses, but moves to understanding and then
to embodiment. This can be best seen as a detour. The soul, on its
way to God, stops to notice that it has changed. Gilbert of Tournai
starts with desire, presents a physical change a person undergoes
as a result of utilizing her/his spiritual senses and only then reaches
understanding.
Gilbert of Tournai uses the description of desire to move the reader
emotionally. He reaches out with his descriptions to actually induce
this feeling of delight in the mind of his reader. ‗when the mind
longing for the sweetness of the fatherland is refreshed by its
fruits… they are the select fruit that feed her inner burning storm
and refreshes her and extends her inner self…‘125 the words
themselves are transformational mechanism. He describes the
feeling the reader should achieve: ‗it is light comparing to the
strength of the whip… and nothing compares to this torment.‘ 126
123
„Gilbert‟s Letter‟, ed. Field, 287vb, 180, p. 87.
Hugh of Saint-Victor, Expositio in Hierarchiam Coelestem S. Dionysii Areopagitae 6 (PL 175, col.
1037): „Significat enim acutum impetus quemdam amoris, et vehementiam desiderii ardentis,ferentis se
in amatum, et intrantis, et penetrantis, ut ibi sit, ubi est ipsum, quod amatur, cum ipso, et in ipso, ut non
solum ab ipso calidum sit, sed transeat acutum in ipsum‟.
125
„Gilbert‟s Letter‟, ed. Field, 287vb, 161-5, p. 86: „cum ad illius patrie dulcedinem suspiratur et ex
illius terre fructu mens reficitur, ubertate lactatur… his enim fructibus electos ad ipsum ardencius
conspirantes interim pascit et reficit, dilatat viscera, poerrigit ubera, sinum offert, gremium pandit.‟
126
Ibid. 287ra, 109-11, p. 84 : „leves quia consideration premii minuit vim flagella… et nihil erit quod
non equanimiter toleretur‟.
124
64
From there he moves to embodiment. Mary Magdalene is presented
by Gilbert as an example of a lover who acquires great strength by
the love she feels for Christ. She is portrayed requesting the body
of Christ so that she can perform the ceremony of burial for him.
She, a frail woman, wants to lift the heavy body single handedly,
says Gilbert of Tournai, and carry it to its grave. In this example the
love of Christ transformed the physical body of the lover. Moreover,
this isn‘t just a metaphorical example. Gilbert assumes the princess
is able to achieve such fits of strength. Therefore he stresses that
although such transformation is possible the princess should not
attempt it. ‗I do not write this to you so that you should exceed
your bodily strength, but that you should know the force of divine
love.‘127
Female sanctity was often described and tested in physical
dimension. When a woman was exhibiting mystical experiences and
revelations her sincerity was depicted as occurring in physical
changes of the body. Usually female mystics were described as
loosing sensation. Sometimes that loss of sensation was tested by
infliction of injuries to the body in order to discern whether
sensation loss was genuine. If the mystic suffered from these
abuses later when she ‗woke up‘ it was an acceptable side effect.128
After embodiment comes understanding. This understanding is
described by Gilbert as something both physical and spiritual. It is a
change of the mind, felt acutely by the senses. ‗ it signifies a sort of
sharp force of love and the fierceness of burning desire carrying one
into the loved one, entering and penetrating and going over into the
127
Ibid., 287va, 137-9, p. 85.
Dyan Elliott, Proving Woman, Female Spirituality and Inquisitional Culture in the Later Middle
Ages, Princeton, 2004, pp. 1-3.
128
65
loved one itself.‘129 In Gilbert‘s letter the understanding is divine.
The person gaining the understanding is transported into God.
I think that irreversibility signifies the yoke and tireless excess
of the mind, which according to the measure of its self giving
and freedom of the spirit, breathing where it wills, the Lord
seizes for himself the souls of the perfect; and perhaps this is
not the state of pilgrims, but of those in the blessed
fatherland. For the mind, accustomed to the shadows,
weighed down by corruption and corpulence, constricted by
the necessities of the body, falls away from that sweetness
into physical bitterness and temporal distress.130
Therefore, this understanding is a form of embodiment too. The
acuteness or the sharpening of the mind is a change in the body of
the mystic. It is not what she/he sees, but what she/he is. She/he
becomes this other, more perceptive person, as a result of her/his
mystical progress and taken by God into the celestial fatherland.
Journey of the mind and heart
This hybrid of spiritual transformation of the mind acquired and
experienced by the external senses and passions is very similar to
another such journey prescribed by another prominent Franciscan,
the seventh general of the Franciscan Order, Bonaventure. As much
as his writings influenced the northern mystic Marguerite Porete, his
influence is more immediate in this treatise and his personal
collaboration with the princess.
129
„Gilbert‟s Letter‟, ed. Field of Tournai, 287va, 151, p. 86, „significat autem acutum impetum
quemdam amoris et vehemenciam desiderii ardentis, ferentis se in amatum, intrantis et penetrantis et
transeuntis in ipsum…‟
130
Ibid. 287va, 154-60, p. 86, „puto quod significant illa irregressibilitas iugem et indefatigabilem
mentis excessum, quo secundum mensuram donationis sue et libertatem spiritus spirantis ubi vult, in se
rapit Dominus animas perfectorum; aut forte non est status viatorum, sed in patria beatorum. Mens
enim hic suis assueta tenebris, aggravata corruptione et corpulencia, constricta necessitatibus corporis,
ab illa dulcedine recidit in amaritudines corporales et molestias temporales.‟
66
In his Itinerarium Mentis in Deum Bonaventure describes a journey
to God as movement from the senses, physical and spiritual, to
understanding. 131 This understanding takes the monk close to God;
but does not in itself allow full understanding. The final step is
described in terms of the burning desire. The beginning of the
Itinerarium mistakenly leads us to believe that it is the anima that
will be discussed in this book and her way to God through feeling.
‗Desires can be inflamed in us in two ways, namely through the cry
of prayer which makes us cry aloud with groaning of the heart, and
through the brightness of contemplation by which the mind turns
most directly and intently to the rays of light‘.132 And ‗give more
attention to … the stimulation of affect than to the instruction of the
intellect.‘133
After such an opening the reader would expect this treatise to
arouse the heart of the believer and help it soar to the spiritual
heights. It is not so, however. This journey is declared to be one of
the mind to God, Mentis in Deum. And indeed Bonaventure explains
by which means he will reach his goal: ‗sense, imagination, reason,
understanding, intelligence and the high point of the mind or the
spark of conscience.‘134 He speaks of ‗triple illumination of the mind.
Which relates to the three-fold existence of things, namely in
matter, in understanding, and in eternal art… this also relates to the
triple substance in Christ who is our ladder; namely the corporeal,
the spiritual, and the divine.135 For him the journey is made by
131
New Catholic Encyclopedia, ed., Thomas Carson, Joann Cerrito, 2nd ed., Detroit, London
2003,VOLUME ?? p. 481.
132
Bonaventure, Itinerarium Mentis in Deum ed. Philotheus Boehner, O.F.M, trans. Zachary Hayes,
O.F.M, in Works of Bonaventure, Saint Bonaventure, 2002, p. 39.
133
Ibid. p. 41.
134
Bonaventure p. 51.
135
Ibid., p. 46 and 47: „triplex illuminatio unius diei… haec respicit triplicem rerum existentiam,
scilicet in material, in intelligentia et in arte aeterna… haec etiam respicit triplicem substantiam in
Christo, qui est scala nostra, scilicet corporalem, spiritualem et divinam‟.
67
considering and contemplating things he gradually offers as the
reader goes through the chapters.
Bonaventure explains that seeing and thinking about things leads a
person to see the creator of these things. No other way is open, he
says, to a person who is of this world. If he can only hold on to the
physical reality that is this world and only understand its rules then
this is the way Bonaventure employs to lead him to God. ‗…all
creatures of this world of sensible realities lead the spirit of the
contemplative and wise person to the eternal God. For creatures are
shadows, echoes, and pictures of that first, most powerful, most
wise, and most perfect Principle, of that eternal source, light, and
fullness; of that efficient, exemplary, and ordering Art. They are
vestiges, images, and spectacles proposed to us for gazing at God.
They are divinely given signs. These creatures are copies or rather
illustrations proposed to the souls of those who are uneducated and
immersed in sensible things, so that through sensible things which
they do see they may be lifted to the intelligible things which they
do not see, moving from signs to that which is signified.‘ 136
Even when discussing the vestiges that can potentially arouse
feeling in the reader, Bonaventure remains in a strictly
contemplative mood. It is always instructional and aims at the
reason of the reader. Bonaventure does two things in his treatise.
He argues for the usefulness of his way, and he directs the reader in
the development of this train of contemplation in his mind. This is
apparent in the most luminous part of his treatise. Even when
discussing the vivid sensuality of the Song of Songs Bonaventure
remains strictly rational. ‗it is at this level where the interior senses
have been restored to see what is most beautiful, to hear what is
most harmonious, to smell what is most fragrant, to taste what is
136
Ibid., p. 77.
68
most sweet, and to embrace what is most delightful, that the soul is
disposed for spiritual ecstasies through devotion, admiration and
exultation, in accordance with the three exclamations found in the
Canticle of Canticles…. When these things have been accomplished,
and our spirit has been brought into conformity with the heavenly
Jerusalem, it is ordered hierarchically.‘137 This isn‘t about eliciting an
emotional response of the reader. All this is described to argue one
of the points on the way. It is used in a descriptive mode. This is
what happens; you think this and this and this and so these boxes
in your mind will be ordered in such a way; restored to its previous
order from before the fall.
Therefore it is safe to say that this treatise deals with rational
ascent; the beginning and the end move away from this theme.
Bonaventure‘s account of the climb to mount Alverna and of his
vision there of the bound Seraph with six wings is very emotionally
arousing. He does warn us at the outset that his proposed
contemplation would not work without a suitable preparation first.
‗to those anointed with the oil of gladness, to those who are lovers
of divine wisdom and are inflamed with desire for it; and to those
who wish to give themselves to glorifying, admiring and even
savoring God, I propose the following reflections.138 One would
expect this to be just a warning against pride, so that the friar
doesn‘t think he is the one in charge of his development and divine
grace is ultimately responsible for the uplift of the human soul. One
would also expect the ending to be somewhat different. Something
along the lines of more warnings against pride, but ultimately an
acknowledgment of the journey accomplished and the soul changed.
137
138
Ibid., p. 101.
Ibid., pp. 39, 41.
69
Yet in his conclusion Bonaventure breaks with this pattern entirely.
‗If this passing over is to be perfect,‘ he says, ‗ all intellectual
activities must be given up and our deepest and total affection must
be directed to God and transformed into God… And no one receives
it except one who desires it. And no one desires it but one who is
penetrated to the very marrow with the fire of the Holy Spirit whom
Christ has sent into the world.‘139
He finishes his thesis with an emotional outburst: ‗now if you ask
how all these things are to come about, ask grace, not doctrine;
desire, not intellect; the groaning of prayer and not studious
reading; the Spouse, not the master; God, not a human being;
darkness, not clarity; not light, but the fire that inflames totally and
carries one into God through spiritual fervor and with the most
burning affections. It is God alone who is this fire, and God‘s
furnace is in Jerusalem. And it is Christ who starts the fire with the
white flame of his most intense passion. Only that person who says:
My soul chooses hanging, and my bones death can truly embrace
this fire. Only one who loves this death can see God, for it is
absolutely true that no one can see me and live‘.140 This is almost
an antithesis of all that has preceded in the Itinerarium. There is no
illumination in the darkness. The disciple, who diligently followed all
Bonaventure‘s instructions, is left in the end with a feeling that the
way of the mind will not allow him to finish the journey and cross
the finish line into God.
This treatise includes the movement from physical and spiritual
senses to pure intellect of understanding. The last step of the
journey, however, is done when the person, having suitably
prepared his mind, lets go, turns his willing open heart towards
139
140
Ibid., p. 137.
Ibid., p.139.
70
grace that will take him in, but Bonaventure does not explain how
to make it. Regardless of the frustration Bonaventure exhibits in the
end of his theology, his journey is of the mind, or understanding. It
utilizes sensual experience as a vehicle to illumination. The method
is most straightforward in the first leg of the journey when the
memory of sense experience of the surrounding world is analyzed
then transferred into a brick of understanding in the building of
mental growth. The second part is contemplation on self. It starts
with the examination of self and proceeds to contemplating an
intellectual understanding of self as reflection of the trinity, thus
transforming the physical sense experience into the spiritual sense
understanding. The third part is purely intellectual, contemplation
on God. But the last part shows the reader that this understanding
is not the final step. After the preparation or development of the
mind that Bonaventure treats, there is a specific moment of a
willing heart opening itself to grace that was first articulated by
Bernard of Clairvaux, in his On Grace and Free Choice. This part is
not explained by Bonaventure. But it is presented by him as
essential for successful completion of the journey.
Combining theologies
There is a prevailing notion of feminine and masculine writing, as
Kocher puts it, of vision-narratives or descriptions of embodied
religious expression, that mainly beguines have been credited with,
or accused of, applying a secular discourse of human love to the
subject of love for God, and the masculine writing of reason or
training of the mind as a way to God. Marguerite Porete, he states,
did not take the feminine side or the masculine. She disembodied
her characters in order to better express Love‘s primacy over
Reason.141 Gilbert in his letter tried to create a combined theology
141
Suzanne (Zan) Kocher, Allegories of Love in Marguerite Porete’s Mirror of Simple Souls, Turnhout,
2008, p. 183.
71
of reason and love, both conforming to accepted theology of
mysticism and adjusting it to his female recipient. Sean Field
mentions in his article that Gilbert included this mystical treatise to
attract the attention of the princess. However he does not refer to
the content of the treatise to explain its appeal to his recipient. I
would like to offer an insight into his reasons as well as the
significance of his offering to the overall idea of a spiritual/mystical
connection between Franciscan leaders and the French princess.
Usually women writing about their mystical journeys, or men
instructing women did not stress an element of contemplation. They
moved directly into an emotional reach towards God. Because of
this uncontrolled and unsupervised connection the women attracted
various responses from their male contemporaries. As the thirteenth
century progressed, the reaction ranged from outright hostility to an
adoring description by devout friars of holy women mystics. Some
Franciscans and Dominicans saw these devout and holy women as
having a different relationship with the divine, which the friars saw
as privileged, unique and remote from their own experience.142 It
was a well developed concept that women with their loving hearts
could connect more easily with the divine, however they were also
always suspect. On one hand there is appreciation of their ability to
transcend and radiate that emotional richness onto their close
followers; on the other, a suspicion and fear of being set aside,
which John Coakley claims did not exist among the friars. Instead,
Coakley observes, acting within the accepted feminine space, these
women symbolized for the friars the boundary of their own logic and
reason based authority. 143
142
John Coakley, „Gender and the Authority of the Friars: The Significance of Holy Woman for
Thirteenth-Century Franciscans and Dominicans‟, Church History, 60 (1991), 45-60, p. 450.
143
John Coakley, „Gender and the Authority of the Friars‟, p. 459.
72
However, mere, observation and adoration was not enough to form
a bridge between female mystical experiences and male perception
of an appropriate way to ascend to God. Gilbert of Tournai included
both the intellectual striving to understand God, and used this
process of understanding for upward movement, and the feeling
which transcended human intellect and moved the mystic by their
affective outreach. Logic dynamizes the movement of Gilbert‘s way
to God. The fear is mobilized as the moving factor. The initial
movement towards God happens not by the fear itself but by
meditation on that fear; not the actual feeling of fear or love, but
the contemplation/understanding of that fear. Then when the
person is convinced by his/her contemplation on the fear, the need
for emotional connection is revealed. Dissolving into the greater
being was articulated earlier by Bernard, and as pointed out by
Sean Field, by Ps. Dionysius. Both have included the will in that
process but not as the actual moving agent. Both understood the
will as something man has, something that might get her/him to
begin the journey, but not to significantly move her/him towards
God. This element was later advanced by Marguerite Porete and
already present in Gilbert‘s writing. When the person realizes
he/she needs to start a journey to God, his/her will is what makes
them to open up and allow emotion to flow towards God. In all
journeys this essentially emotive element is achieved by
contemplation and conscious navigation by the person him/herself.
But contemplation was not the only element in Gilberts‘ journey. He
included the sensual/emotive experience, the change the body
undergoes as a result of understanding reached by the journey.
Gilbert includes in his letter to the princess all the formative
theologies that affected the Franciscan thought and were before
only addressed to men. By doing so Gilbert (and his associates, as it
is reasonable to assume he did not compose such an important
73
treatise by himself), allowed a place for a woman in a spiritual
tradition that was essentially male. These theologies were reshaped
and adjusted and the affective part enhanced. However the fact that
Gilbert included this meditation practice indicated his intention to
include the princess in a practice that was before that restricted to
male monastic audience.
This places Gilbert of Tournai‘s theology between the two parts of
the second stage of development of McGinn‘s module, making it
both affective and logic oriented. Compared to Bonaventure‘s
Itinerarium, this treatise stands at the same place. Both combine
the rational gradual climb, with a journey of the heart being
necessary for the final leap. Neither Gilbert nor Bonaventure
provides a recipe for that final step. However Gilbert does not
present it in a negative manner. Bonaventure‘s emotive part is one
of frustration; Gilbert‘s is one of love and a natural outcome of the
journey. ‗and it is good, just as in the streams and brooks foot
prints of animal are hurrying towards you, oh God, fountain of
life‘144 ‗and the heart, the mind, the soul will be full, all the joy of
man will be full, overjoyed, as in the Scripture: ‗in the joy of your
God, and all joyful will enter in joy, and joy to no end‘ and this is
the heritage that should be kept by the daughter of the king.‘ 145
Gilbert assumes that the final leap is there to be made and will be
the natural outcome of his prescribed journey.
Looking at the similarities between this letter and Bonaventure‘s
Itinerarium, reveals the standpoint of the major Franciscan writers
on the place of the affective and the rational elements in the
144
„Gilbert‟s Letter‟, ed. Field, 287vb, 193-5, p. 87, „Et bene illis, qui per tenues rivulos et cenosos,
vestigia creaturarum scilicet, ad te properant, Domine, fontem vivum!‟
145
Ibid. 287va, 205-9, p. 88, „Et hoc quidem erit cum pleno corde, plena mente, plena anima, pleno toto
homine gaudio, supererit gaudium, sicut scriptum est: Intra in gaudium Domini tui, ut toti gaudentes
intrent in gaudium, et non totum gaudium in gaudentes. Hec est hereditas que regis fillie conservatur.‟
74
descriptions of the mystical journeys, and their views on women‘s
spirituality in the general mystical discourse. The letter includes
mental development in the search and climb to God, with the
affective part that induces and shapes this development. The fact
that Gilbert, a Franciscan in the centre of the French court milieu
saw fit to send a princess, a woman on a spiritual journey, which
before that was considered suitable only for monks, signifies his
perceived liberty to do so. The affective part, so similar to
Bonaventure‘s Itinerarium, provides an insight into the creative,
flexible and inclusive environment, in which new theologies were
more acceptable than later in history.
In France Gilbert‘s treatise marks one of the first stages of
Franciscan infiltration into the royal basis of power. I surmise that
the Franciscans were looking for someone who could advance their
interests. Advancing her spiritual education, pointing her in the
direction of using her mind to progress on her spiritual journey
afforded them an element of influence in her decisions and
operations. Because she was a woman the treatise was adjusted to
what he/they perceived as appropriate for her. Through its structure,
the treatise afforded a possibility to consider women‘s passionate
connection to God, experienced in their bodies, as different but
equally valid. Acknowledging the usefulness of human passion as a
way to God, also acknowledged women‘s mystical way as legitimate,
and created a place for dialogue as to the inclusion of women into
the general Franciscan mission.
Evading real spiritual women as examples of embodiment, and
using instead the venerated figure of Mary Magdalene as an
example of the perfect lover, whose being was changed by her love,
makes perfect sense in this setting. For many of these women the
logical component was not essential for their journey, and it was not
75
described in their reports. Understanding, even if occurred, was not
aimed at, nor was it emphasized. What constituted their mystical
journey was feeling and the fall into the abyss. Using these women
as exempla would have created a treatise appropriate for a woman
who was not encouraged to step closer and participate in the
general discussions of mystical experience within the Franciscan
order.
The success of these attempts to breach the divide is vividly evident
in Isabelle‘s seeking the Franciscan advice in establishing a rule for
the nuns with her team of Franciscan advisors. Instead of seeing
them as her opponents, she consulted them and made progress in
her rule to the extent of including the women in the Franciscan
movement, advancing title minores in the community‘s name. This
was something that only collaboration between mutually respecting
sides could have accomplished. And this letter was the foundation
for this respect.
76
Chapter three - Dialogue of the Soul
Marguerite Porete was active in the region of Hainault, part of what
can be called the Southern Low Countries. Unlike Isabelle of France,
the story of her collaboration with both Franciscans and Cistercians
is less documented. Her treatise, however, does echo their ideas.
Scholars have often claimed that Marguerite Porete was executed to
draw the attention of the public from the suspicious affair of the
trial of the Templars that was held at the same time she was
arrested146. From this perspective, it might be judged that her
opinions were so extremely heretical that there would be popular
support for her execution, as distinct from uncertainty about the
condemnation of the Templars. This interpretation implies that
Marguerite Porete was a solitary woman with no connections among
the leading religious movements of her day. In this chapter I shall
examine the theology of the Mirror of Simple Annihilated Souls of
Marguerite Porete so as to detect the influence of the traditions
debated in Paris in the end of the thirteenth century at the time of
her writing the work.147
Relatively little research has been done into theological influences
on the writings of Marguerite Porete. What little has been written
has mainly been concerned with the resemblance of her Mirror to
the writings of other women mystic writers like Mechthild and
Hadewijch. A strong similarity was expected; after all they were
women and wrote mystical treatises in the vernacular. The Mirror
shares with Hadewijch and Mechthild a strong affinity for the
146
See mainly Robert E. Lerner, The Heresy of the Free Spirit in the Later Middle Ages, Berkeley, Los
Angeles, London, 1972, p. 77, and Paul Verdeyen, „Le Procès d‟inquisition contre Marguerite Porete et
Guiard de Cressonessart (1309 – 1310)‟, p. 85.
147
See Introduction, note 2.
77
language and themes of courtly love.148 Amy Hollywood has more
cautiously claimed that although the theology of Marguerite shows
some demonstrative origins from contemporary forms of devotion
such as the ascetic, churchly, and contemplative practices
advocated by the majority of thirteenth-century religious and semi
religious, and promoted by many hagiographical accounts of holy
women, she rejects those forms of ascetic, ecstatic and mystical
piety particularly associated with women of her day. Hollywood
argues that Porete viewed many of her contemporaries as being
‗stuck‘ on this level.149 She pities those who think that they have
reached their target by these practices. She thinks of them as
merchants, who believe that one can barter with Love (God) and as
such are unable to merit her courtesy.150 Hollywood describes
Mechthild and Hadewijch as embodying a style of ‗suffering female
mysticism‘ to which Marguerite objects. Bernard McGinn contributes
to the better understanding of the impetus of Marguerite‘s
Christological theology by saying that she does not reflect on
Christ‘s suffering for his ‗sweet humanity‘, nor fixates on the bloody
wounds of the dying Lord, like in the writings of other women
mystics. Rather than rejoicing and striving to stay in this state,
McGinn says, understanding and mimicking the suffering of Christ
pushes Marguerite to seek progress on her journey. 151
Bernard McGinn is unusual in offering another outlook on the
possible influences on the theology of Marguerite. He points out that
Marguerite Porete was deeply grounded in traditional Latin theology,
especially Augustine, the Cistercians (Bernard and William of St-
148
Barbara Newman, From Virile Woman to Woman Christ. Studies in Medieval Religion and
Literature, Philadelphia, 1995, p. 139.
149
Amy Hollywood, The Soul as Virgin Wife, Mechthild of Magdeburg, Marguerite Porete, and
Meister Eckhart, Notre Dame, 1995, p. 98.
150
Hollywood The Soul as Virgin Wife, p. 99.
151
Bernard McGinn, The Flowering of Mysticism, Men and Women in the New Mysticism (1200 –
1350), The Presence of God: A History of Western Christian Mysticism, III, New York, 1998, p. 261.
78
Thierry) and Richard of St-Victor.152 Like William of St-Thierry,
Marguerite saw the Holy Spirit, the Love uniting Father and Son in
the Trinity, as the power drawing the soul to the deepest union with
God. Her notion of pre-existence of the soul is found in the
reflections of Augustine in his great treatise On the Trinity.
Augustine had remarked on the pre-existence of the soul and its will
in God, noting that in its created state the soul can either will to be
converted to the source from which it came or to turn away from it
and cease being a good will. Bernard McGinn claims, however, that
on both accounts, the pre-creation of the soul and the movement to
God by the power of Holy Spirit Marguerite Porete went beyond
Augustine and previous Western theologians.153
Amy Hollywood has offered an explanation for the way Marguerite
Porete chose to present her narrative as a discussion between three
major protagonists, The Soul, Love, and Reason. Hollywood claims
that this way of telling the story represents the fluidity of these
three persons in the state of a transformed soul, in whom love
operates and uses to tell the story in the only way possible, with no
regards to human concepts of linear progress of narrative.154 Zan
Kocher‘s study (2008) elaborates on this theme by stripping the
Mirror‘s protagonist and object, the soul, from its temporal flesh,
from gender and subjectivity, to claim that Marguerite‘s intention
was to disengage from the wish to understand, to love, or to want
anything at all.155 Marguerite Porete, Kocher argues, wanted to
exemplify what happens when the soul abandons the social
preconceptions and personal desires. This, he claims, retracts the
soul to its precreational condition.
152
McGinn, The Flowering of Mysticism, p. 437, n. 240.
McGinn, The Flowering of Mysticism, p. 262.
154
Hollywood The Soul as Virgin Wife, p. 119.
155
Suzanne (Zan) Kocher, Allegories of Love in Marguerite Porete’s Mirror of Simple Souls, Turnhout,
2008, p. 183.
153
79
I agree with Bernard McGinn that Marguerite Porete was aware of
the theological currents of her day and went beyond them
proposing an active annihilation of the will. I would also agree with
Kocher that she deliberately moved away from any gender
conventions when describing her journey. She did not repeat the
description of the suffering of the women mystics before her. She
also did not give a version of a logically structured argument of the
logical or rational ascent of the created soul to the uncreated God,
achieved by understanding and knowing God, like Thomas Aquinas
did.156 As Jantzen has demonstrated, the purely scholastic way to
God, by the way of interpreting Scripture and reaching
understanding, was not available to women at all. If males had a
choice of articulating their mysticism either in the way of loving or
the way of thinking, women could only do the latter.157 Marguerite,
however, used the theological, mystical and literal developments to
create her unique piece of writing. In this chapter I shall look at the
ways Marguerite Porete used the descriptions of the feelings of the
former and the knowledge of the latter, echoing the debate about
reason and affective theologies, to create her own treatise, using
the contemporary theological concepts only as a starting point for
her own arguments.
The Franciscan connection
Bonaventure‘s Itinerarium Mentis in Deum is a guide directed at
Franciscan monks addressing the issue of the way of the human
soul to God.158 Although he was elected in 1257 as seventh minister
general of the Franciscan Orderin an attempt to soothe the distress
156
A. N. Williams, „Mystical Theology Redux: The Pattern of Aquinas‟ Summa Theologiae’, Modern
Theology, 13 (1997), 53-74, p. 65.
157
Grace M. Jantzen, Power, Gender and Christian Mysticism, Cambridge, 1995, p. 133.
158
Bonaventure, Itinerarium Mentis in Deum, ed., Philotheus Boehner, O.F.M, and trans. Zachary
Hayes, O.F.M, in Works of Bonaventure, Saint Bonaventure, 2002.
80
within the Order provoked by admirers of the radical book of Gerard
of Borgo San Donnino the Eternal Gospel, Bonaventure‘s writings do
not attest him to be a conventional pacifier. On the contrary, his
first official encyclical letter to the Order admonished the brethren
for their laxity in observing the practice of poverty. After two years
in his generalate and much travelling throughout Europe, he
changed the character of his writings from theological abstractions
to motivational writing, to address the real needs of his brethren for
uplifting spiritual guidance. While still a great scholar, he was
particular concerned after 1259 to motivate his brethren more than
to speculate on items of theology. His first masterpiece was
Itinerarium Mentis in Deum or the Journey of the Mind into God.159
At its outset, Bonaventure describes his own mental journey on
Mount Alverna when he realized that the way to God that St Francis
had demonstrated in person to his followers, is not only a venerated
occasion of a saint, but a way that can be attempted by others. The
Itinerarium is therefore a guidebook aimed at leading man to God in
six steps. Bonaventure outlines his plan in the beginning of his book
after he explains that he arrived at this understanding at Mount
Alverna following the experience that St Francis had there. The six
winged Seraph that St Francis saw in his vision was the key for
Bonaventure‘s proposed journey of the soul into God: ‗For those six
wings can well be understood as symbols of six levels of uplifting
illumination through which the soul is prepared as it were by certain
stages or steps to pass over to peace…‘160
159
Bonaventure, New Catholic Encyclopedia, ed., Thomas Carson, Joann Cerrito, 2nd ed., Detroit,
London, 2003, VOL? p. 481
160
„Nam per senas alas illas recte intelligi possunt sex illuminationum suspensions, quibus anima quasi
quibusdam gradibus vel itineribus disponitur…‟ Bonaventure, Itinerarium Mentis in Deum, p. 37. The
six winged seraph is also associated with the Apocalypse Commentry of Joachim of Fiore, by Olivi, in
David Burr, Olivi’s Peaceable Kingdom. A Reading of the Apocalypse Commentary, Philadelphia,
1993, p. 52.
81
The final destination of a person following the directions of the
Itinerarium is God. Bonaventure completes his treatise with the
description of the place the soul arrives after completing the six
stages of uplifting he described in his book. ‗leaving all things and
freed from all things in a total and absolute ecstasy of a pure mind,
transcending yourself and all things, you shall rise up to the superessential radiance of the divine darkness.‘161 Leaving all things the
soul becomes empty and free and returns to the divine darkness,
the state when God was alone before creation. Not only does
Bonaventure describe freedom and emptiness as the final aspiration
of the person undertaking his prescribed journey, he also completes
his description with the analogy of death, or even more strongly the
nothingness of the precreational state of non existence.
The point of departure is the sixth winged seraph from Isaiah 6:2.
Isaiah tells us that he had seen the Lord sitting on a throne and
above him stood the seraphim. Each seraph had six wings: with two
he covered his face, and with two he covered his feet, and with two
he flew. Bonaventure tells us that when he retired to Mount Alverna
he was thinking about St Francis and his vision of the Seraph. St
Francis saw the seraph in the form of the Crucified. Bonaventure
understood that to mean that St Francis had identified Christ with
the Seraph as the means to reach God. As the Seraph was
described directly with God in the Old Testament and St Francis had
seen him with the stigmata, the symbolic meaning of the seraph
shifted from angel of God, to the Crucified as Son of God. The
closeness to God remained and Bonaventure understood it to mean
that the person can come closer to God by coming closer to Christ
and the road was the road of contemplation and understanding. ‗I
saw immediately that this vision pointed not only to the uplifting of
161
Bonaventure, Itinerarium Mentis in Deum, p. 139.
82
our father himself in contemplation but also to the road by which
one might arrive at this experience.‘162
After explaining the source of his idea for this book Bonaventure
breaks the journey into six steps and takes his audience step by
step of the journey. At each step he prescribes the precise subjects
on which to contemplate, explaining that each will allow a different
angle of understanding something of God‘s goodness. He breaks
down for us the different aspects of the goodness of God, moving
from his outer traits to closer, more profound ones. In essence the
follower begins with contemplation about things that are more
simple and approachable like the different parts of the world outside
himself. These are the qualities of the world around him that he can
easily see and contemplate on. Then the one on the journey
proceeds to contemplation of inner human qualities, which are more
complex and completes the journey with high corporeal
contemplation which is God. Somehow during this journey the
person sheds his human soul and is uplifted into God. Bonaventure
does not explain how this happens or even explicitly say this is the
goal. The only part of the work where this becomes evident is in the
brief account of the end of the journey. By understanding God the
followers are expected to be uplifted, and somehow emptied and die
a mystical death that leads into God: ‗leaving all things and freed
from all things …you shall rise …to the divine darkness.‘163
Bonaventure does not give an explanation of even a detailed
description of this emptiness or the height to which one is uplifted.
Similarities in the Mirror
Very much like the Itinerarium, The Mirror of Simple Annihilated
Souls is a guide addressed to the reader or the listener so as to
162
163
Ibid., p. 37.
Ibid., p. 139.
83
direct them on their journey to God. In her Mirror Marguerite Porete
argues that the soul must move through seven stages. These seven
stages she sees as subdivided by three deaths; those of sin, nature
and spirit. Subsequent to each death are two stages, one
characterized by complacency and the other by a sense of
dissatisfaction that leads to the next death.164 However, Marguerite
describes only six stages or steps in her Mirror, saying that the
seventh stage is only accessible after death. Therefore although
Marguerite mentions that this is a seven steps journey, her Mirror
deals with only six, after which the soul has arrived at her
destination and she rests in the total happiness which is God.165
The nature of the state Marguerite describes as the destination of
the journey of the soul is very similar to the state Bonaventure
describes in his Itinerarium. The soul completing the journey
Marguerite proposes has died three deaths, each removing from the
soul more and more of her human attributes. Until at the sixth
stage the soul has nothing of her own. In such a state the soul
ceases to exist and is fully immerged in God, making this stage very
close to natural death.166 ‗…the one who would have perfect charity
must be mortified in the affections of the life of the spirit…‘ 167
The road to the final destination is a road of contemplation in both
treatises. When Marguerite describes the movement of the soul
from one state to another she uses thought or consideration as
vector. ‗l‘Ame se regarde en affeccion d‘amour de oeuvre de
perfection…‘168 or ‗Le quart estat ist que l‘Ame est tiree par
164
Hollywood The Soul as Virgin Wife, p. 98.
Porete, Speculum, ed. Verdeyen, p. 331.
166
Amy Hollywood cautiously interprets it to mean that all of the creature‟s human nature - body,
spirit and soul - is a burden and must be killed. Seen from this perspective, the soul in her entirety must
be renounced insofar as she is created and other than God. Hollywood The Soul as Virgin Wife, p. 110.
167
Porete, Speculum, ed. Verdeyen, p. 19.
168
Ibid., p. 321.
165
84
haultesse d‘amour en delit de pensee par meditacion, et relinquie
de tous labours de dehors et de obedience d‘aultruy par haultesse
de contemplacion…‘.169 However, even if the initiating movement
comes from a person himself, who desires to move towards God,
the journey cannot be completed by himself alone. The one to
actually lift him from one step to another is God. In The Mirror
Marguerite describes Love as the power that lifts the soul from one
stage to another. But in essence Love is God and therefore God is
the one who lifts the soul that has prepared herself with Love.
Bonaventure states that his way is the way of contemplation,
however, he urges his potential readers not to rely too heavily on
their intellectual strengths, but to allow themselves to experience
desire and be inflamed in the love of God. ‗To those who are already
disposed by divine grace… to those anointed with the oil of gladness,
to those who are lovers of divine wisdom and are inflamed with
desire for it; and to those who wish to give themselves to glorifying,
admiring and even savoring God, I propose the following
reflections.‘170 He says further, ‗we cannot be elevated above
ourselves unless a superior power lifts us up. No matter how wellordered the steps of our interior life may be, nothing will happen if
the divine aid does not accompany us‘.171 Therefore the power that
lifts the person is God and not his own efforts, no matter how
efficient they are.
The agency of the movement or the concept of the reflection is very
similar in both treatises. I agree with Zachary Hayes who says in
the introduction to the Itinerarium that Bonaventure‘s ‗speculation‘
is not a mere synonym of ‗consideration‘ and ‗contemplation‘ or
even ‗meditation‘. It is a higher degree of mystical contemplation,
which ‗seizes the soul and raises it up beyond itself when beholding
169
Ibid., p. 323.
Bonaventure, Itinerarium Mentis in Deum, p. 41.
171
Ibid., p. 45.
170
85
the inaccessible grandeur and splendour of the divine manifestation
of eternal Truth‘. Therefore ‗speculation‘ in Itinerarium means
gazing at God.172 It is not an untreated and untouched gazing,
however. Bonaventure divides this gazing into carefully outlined
steps which pull the reader or the follower to gaze from a closer
distance each time he progresses in steps. Amy Hollywood has
noted that the Mirror of Marguerite promises to project either a
reflection of the souls or a representation of some other entity that
has been given to these souls.173 Following the inner logic of the
Mirror it is unnecessary to decide which object is represented. The
soul progresses to God by increasingly letting go of its human
attributes and by allowing God to replace them. Therefore at the
end of the journey there is no soul to be reflected by the Mirror
back to the reader or the listener, there is only the image of God.
Therefore the Mirror becomes a reflection of a speculation on God
offered to readers to follow.
The advance of the Mirror
The Mirror of Marguerite reflects a further development of a
Franciscan ideology accepted in her day. The first two stages of the
journey Marguerite advocates in her Mirror express the height of
achievement of the suffering mystics before her. As Amy Hollywood
has noted, Marguerite is unsatisfied with the level reached by the
majority of the mystically inclined women of her period, who are
happy with their misery and suffering.174 Hadewijch for example
says that she expects the human lover of God, or the mystic, to
suffer without relief. ‗What satisfies Love best of all is that we be
wholly destitute of all repose, whether in aliens or in friends, or
even in Love herself. And this is a frightening life Love wants, that
we must do without the satisfaction of Love in order to satisfy
172
Hayes, Introduction to Bonaventure, Itinerarium Mentis in Deum, p. 27.
Amy Hollywood, The Soul as Virgin Wife, p. 87.
174
Amy Hollywood, The Soul as Virgin Wife, p. 98.
173
86
Love… and that life is miserable beyond all that the human heart
can bear.‘175 The state of suffering is the desired state for Hadewijch;
not so for Marguerite. Indeed, her theology reaches this state at the
second stage. ‗the second state or degree is that the Soul considers
that God counsels His special lovers to go beyond what He
commands... the creature abandons self and strains self above all to
do the counsels of men, in the work of mortification of nature, in
despising riches, delights and honours, in order to accomplish the
perfection of the evangelical counsel of which Jesus Christ is the
exemplar.‘176
The fifth stage proposes contemplation of God. At this stage the
person is directed to examine the manifestation of the goodness of
God in order to understand something of Him. Marguerite, too,
speaks about closeness and understanding. But unlike Bonaventure
she does not think there is a way to understand God. She uses the
motions of the Seraph in the Old Testament but interprets them
allegorically. For her the meaning of the Seraph covering his face
means that he understood nothing about the divine Goodness of
God compared to his understanding of Himself. When the Seraph
covers his feet she understands it to mean the understanding of
Christ‘s suffering while in this world. She realizes that there is no
understanding compared to His understanding of Himself. After
telling us what is unavailable to us she teaches us what is: ‗With the
two others the Soul flies, and dwells in being and rest. Thus all that
she understands and loves and praises of the divine goodness are
the wings by which she flies.‘177 For Marguerite there is only the
understanding of our own actions on our way to God, the image of
which she gives in her Mirror.
175
Hadewijch, The Complete Works, trans. Columba Hart, O.S.B. New York, 1980, p. 75.
Porete, Speculum, ed. Verdeyen, p. 319, 321.
177
Ibid.,, p. 23.
176
87
The sixth stage or the end of the journey accessible to the person in
this life is very similar to the condition described by Bonaventure. In
both theologies the soul described in the journey reaches the final
stage of the journey, which is total nothingness for her. However in
Marguerite‘s case the soul also experiences the total fullness, which
is God. This is not to say that Bonaventure‘s theology does not
allow the possibility for this experience; after all the Itinerarium
puts the person in the end of the journey in the total darkness and
emptiness that resembles death and being with God. He, however,
does not speak about the feelings of a person at any of the stages,
and the final stage is no different in this respect.
The stages are covered in one chapter, which summarizes her
theology, chapter 118 of the Mirror. Alongside the description of the
suffering and consideration of the Goodness of God, there is an
active change that the soul applies to itself. Step after step the soul
empties itself from its essence becoming an empty vessel for God to
fill: ‗now such a Soul is nothing, for she sees her nothingness by
means of the abundance of divine Understanding, which makes her
nothing and places her in nothingness.‘178 The last attribute of the
soul, that symbolizes the soul‘s being, is the free will, used by the
soul in the second part of the fifth stage. ‗And thus the Soul
removes herself from this will, and the will is separated from Soul
and dissolves itself, and [the will] gives and renders itself to God…‘
‗such a gift accomplishes this perfection in her and so transforms
her into the nature of Love…‘179
The largest part of her book deals, however, with a different
material. In her theology Marguerite has created an alternative
reality. She then takes some time to consider how this reality feels
178
179
Ibid., p. 327.
Ibid.,p. 327.
88
for the actual participant before starting to write her book. She then
describes the feelings in detail so that the follower can identify
himself in her emotional state in each of the stages and draw
strength from her leadership. The reality she offers is so vivid that
there is no doubt left that she has lived this herself and has
analysed each feeling and thought in each of the stages. Reading
her book one has the feeling of being led by someone of great
experience into an unknown territory. A major part of her book
reads like a detailed description of each stage rather then a
direction as how to get to it. Marguerite does not only depict the
end purpose in detail, she also takes great care explaining and
describing each stage and the feelings of the traveller in it.
The Mirror is not a narration of a miserable romantic relationship
with a lover. It is a guide that aims to tell people what to do in
order to ease the suffering and not how to perpetuate it.
Marguerite takes up most of the space of the Mirror to discuss the
feelings she had in the process of achieving each stage, what the
world looked like to her at each stage and what drove her to
proceed. She addresses every discomfort and prescribes a specific
contemplation to ease every distress. Marguerite tells her audience
what she felt in order to support the followers who struggle with
any of the stages and to motivate them to move forward.
In this respect the Mirror, although a guide book, does not offer
merely a prescription of steps as Bonaventure does. He directs the
readers step by step in a circle of life that begins with God, moves
with Christ to us and then with the directions he prescribes in the
Itinerarium back to God through Christ. He directs them with no
explanation of the benefit of his proposal and without giving much
consideration to the feelings and thoughts of his readers.
Bonaventure‘s Christology only sees God and mobilizes all senses to
89
come back to him. The Mirror of Marguerite still sees Christ as the
centre and moves towards Him, but concentrates on the individual‘s
pursuit of God.
There is not much said in the Itinerarium about the experience of
the person at each of the stages. The follower is prescribed a
certain action at each stage. Bonaventure assumes that he will
perform each stage of the contemplation perfectly and move
forward to the next. He never questions the actual feelings of the
person performing the mental work. However, although
Bonaventure does not discuss the feelings of the person on the
journey, this does not mean that he ignores the inner experience of
the friar attempting the journey to God. He gives directions based
on an understanding that there is a mental essence in the soul
created by experience and preserved by memory: ‗therefore enter
into yourself… it would not know itself unless it remembered itself,
for we do not grasp anything with our understanding if it is not
present to us in our memory.‘180 Bonaventure builds his instruction
based on this assumption. He calls it memory but it is evident that
he draws on another theology, which presupposes experience, too,
for its instructions.
The Cistercians
In her understanding of the soul‘s journey, Marguerite Porete also
draws on the notion of experience, central to the theology of
Bernard of Clairvaux, the primary builder of the reforming Cistercian
180
„…nisi sui meminisset, quia nihil capimus per intelligentiam, quod non sit praesens apud nostram
memoriam.‟ Bonaventure, Itinerarium Mentis in Deum, pp. 80-1.
90
monastic order. He was the abbot of the abbey of Clairvaux, which
he founded with his twelve companions in a place called Clara Vallis,
or Clairvaux at the age of 25 in 1115. He died there on August 20,
1153, not before Clairvaux became the most important Cistercian
house, owing to the fame and influence of Bernard.
Bernard‘s idea of experience acts in a similar way to the memory of
Bonaventure. It promotes the travel of man towards God. It is this
experience one meditates on in order to begin movement into God.
There are three stages of experience, according to Bernard. The
first is a reflection on our own misery and sin. Bernard trusts there
will be no difficulty for the monks to recall their own suffering,
resulting from the separation from God and the misery they feel
from their own sins. Then he prescribes for them to experience
Christ and after and through him to experience God.181 Bernard
stresses, however, that although experience is necessary it is also
misleading. In cases of contradiction between Faith, Scripture and
experience, Faith and Scripture must be trusted.182
But even when Faith, Scripture and experience speak the same,
man must not think he has initiated this marvellous occurrence, of
reaching and learning from his experience, that brings him closer to
God. Although man begins his movement into God by meditating on
fragments of his own experience, Bernard tells us, this is not truly
man who initiates and uses the experience. In his theology this is
not man‘s movement to God, but the movement of God in him, that
brings him to God.183 This notion of man‘s moving towards God,
which is experienced by man as his initiative, but which is in fact
done wholly by God, is more elaborately discussed in a treatise of
Bernard, On Grace and Free Choice.
181
Kilian McDonnell, „Spirit and Experience in Bernard of Clairvaux‟, in Theological Studies,
58(1997), 3-13, p. 10.
182
Ibid., p. 14.
183
Ibid., p. 18.
91
The treatise On Grace and Free Choice was probably written about
the year 1128 as an answer to the question of what part played by
the decisions and actions in his salvation?184 Bernard begins his
treatise, On Grace and Free Choice by presenting an active faculty
of man in his effort to come to God: ‗God is the author of salvation
and the free willing faculty is capable of receiving it.185 Only the
freely chosen goodness is capable of receiving grace. Bernard
speaks of three freedoms that were lost to man in the fall and they
can be restored to him in salvation with an increase in intensity.
Freedom from necessity, freedom from sin and freedom from
sorrow will be twice as strong when they are restored.186 Freedom
from necessity, which Bernard also calls freedom of choice, we all
possess. It was not damaged by the fall. The other two freedoms,
freedom from sin and from sorrow are given by God in heaven.
Therefore we are able to will good but are unable to act upon our
best intentions. Saving grace gives our will the ability of this
achievement. As Bernard puts it, ‗we are God‘s by good will.‘187 Free
choice is a necessary but not a sufficient condition for salvation:
without the exercise of free choice we cannot be saved; by itself it
is impotent and cannot achieve salvation. We can only achieve
salvation if by grace God restores to us the freedom from sin and
the freedom from suffering as well.188
184
Bernard of Clairvaux, Liber de gratia et libero arbitrio, ed. Jean Leclercq, Sancti Bernardi Opera,
vol. 3, Rome, 1968, pp. 165-203; PL 182, cols. 1001-1030; Bernard of Claivaux, On Grace and Free
Choice, trans. Daniel O‟Donovan OSCO, in The Works of Bernard of Claivaux, vol. 7, Cistercian
Fathers Series, 19, Kalamazoo, 1997., pp. 3-111.
185
Bernard, De gratia et libero arbitrio, I.2, ed. Leclercq, p. 166, PL 182, col. 1002;On Grace and
Free Choice, p. 54
186
Bernard, De gratia et libero arbitrio, III.7, ed. Leclercq, p. 171; PL 182, col. 1005; On Grace and
Free Choice, p. 62.
187
Bernard, De gratia et libero arbitrio, VI.18, ed. Leclercq, p. 179; PL 182, col. 1011 ; On Grace and
Free Choice, p. 73.
188
Vincent Brummer, „Calvin, Bernard and the Freedom of the Will‟, in Religious Studies, 30, (1994),
437-55, p. 442.
92
The concept of free choice or voluntary consent in the theology of
Bernard is tightly connected to the free will and is described as the
essence of the soul. ‗Voluntary consent is a self-determining habit of
the soul.‘189 Bernard takes special care and dedicates a separate
part of his thesis to the definition of the term ‗voluntary consent‘.
After describing it as ‗a self-determining habit of the soul‘, he
proceeds to a simpler explanation. The choice, he says, stems from
the will and coerced by no other considerations but the desire of the
will. Then he says: ‗where you have consent there is also is the will.
But where the will is, there is freedom.‘190 The soul can therefore do
the free willing if not the action that this willing entails. Bernard
clearly states that the freedom of choice has not been damaged by
the fall and it is the only true freedom left for us.191 However, later
he states that man after the fall is incapable of actually doing good
without grace.192 Therefore it is inherent in man that he lives in
constant sin and suffering, the end of which is expected only after
death.
Bernard is not entirely averse to the concept of achieving the state
of happiness and freeness from sin and suffering while still in this
life. He says that a truly wise and powerful man is not merely able
to will a thing from his free choice, but is able also, by the virtue of
the remaining two freedoms, to do it.193 However Bernard feels that
such a state is inaccessible to most people in this life. Only those
caught up in the Spirit through excess of contemplation are able to
189
Bernard, De gratia et libero arbitrio, II.3, ed. Leclercq, p. 169; PL 182, col. 1003; On Grace and
Free Choice, p. 77.
190
Bernard, De gratia et libero arbitrio, II.3, ed. Leclercq, p. 167, PL 182, col. 1003: „Non enim est
consensus, nisi voluntarius. Ubi ergo consensus, ibi voluntas. Porro ubi voluntas, ibi libertas.‟ On
Grace and Free Choice, p. 56.
191
Bernard, De gratia et libero arbitrio, VIII.24, ed. Leclercq, p. 183 ; PL 182, col. 1014 ; On Grace
and Free Choice, p. 82.
192
Bernard, De gratia et libero arbitrio, VI.16, ed. Leclercq, p. 177 ; PL 182, col. 1010 ; On Grace and
Free Choice, p. 72.
193
Bernard, De gratia et libero arbitrio, VI.20, ed. Leclercq, p. 181 ; PL 182, col. 1012 ; On Grace and
Free Choice, p. 77.
93
savour something of the sweetness of the heavenly bliss, but only
rarely and fleetingly.194 The way Bernard sees it, such an
experience can be achieved by the means of accessing the two
remaining freedoms, which were lost to all mankind in the fall.
When trying to describe the happy state which this ‗wise and
powerful‘ man will experience for just a short time he says: ‗He will
then be incapable of willing what is evil and will also be perfectly
content and nothing will be lacking to him.195
Similarities in the Mirror
Marguerite Porete in her Mirror of Simple Souls enters the
theological world of concepts Bernard has created but takes the
reader in entirely different direction. Bernard claims in his theology
that the free will is the only freedom that is left for man after the
fall and that this freedom of choice is ‗a self-determining habit of
the soul‘. He also claims that because we still possess our free will
we can will good or evil. According to the direction of our will, the
forces that give true movement to this will, take us. He allows that
there are some extraordinary people that can be taken to this
happiness while here in this life but only for short periods of time.
Marguerite enters his theological world with all its rules and
limitations but instead of only describing and accepting the
miserable situation of man in this world, she proposes a solution.
Her solution does not follow the direction that the theology of
Bernard has prepared. It is original and daring and gives purpose
where Bernard only offered a distant hope. Marguerite accepts that
the free will is the only freedom man truly has and it is according to
this will God dispenses grace and so gives the other freedoms. By
doing so God embraces man and lets him into himself in salvation.
194
Bernard, De gratia et libero arbitrio, V.15, ed. Leclercq, p. 177 ; PL 182, 1010 ; On Grace and Free
Choice, p. 71.
195
St. Bernard, De Gratia et Libero Arbitrio, 611, Caput VI, 20, f. 1012.„dum nec velle valeat quod
malum sit, nec carere quod velit.‟ On Grace and Free Choice, p. 77.
94
Following this logic, Marguerite decided, for herself and for her
followers, not to keep the free will and aim it time and again in the
direction of God waiting with trepidation for the day when God will
relieve the burden and collect this good free will into himself in
salvation. She decided to relinquish this free will to Him
immediately and without return, so that the will will not be able to
waver and become bad will. It is not hers anymore and therefore
only God‘s to will what He would.
The movement of man and God in the direction of bringing the man
into God is also treated by Marguerite according to the same
understanding of the laws and boundaries articulated by Bernard,
but in an original fashion. Bernard attributed to God alone the
movement of man to Him in salvation. Even though he prescribed
the free will of the man a certain part, it did not take anything from
the role tha God has in this deed, which is everything. ‗God works
these three things in us, namely thinking, willing and accomplishing
the good.‘ 196 Therefore, Bernard, even in his most man empowering
treatise, attributes to God the entire faculty of salvation. ‗He,
therefore, accomplishes the salvation of those whose names are in
the book of life, sometimes through the creature yet without it,
sometimes through the creature but against it, and sometimes
through the creature and with it.197 Man has the choice to will the
good, but from this point God picks up all the tasks required for his
salvation, replacing man in himself, sometimes even against his free
will. Marguerite accepts the direction of the power of God as
prescribed by Bernard. She, however, elaborates on its activity
allowing man an active role. Marguerite claims that the faculty of
Love is shared by man and God. When man chooses to live in his
196
St. Bernard, De Gratia et Libero Arbitrio, 621, Caput XIV, 46, f. 1026. On Grace and Free Choice,
p. 105.
197
St. Bernard, De Gratia et Libero Arbitrio, 620, Caput XIII, 44, f. 1025. On Grace and Free Choice,
p. 102.
95
loving capacity to the fullest, doing for Love everything and
withholding nothing, Love alters from feeling of man to a power of
God. In this capacity Love can pull man towards itself.
This solution agrees with the theology of Bernard, who attributes
the action of grace in the soul entirely to God. In Marguerite‘s
theology Love, as God, pulls man into Himself. However in the
theology of Bernard the performance of grace is depicted as a flow
of divine power through a passive man. ‗The first he does without
us, the second with us and the third through us. By suggesting the
good thought he goes, one first step ahead of us; by also bringing
about the change of our ill will, he joins it to himself by its consent;
and by supplying consent with faculty and ability, the operator
within makes his appearance outwardly through the external work
that we perform.‘198 By supplying consent man allows God to act
within him, but more importantly through him. The theology of
Marguerite puts much more action into the hands of man than that
of Bernard. Although he attributes to man the freeness of will, man
is only free to decide within this will whether to choose good or evil.
He cannot change anything by his will. He cannot even act on his
will. He cannot even will completely on his own, because in essence
God wills in him. All activity towards God is done by God alone. In
the Mirror Marguerite attributes to the soul the crucial action that
brings her completely into God. The will and the capability to decide
to act upon this will are attributed completely to man (or soul) in
the Mirror. And the soul wills and decides and accomplishes to hand
over this will into God. ‗And thus the Soul removes herself from this
will and [the will] gives and renders itself to God.‘199
198
St. Bernard, De Gratia et Libero Arbitrio, 621, Caput XIV, 46, f. 1026. On Grace and Free Choice,
p. 105.
199
Porete, Speculum, ed. ? p. 327.
96
The end result in both treatises is death. However, in Bernard‘s case
this is the natural death, which brings man to the happy state of
freedom. In the case of Marguerite it is a mystical death which
brings to man the same state of permanent joy. I agree with Amy
Hollywood, who claims that Marguerite Porete experienced this
stage as the third and final death after which the freedom of the
soul was achieved. I believe that in this Marguerite acknowledged
the concept of the will being ‗a self-determining habit of the soul‘.
For her relinquishing the willing faculty of the soul meant exercising
the free choice Bernard claimed we all had intact even after the fall.
Loosing this faculty had therefore felt to Marguerite like loosing the
last human essence and therefore experiencing the final death. The
fact that this will was handed over to God meant that the freedom
this soul experiences hence was in God. ‗When the spirit is perfectly
dead, then he has lost the sense of his love and killed the will which
gives life to [this sense], and in this loss the will is perfectly filled by
the sufficiency of divine pleasure. And in such a death grows the
supreme life, which is always unencumbered and glorious.‘200
For Marguerite, the state of the human soul after death is of total
happiness and freedom: ‗Such a gift accomplishes this perfection in
her and so transforms her into the nature of Love, who delights her
with full peace and satisfies her with divine food.‘ 201 However, both
Bernard and Marguerite greatly emphasize that such freedom does
not interfere with what is considered good and virtuous behaviour.
Both theologies emphasize the inability of the soul to do any harm
‗but such Nature is so well ordered through the transformation by
unity of Love, to whom the will of this Soul is conjoined, that Nature
demands nothing which is prohibited. Such a Soul has no anxiety
200
201
Porete, Speculum, ed. Verdeyen. p. 205.
Porete, Speculum, ed. Verdeyen, p. 327.
97
about anything which she lacks…‘202 Bernard, too, when describing
the state of man after his three freedoms are achieved says: ‗To the
end that only fitting of permissible things may be found pleasing …
and nothing of what is pleasing may any longer be found
wanting‘.203 There is also nothing wanting to this soul, because
everything is there within God.
Advance of the Mirror
Nothingness is another aspect of the relinquishment of the will after
it has been transferred into God. And ‗now such a Soul is nothing,
for she sees her nothingness by means of abundance of divine
Understanding, which makes her nothing and places her in
nothingness.‘204` Marguerite describes this nothingness of the soul
in great detail. She wills her audience to understand this unique
quality that the soul has reached after relinquishing the will.
However just like the concept of ‗farnearness‘, a term Marguerite
uses throughout the Mirror to explain the feeling of being at the
same time very close and very far from God, the nothingness is
both fullness and emptiness, in the Mirror.205 After the soul sheds
her human essence and God resumes His being in her she is
suddenly full. But this is not a fullness of a human being, filled with
everyday worries, thoughts and feelings. It is a fullness of a vessel
that has substance but it is not her substance. The substance God
gives her gives the vessel a sense of being full and empty at the
same time; full of God, and empty of her original substance of
human being. ‗Thus this gift is given from the most High, into whom
this creature is carried by the fertility of understanding… it is no
longer her will which wills, but now the will of God wills in her…thus
202
Porete, Speculum, ed. Verdeyen, pp. 33,35.
Bernard, De gratia et libero arbitrio, VI.19, ed. Leclercq, p. 180, PL 182, 1012; On Grace and Free
Choice, p. 75.
204
Porete, Speculum, ed. Verdeyen, p. 327.
205
Bernard McGinn mentions the term Loingprés as the new name Marguerite has invented for the
trinity. In McGinn, The Flowering of Mysticism, p. 256.
203
98
Love works in her without her…‘206 Marguerite claims that after the
soul completes all the works within herself only God exists in her
and does His work through her. Following this logic it is indeed
irrelevant for the person who has completed the journey what is
done to or with the vessel that has used to be him. In this sense the
idea of passivity in Marguerite‘s theology seem credible. However, it
is difficult to comprehend the happiness that Marguerite confesses
to, since she has nothing to feel the happiness with.
The story Marguerite tells in her Mirror begins where the story of
Bernard ends. He begins with the description of man in this world.
He depicts his state of suffering and explains it is detail. He then
explores the origins of our suffering and concludes with a promise of
this suffering ending after natural death in salvation. Shortly after
leading man into salvation Bernard concludes his treatise. By
contrast, Marguerite begins with a thorough examination and
depiction of the soul after it has relinquished its will. She examines
the state and condition of the soul and her attitude toward the
outside world, both earthly and celestial. She dedicates most of her
book to this analysis, coming to give directions to the followers and
considerations to those who are on the way but distressed only
towards the end. Her Mirror keeps with the structure and the
direction of the Itinerarium, even if it is more caring and leading as
opposed to the instructional direction of the Franciscan. She shares
with the readers her concerns and feelings and gives
encouragement as well as instruction. Bonaventure‘s Itinerarium,
except for the introduction and conclusion, only gives instruction
without any consideration as to the mental and emotional state of
the friar following his instructions. Marguerite also adopts from St
Bernard the prescribed direction of man to God and the power that
lifts him, but elaborates on this theme and gives man a more active
206
Porete, Speculum, ed. Verdeyen, p. 27.
99
role and a more immediate outcome of his efforts. The Mirror,
therefore, is written as an elaboration on the themes first
introduced by the most orthodox of the Cistercian and Franciscan
movements. It stands firmly within their rules and limitations but
with enough development to attract an otherwise reluctant audience.
The one thing none of the treatises offered was immediate hope.
Both the Franciscan and the Cistercian treatises were written to
encourage the friars and the monks to preserve their virtuous lives
in face of the difficulties. Bonaventure started writing his
motivational treatises when realizing the dire straits of the brethren
he encountered on his travels. He tried to offer them a glimpse into
what awaited them after death. Bernard of Clairvaux, too,
attempted to revive in monks the will to suffer the hardships and try
to do good, by offering them an explanation of the values of their
behaviour for their salvation. In both cases the audience was
requested to keep up good deeds and wait until the natural death
will come and with it the possibility of salvation. The treatise of
Marguerite offered action. She, too, claimed that only God was the
author of salvation, but she gave the human person an active role
in his or her destiny. The active initiative offered the follower to
expedite and assure his or her salvation.
Marguerite‘s theology combines the wish to appease the suffering of
the soul in its isolation from God. This need is an emotional one.
The person feels dissatisfied with his/her situation in life and
frustrated with being attached to the terrestrial instead of celestial.
This is not a theoretical state many speculative theologies treat.
This is not an understanding of the human condition; this is a
feeling of anguish. Therefore the state before the journey can be
described as feelings, the heart, something shared by women
mystics and described in their accounts. However, the ultimate
100
fusion is not of the mind, of understanding, but of the soul back to
its creator; movement beyond human understanding. The fact that
Marguerite, as Kocher contended, used disembodied, genderless
soul, to describe such process, supports the notion that it is neither
man nor woman, neither affection nor reason that remains, but
something ineffable: a theosis, available to all souls.
101
Chapter four - A mirror of Queenship: The Speculum
dominarum and the demands of justice
At the same time as Marguerite Porete was evolving the ideas that
matured in the Mirror of Simple Souls, a very different kind of
treatise was being prepared, addressed not to the ‗simple soul‘, but
to the Queen. Based on the literary genre of ‗Mirrors of Princes‘
about how a ruler should behave, a genre known as the ‗Mirrors of
Princes‘. The Speculum dominarum, was written in Latin sometime
during the reign of Jeanne of Navarre (1285 - 1305), wife of Philip
the Fair (1285 – 1314), as such a manual by her Franciscan
confessor, Durand of Champagne but for noble women, rather than
for princes.207 It was subsequently translated into French as the
Miroir des dames or Mirror of Ladies. This mirror is aimed at a
different audience and has a different purpose to the Mirror of
Simple Souls. Instead of fulfilment through emptiness it encourages
participation and influence in the world. Alongside the traditional
reflection on spurning the world and moral instruction for the queen
one third of it is structured in a similar manner to the mirrors of
princes, such as those written by Thomas Aquinas, Giles of Rome
and others. Thematically and structurally the Speculum dominarum
deals with the various ways of administration of justice to the
people. It demonstrates how Franciscan influence had evolved in
the royal court from offering literature of spiritual edification to
outright political instruction of the queen.
The Speculum dominarum combines moral and spiritual instruction
with passages which teach the right way to govern a country and
207 Anne Dubrulle, ed., „Le Speculum Dominarum de Durand de Champagne’, 2 vols., Thèse
prèsentee pour l‟obtention du diplome d‟archiviste-paleographe, 1987-1988.
102
the queen‘s place in it. It is structured in this manner, I would argue,
because it is aimed at rearranging the place of the Franciscans in
the French court; not at teaching the queen how to withdraw from
the world and only advance her spiritual development. It teaches
the queen that her place is to govern side by side with her husband;
in effect it teaches her how to become a judge and to administer
justice. By promoting the role of the Queen within the royal court,
the Franciscans were aiming to increase their own participation and
influence therein.
Soon after the Speculum dominarum was written it was adapted by
an unknown author for the instruction of a prince and named Liber
de informatione principum, which was then translated by John
Golein into French.208 The Speculum dominarum itself was
translated into French either by Durand de Champagne or by
another Franciscan, who did not leave his name. The French version
was named Le Miroir des Dames.209 French princesses of the
fourteenth and fifteenth centuries continued to possess copies of
the vernacular version of Durand‘s treatise, of which ten copies
have been preserved.210 The treatise of Durand was fairly widely
disseminated in the royal and princely circles of fourteenth and
fifteenth century France, but its influence did not extend beyond the
confines of this milieu.211 In 1528, the Speculum dominarum was
translated afresh for Margaret of Navarre, by Ysambert of St-Léger,
a priest patronized by the court. However, unable to adjust his
treatise to the changing values of the renaissance queen, Ysambert
left his revision incomplete.212
208
Catherine Louise Mastny, Durand of Champagne and the ‘Mirror of the Queen’: a Study in
Medieval Didactic Literature, Columbia University, Ph.D., 1969,p. 119.
209
Mastny, Durand of Champagne, p. 123.
210
Mastny, Durand of Champagne, p. 131.
211
Mastny, Durand of Champagne, p. 134.
212
Ysambert. de Saint-Léger, Le miroir des dames, C. Marazza éd., Milella-Lecce, 1978. and Élodie
Lequain, La maison de Bourbon, „escolle de vertu et de perfection‟ Anne de France, Suzanne de
Bourbon et Pierre Martin, Médiévales, 48, (2005) 39-54.
103
Only two theses have been dedicated to the Speculum dominarum.
One was written as a Ph.D. dissertation by Catherine Louise Mastny
in Columbia University in 1969. She dated the Speculum as written
between 1285 and 1305 and firmly placed it as a manual written by
Durand of Champagne to Jeanne of Navarre. The other was a
critical edition of its Latin text within a thesis for the diploma of
archivist – palaeographer by Anne Dubrulle in 1987-8. Dubrulle
retraced its origins from earlier theological thought, in particular
arguing that it was dependent on the Speculum Morale that
circulated as part of the Speculum maius of Vincent of Beauvais, but
in fact not written until the late thirteenth century.213 She reports
the dubious authorship of the Speculum Morale, but continues to
address the work as by Vincent of Beauvais in her ensuing
discussion.214
When the Speculum dominarum was being written, the king and
queen were very much divided in their support for mendicant orders.
Philip the Fair preferred to surround himself with the Dominicans, as
shown by his choice of confessors, Nicolas of Fréauville and
Guillaume de Paris. His confessor before he became king, Lorens of
Orléans, compiled Somme le Roi, an important treatise of moral
edification for his father, Philip III, and kept in the royal library. It is
a very personal spiritual manual, aimed more at perfecting oneself
than discussing the right way to rule a country.215 Its beautiful
imagery of trees being watered by divine founts was adopted by
many artists.216 Due to the great influence of Lorens of Orléans on
the young king, the heart of his father was transferred and buried
213
Anne Dubrulle, These, p. 83.
Mastny, Introduction to Durand of Champagne , p. 84.
215
W. Nelson Francis, The Book of Vices and Virtues, A Fourteenth Century English Translation of the
Somme Le Roi, of Lorens d’Orléans, London, New York, Toronto, 1942, 1968.
216
Ellen Kosmer, „Gardens of Virtue in the Middle Ages‟ in Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld
Istitutes, 41, (1978), 302-7, p. 305.
214
104
at Saint Jacques, a Dominican monastery. Moreover, the king‘s
commissioning of literary works and his gradual policy shift in
favour of the Inquisition demonstrates an increasing support for the
aims of the order. Philip‘s artistic patronage suggests an extensive
Dominican influence in Paris in the generations following Aquinas.217
By the end of the century Philip put the Beguinage of Paris, which
was an independent female religious institution established by his
saintly grandfather, under Dominican influence. He also established
the Dominican female house in Poissy as a memorial for his
grandfather, when Louis IX was sainted.
Jeanne‘s support for the aims of the Franciscan order is reflected in
statements attributed to Bernard Délicieux, Franciscan lector of
Narbonne and Carcassonne. Bernard had access to the queen
through her confessor Durand de Champagne. He saw in Jeanne of
Navarre a strong protector who could influence the king‘s policy. He
referred to her as ‗Queen Esther who interceded for her people‘.
Bernard visited Paris each year from 1301 to 1304, on behalf of the
citizens of Albi and Carcassonne, in hopes that Jeanne could
influence the royal policy against the excesses of the Dominican-led
inquisition in the Languedoc. The citizens of the region reportedly
saw the queen as their ―anchor‖.218 This image of the queen Jeanne
of Navarre as Queen Esther is extensively used by Durand de
217
Dorothy Gillerman, Enguerran de Marigny, Pennsylvania, 1994, p. 13.
Constant J Mews, „The The Speculum dominarum (Miroir des dames) and Transformations of the
Literature of Instruction for Women in the Early Fourteenth Century‟, in ed. Karen Green and Constant
J. Mews, Virtue Ethics for Women, 1250-1550, to be published by Springer, p. 33. referring to
Processus Bernardi Delitiosi: The Trial of Fr. Bernard Délicieux, 2September-8December 1319, ed.
Alan Friedlander, Philadelphia, 1996, 264r, 265r, p276, „Item dixit quod ipse audivit dictum fratrem
Bernardum praedicantem publice apud Castras et Albiam et Corduam quando dominus rex Franciae
debuit venire ad terram istam et post publicationem appellationis et quarumdam literarum vicedomini
quae dirigebantur consulatibus huius terrae, dicentem in dictis sermonibus inter caetera, prout
recordatur, quod dominus rex veniebat ad terram istam ad instigatum et preces dominae reginae, quae
tanquam regina Hester intercesserat pro populo huius terrae, et , quod dictus dominus rex palparet
veritatem negotii inquisitionis et quod de ipso negotio taliter ordinaret vel faceret ordinari quod
negotium ipsum non male nec per corruptiones procederetur, ita quod neminem oporteret dubitari
ulterius sine culpa. Et ista audivit, ut supra deposuit, sub anno Domini millesimo trecentesimo secundo
vel tertio, de diebus tamen et de horis dixit se non recordari. Tenor vero literarum de quibus superius
facta est mentio inferius est insertus.
218
105
Champagne in his Speculum dominarum.219 The image of a simple
Jewish girl who influenced the Persian king to change his policy was
a familiar one. This image enabled praise for a woman who
promoted political interests without stepping out of the conventional
female role. Such indirect influence, which aimed to move by
persuasion, was praised, as opposed to negative descriptions of
women who acted in their own right to bring change.220 Mentioning
Esther is one of the ways Durand signals to the reader that this
treatise will not step outside of the conventional concepts of
women‘s conduct. Within this conventional framework, however,
Durand will make some extraordinary advances.
The Speculum dominarum is generally assumed to have been
written as a manual for the queen‘s personal edification towards her
salvation. Durand begins his treatise with a scriptural foundation for
the articulate argument to follow. Sapiens mulier edificat domum
suam (Prov. 14, 1) ‗A wise woman builds her home‘.221 Durand
describes four houses where the queen reigns. In her ‗exterior
house‘ the queen receives the world in surroundings which
splendour and rich furnishings mirror her worldly position. The
queen‘s ‗interior house‘ is her conscience, which she is urged to
‗decorate‘ with the same care as her palace. Her ‗inferior house‘ is
the resting place of the damned, that is, hell, and her ‗superior
house‘ is heaven. It has been argued that house imagery in Durand,
like tree imagery in the work of Lull, is more than a convenient
metaphor. The houses function as a system for organizing aspects
of queenship, which are conceived as an ascending hierarchy. As in
219
For example Sd, I, 1,2, Dubrulle, p. 69: „Hoc decore fulgebat regina venerabilis Hester, cultum
muliebrem contempnens, omne signum superbie et ornatum qui super caput ejus erat in die ostensionis
ejus ad populum, quasi pannum menstruate, abhominans; de qua dicitur /Esth 2,15/: Erat Hester decora
valde, et incredibili pulchritudine, omnium oculis graciosa et amabilis videbatur.‟
220
Anke Passenier, „„Women on the loose‟: stereotypes of women in the story of the medieval
beguines‟, in ed., Ria Kloppenborg, Wouter J. Hanegraaff, Female Stereotypes in Religious Traditions,
Leiden, 1995, p. 88.
221
Sd, I, 1,1, Dubrulle, p. 4.
106
the work of Lull, there is an idea that human beings reach spiritual
things through experiential things. Thus, the first two houses lead
from the world of the senses to the inner world of morality, and the
second two houses exist beyond earthly experience.222
The house imagery for female edification in virtuous behaviour is a
traditional one. The praise of a modest and humble behaviour of a
woman, ensconced in a house, hidden from the world is a well
known paradigm that many medieval writers used when discussing
women. Gilbert of Tournai addressing Isabelle of France half a
century earlier similarly used the verse: ‗all the glory of the
daughter of the king is within in golden fringes, clothed around with
variety.‘
223
Whether specifically talking about virginity or about
humble modest female behaviour in general, the metaphors tend to
be of an enclosed space where the woman quietly dwells. In the
Speculum dominarum the queen is urged to decorate her home,
which can be understood as her soul, or her physical home. Even if
it is implied that the queen‘s home is her country, the author
speaks in terms of home imagery. In contrast edifying sermons
addressed to men usually use images of trees and open space as
opposed to enclosure.
Durand uses familiar and accepted terminology; however this is not
a normal woman he is talking about. This woman is a queen of
France and her house is a very public place, a court and ultimately
the entire country. Therefore she is still in her rightful place, her
home, when she enacts her life purpose. The home Durand speaks
about is therefore twofold. Strengthening her inner house will
prepare her character to become the object of admiration, not as a
222
Dorothy Gillerman, Enguerran de Marigny, p. 15.
Gilbert of Tournai, 286r-rb, l. 18-9, Sean Field, „Gilbert of Tournai‟s Letter to Isabelle of France: an
Edition of the Complete Text‟, Mediaeval Studies, 65,2003, pp. 57-97, p. 80. „omnis gloria eius filie
regis ab intus in fimbriis aureis circumamicta varietatibus‟.
223
107
shallow self indulgent and spoilt woman, but as a virtuous, moral
and loving queen. As such she will both become an example the
people of the kingdom can strive for, and as such also wield
authority people will respect. As long as he places her within the
accepted paradigm of female behaviour, as a woman who only cares
for her home, and only strengthens herself so that she can build her
home, her active dominance in the country can be accepted as
proper.
These demands for perfection of the character of the leader
resemble very much the demands from the king. Just as the king
who needs to be an outstanding human being in order to be the
monarch people will adore and respect, the queen should perfect
her character, in the accepted female shere of managing her house.
Before Durand‘s treatise the only demands from the queen were
good political connections and children. In this treatise greater
expectations are placed on the queen. She needs to pursue
personal development and improvement in order to assist in
strengthening her kingdom as an aide to her husband‘s rule. In this
respect strengthening her inner house, her soul, will provide her
with the right standing to strengthen her external house, her
kingdom. From the moral point of view strengthening her kingdom,
her exterior house, by aiding her husband the king to fight injustice
and rule his kingdom better, will strengthen her interior house, help
her avoid her inferior house, and achieve a smooth ascent to her
superior house after her death. Durand‘s innovation lies within the
traditional frame: the purpose of woman‘s life is to strengthen her
home. When it is a noble woman‘s home it becomes public sphere.
Going one step further from his predecessors, he argues for
legitimacy of public action to achieve a traditionally acceptable
woman‘s duty.
108
After presenting his theme, he explains how this theme should be
treated. First, he says, her nature as a woman should be explored,
then her acquired wisdom and lastly her practice of that wisdom for
the building of her home.224 Durand begins by stressing the basic
unworthiness and misery of man and especially woman.225 He then
continues with the need for the queen to acquire knowledge and to
become a sapiens mulier, or wise woman, meaning intuitive wisdom
rather than knowledge acquired by learning.226 A detailed discussion
follows of how the theological and cardinal virtues should be
practiced, emotions controlled, good habits formed and bad habits
eliminated.227 All these preparations should transfer the queen from
a mere woman into an exemplum populi, or a reflection of an ideal
image to the people in the kingdom.228 As such the queen was
supposed to participate in her husband‘s rule aiding him in locating
injustices and in pleading with him to amend them.229
The King’s justice
When thinking about the place of Jeanne of Navarre in the French
monarchy it is important to keep in mind that the image of his state
and himself as king was a subject of great concern for Philip the Fair.
From the start he was actively constructing this image. His
propaganda engaged many thinkers and used Aristotle to bolster
the image of the French monarchy.230 Renna has usefully pointed
out that although the royal advisors were attracted to Aristotelian
ideas of the common good and ‗best man‘, unlike later in history, in
France between 1260 and 1320, when Politics was first known, it
224
Sd, I, 1,1, Dubrulle, p. 4.
Mastny, Durand of Champagne, p. 95.
226
Mastny, Durand of Champagne, p. 97.
227
Mastny, Durand of Champagne, p. 99.
228
Mastny, Durand of Champagne, p. 104.
229
Mastny, Durand of Champagne, p. 114.
230
Thomas Renna, „Aristotle and the French Monarchy, 1260-1303‟, in Viator, 9 (1978), 309- 324, p.
309. .
225
109
was used to justify a monarchical government.231 The most evident
use of Philip‘s new image was an attack on the Pope Boniface VIII,
which Philip based on the propaganda he had had developed for
himself as being the ‗most Christian‘ king and France being the
‗most Christian‘ kingdom.232
The masters in the Parisian Faculties of philosophy and theology
presented their ideas on the right kind of kingship in the form of
questiones on the Politics of Aristotle. They concluded that it was
best for the common good to be ruled by a king of exceptional
virtue. However, they believed such person does not exist.
Therefore in practice they saw the best laws as a better alternative
to the best king.233
By the 1290s the ideas of Aristotle‘s Politics as interpreted by
Thomas Aquinas were becoming a key influence on political theory.
He claimed that monarchy is the best form of government because
it contained the most unity. Since monarchy is ‗natural‘, it is
inherently good, irrespective of ecclesiastical sanction. The prince,
Aquinas also said, leads his subjects to virtue both directly (by his
laws) and indirectly (by his justice). In times of emergency the
prince can dispense with the letter of the law and rule uninhibited
for the common good. The king is morally obliged to obey the law,
but no one has the right to compel him to do so.234 He trusted the
king to be of exceptional virtue and therefore in his ruling to
supplement the imperfect laws.235
231
Renna, „Aristotle and the French Monarchy‟ p. 324.
William J. Courtenay, „Between Pope and King: The Parisian Letters of Adhesion of 1303‟,
Speculum, 71/3, (1996), 577-605, , p. 604.
233
Renna, „Aristotle and the French Monarchy‟, p. 318.
234
Renna, „Aristotle and the French Monarchy‟ p. 312.
235
Renna, „Aristotle and the French Monarchy‟, p. 312.
232
110
Aquinas begins his discussion on kingship by considering the best
form of rule for the people of the land. He states that the best way
to create a human society is to copy nature. ‗whatever is in accord
with nature is best, for in all things nature does what is
best…among the bees there is one king bee and in the whole
universe there is One God, Maker and Ruler of all things…every
multitude is derived from unity.236 Durand echoes Aquinas‘s concern
by stating that just as in nature animate overcomes inanimate so is
the king is above the laws. Citing King Solomon, Thomas Aquinas
says ‗. ‗a government becomes unjust by the fact that the ruler,
paying no heed to the common good, seeks his own private
good.‘237 Durand treats the distinction between a just king and a
tyrant by citing Augustine who says that when justice is removed
the kingdoms are just bands of robbers.238 Without applying justice
kings are just thieves, or pirates but on a grander level than their
criminal counterparts.239 Even thieves, Durand says, apparently
have their own juridical system, without which even they cannot
function. Therefore he concludes, nothing can exist, neither cities,
nor countries or kingdoms without justice.240 On the question of
how to assure that the kingdom does not fall into the hands of a
tyrant, Aquinas answers, by proper education of a future king. He
does not believe in restricting the power of the king. Therefore he
says it is necessary that the man who is raised up to king should be
of such condition that it is improbable that he should become a
tyrant.241 If however he does become tyrannical, the people should
not do anything to end his rulership; they should see it as their
punishment for their evil ways.242 Durand says that the king must
236
St. Thomas Aquinas, On Kingship, to the King of Cyprus, Gerald B. Phelan trans., Toronto, 1982,
first published 1949, chapter 2, 19, p. 12.
237
St. Thomas Aquinas, On Kingship , chapter 3, 24, p. 14.
238
Sd, I, 4, 22, Dubrulle, p. 281.
239
Sd, I, 4, 22, Dubrulle, p. 282.
240
Sd, I, 4, 22, Dubrulle, p. 282.
241
St. Thomas Aquinas, On Kingship, chapter 6, 42, p. 24.
242
St. Thomas Aquinas, On Kingship, chapter 6, 50, p. 28.
111
study to serve justice supremely because his injustice opens the
way to all bad things, that will take away from him his royal
majesty.243 And Aquinas, ‗…not a few rulers exercise tyranny under
the cloak of royal dignity‘.244 To better illustrate the difference
between good kingship that is concerned with the benefit of the
people and tyranny that is illegitimate and only interested in
robbery, Durand relates the example of the emperor Alexander that
Augustine used to illustrate kingship without justice. The emperor
Alexander came across a pirate on his journey. He asked him why
he infects the sea with piracy, that is why he exercises robbery in
the sea. The pirate replied: while I infest the sea, you infest the
land. Because I do it from a small boat I am called a pirate; you do
the same on a grander scale, therefore you are called emperor.245
Another big influence on Philip the Fair was the Augustinian Giles of
Rome (1243–1316), who had been a student of Thomas Aquinas.
Giles of Rome wrote a manual on correct rulership De Regimine
Principum for the young Philip the Fair.246 Philip‘s posture as king
embodied many of the ideal traits Giles described. Giles‘s
admonition that a king should avoid familiarity with his subjects is
particularly striking in light of Philip the Fair‘s stony and reserved
attitude, which so impressed his contemporaries.247 Philip‘s
satisfaction with the book Giles produced is shown by the French
translation he commissioned soon after the original version was
completed, as well as by the favours he bestowed on Giles in later
years.
243
Sd, I, 4, 22, Dubrulle, p. 280, „Summe ergo debet rex studere servare justiciam, quia injusticia ejus
dat occasionem et aperit viam obnibus malis in regno et aufert ab eo ragiam majestatem‟.
244
St. Thomas Aquinas, On Kingship, chapter 4, 30, p. 19.
245
Sd, I, 4, 22, Dubrulle, pp. 281-2.
246
D. Aegidii Romani, Archiepiscopi Bitvricensis, Ordinis Fratrum Eremitarum Sancti Augustini, De
regimine principum libri III, Ad Francorum Regem Philip Pvm IIII, Cognomento Pulcrum, Romai,
Apud Antonium Bladum Pont, Max. Excusorem, MDLVI.
247
Elizabeth A. R. Brown, „The Prince is Father of the King: The Character and Childhood of Philip
the Fair of France‟, in Mediaeval Studies, 49, ( 1987), 282-334 , p. 330.
112
According to Giles, the ideal prince should be a person of aloofness,
magnificence, liberality, and power, who dedicated himself to the
people‘s common welfare and fought just wars in their defence, who
inventoried and harboured the resources of his kingdom and
restrained himself from greed and rapine.248 The De Regimine
Principum demonstrates an extraordinary command of Giles of
Rome of the classical sources, especially Aristotle‘s Politics, Ethics,
and Rhetoric. Giles cites the Politics by name approximately 230
times, the Ethics 185 times, the Rhetoric 88 times and the De Re
Militari of Vegetius 23 times. De Regimine’s studious avoidance of
Scripture or patristic writing is unique among medieval mirrors.249
The narrative of De Regimine is patterned on the discourse of the
schools; every subject is treated in the same disciplined, methodical,
and closely reasoned manner that Giles as well as the universityeducated readers of the De Regimine would have expected in a
university lecture or textbook.250 For Giles of Rome the perfect
kingship is the rule of one man of exceptional virtue for the sake of
the common good. A virtuous king was needed to correct defects in
the law and to apply the law in concrete cases. The law is imperfect
and too abstract; the king must have the authority to apply it to
particular cases. The way to assure the virtue of the king was
proper education of the young princes that will fix their gaze on the
ideal of the common good.251 In other words in order to exercise
perfect rulership the king should become an exemplary character or
an exemplum populi. It is interesting therefore that Durand picks up
this precise indication for the perfection of the queens‘ character.
248
D. Aegidii Romani, De regimine principum libri III, 1.1:12, 4:3, 3.2:9.
Charles F. Briggs, Giles of Rome’s De Regimine Principum, Reading and Writing Politics at Court
and University, c. 1275 – 1525, Cambridge, 1999, p. 11.
250
Charles F. Briggs, Giles of Rome’s De Regimine Principum, p. 12.
251
Renna, „Aristotle and the French Monarchy‟, p. 313.
249
113
Both are required to become perfected in their virtue in order to
exercise justice to the greatest extent possible.
A more practical publicist of Philip the Fair was John of Paris, a
Dominican theologian, who summoned Aristotelian concepts of
monarchy to serve in the deposition of Boniface VIII.252 John‘s De
Potestate was the most formidable tract from the royalist side
during the controversy. John is less concerned with what the king is
than with what the king does. He takes the king‘s virtue for granted.
John sanctifies the royal family more than any given king. Since
God has blessed the Capetian dynasty, there is no need to justify
the holiness of one of its members, Philip the Fair. John defines
kingship in terms of how best to depose a useless pope. He argues
that royal rule is the best kind of rule because it is the most
effective in purging evil from the church. The king, who is normally
bound by customary law, is temporarily released from the restraints
of positive law in order to rectify the immediate disorder in either
the realm or the church. He defends himself and his people from the
unlawful intervention of a bad pope.253
Although the book of Giles of Rome De Regimine Principum, (c.
1280), was one of the most influential texts of scholastic political
thought, it was not likely to be the only one the king knew about
considering his connection with the Dominicans and the Parisian
masters on the issues of his grandfather's commemoration and his
dealings with Boniface VIII. 254 When Durand was writing his
argument on the right rulership of the king he was addressing the
252
Renna, „Aristotle and the French Monarchy‟, p. 319.
Renna, „Aristotle and the French Monarchy‟, p. 320.
254
Arthur Stephen McGrade, John Kilcullen and Matthew Kempshall, introduction to Giles of Rome,
On the Rule of Princes (Selections), trans., and ed., Arthur Stephen McGrade, John Kilcullen and
Matthew Kempshall, Cambridge, 2001, pp. 200-1.
253
114
whole discussion and not only the argument articulated in De
Regimine Principum.
Durand de Champagne dedicates a formidable part of his treatise to
a discussion about justice. After describing the qualities the queen
should posses and ways of acquiring them he provides a very
detailed discussion about justice and its application by the king. In
her unpublished edition of the Latin text, Anne Dubrulle argued that
a large part of the Speculum dominarum was drawn from the
Speculum Morale, which circulated as part of the Speculum Maius of
Vincent of Beauvais, but was in fact not written until the late
thirteenth century, by a Franciscan author.255 She did not explore in
her edition how the discussion about justice in Durand‘s Speculum
was inspired by the Speculum Morale. Indeed Durand did not copy
this part; he took basic Aristotelian ideas and supplemented them
with other authorities. Dubrulle did not consider differences in their
treatment of the subject of justice. I would argue that describing
justice Durand deliberately chose to include the subjects of justice
discussed by his counterparts. Including them in his treatise was his
way of nudging the queen in the direction of taking a more
substantial role in the government and in doing so bringing her
great supporters, the Franciscans to greater influence and closer to
the power base of the kingdom. Addressing the subject of justice
from all its conventions and articles of argument taking place at
that time in Paris, the Franciscan aimed at convincing the king that
there was a lacuna in the administration of justice by him that could
be filled by his spouse. I shall present his discussion as compared to
newly discovered Aristotelian notion that was widely applied by
255
Dubrulle, Le Speculum Dominarum, p. 83, the franciscan origins of Speculum Morale were
presented by Tomas Zahora in his paper „Uncovering Franciscan Voices of the Speculum Morale‟
given at ANZAMEMES 2011. also Constant J. Mews, Tomas Zahora, Dmitri Nikulin and David
Squire, „The Speculum morale (c.1300) and the study of textual transformations: a research project in
progress‟, VIncent of Beauvais Newsletter 35 (2010), 5-15.
115
theologians at the time, as well as contemporary scholastics‘
dealings with the subject.
Durand begins by describing what justice is: ‗virtue and nobility of
the mind that gives each person what his due. ... And ‗amongst all
virtues this is the most fitting virtue of the king, for other virtues
perfect man in himself …justice perfects man for others‘.256 Aristotle
not only says that justice is the greatest of virtues but that it is a
sign of a great man. ‗And therefore justice is often thought to be
the greatest of virtues… it is complete because he who possesses it
can exercise his virtue not only in himself but towards his neighbour
also.‘ He quotes Bias, ‗rule will show the man‘.257 ‗Further‘, Durand
says, ‗according to the Philosopher justice is to be seen as the
brightest of the virtues, neither Venus nor Lucifer is as admirable as
it. The philosopher wanted to say the beauty of stars is less admired
than the beauty of justice‘, explains Durand. And indeed Aristotle
says: ‗and therefore justice is often thought to be the greatest of
virtues, and ‗neither evening nor morning star is so wonderful‘.258
Following Aristotle, the Speculum Morale divides justice into two
kinds, commutative and distributive. Commutative justice deals
with all the things between people mutually. When it is a matter
between a commune and a person it is a distributive justice.259 The
Speculum Morale then proceeds to describe in detail how both kinds
of justice should be administered. Durand considers what it means
to restore the equality, and not only to restore what was stolen, but
to do it to the satisfaction of the injured party, and to the
256
Sd I, 4, Dubrulle, p. 279, „Justicia secundum philosophos et sanctos est virtus et nobilitas mentis
reddens unicuique quod suum est. Inter omnes virtutes hec potissime decet regem. Nam alie virtutes
perficiunt hominem in se tantum – sicut patet autem de prudencia, temperancia, fortitudine et sic de
aliis – justicia perficit hominem in ordine ad alios, sicut infra patebit.‟
257
Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, in The Basic Works of Aristotle, Richard McKeon, ed,, Bk. V, Ch. 1,
1130a, p. 1004.
258
Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, Bk. V, Ch. 1, 1129a, p. 1003.
259
Speculum Morale, Lib. I, Pars III, Distincio LI, p. 332.
116
satisfaction of the state. He even discusses how to restore a good
reputation, if this is what was harmed. It is a very special individual
who can give justice, the Speculum Morale says. As the justice
consists of different acts, the individual who successfully performs
them is a diverse person.260 The subject of justice closes with the
discussion whether the justice aides should be paid for their efforts.
The Speculum Morale establishes that they are ‗personae
communes‘ and as such should be paid.261 Throughout the
treatment of the subject of justice the Speculum Morale does not
mention kingship or queenship or any specific figure for the delivery
of justice.
The Speculum Morale uses the term persona communis to describe
a person who applies the law and enacts justice. Durand uses this
term but only to describe a king whose personality is worthy of the
term. ‗Since the king is not a regular person, but a king, when he
has dignity and excellence he is persona communis, a public person‘.
In his general persona he is ordained to the rule of the whole
kingdom, especially to hold justice through which he reins and
through which he orders his underlings to minister.262 In this
respect Durand‘s king corresponds with the justice aide, mentioned
in the Speculum morale as a persona communis deserving payment.
Durand expounds on this theme saying that the king embodies the
law and becomes the law itself. 263 Aristotle puts the term judge
instead of the king, but the meaning is very similar: ‗… the judge
tries to equalize things by means of the penalty, taking away from
the gain of the assailant. … this is why when people dispute, they
take refuge in the judge; and to go to the judge is to go to justice;
260
Speculum Morale, Lib. I, Pars III, Distincio LIII, p. 341.
Speculum Morale, Lib. I, Pars III, Distincio LVIII, p. 352.
262
Sd I, 4, 22, Dubrulle p. 279.
263
Sd I, 4, 22, Dubrulle, p. 279.
261
117
for the nature of the judge is to be a sort of animate justice…‘.264
Establishing and enforcing the rules is the king‘s main function.
Durand‘s division of the kinds of justice is a little different from the
Speculum morale but he treats the same activities that are also
described in Aristotle. ‗It is known‘, Durand says, ‗that justice is:
commutative – which consists of making agreements; vindicative –
which consists of punishing criminals; distributive – which consists
of bestowing offices; retributive – which consists of paying back
rewards (salary).‘265 Commutative justice takes the same meaning
in Durand‘s Speculum as it does in the Speculum Morale. The
vindicative, distributive and retributive justices all deal with justice
administered by the state to a person, in Durand‘s case from king to
subject. The Speculum morale includes all these functions under the
heading of distributive justice, but the essence is the same. The
king needs to make sure that all the criminals are punished, all the
goods returned and all the goods distributed appropriately, if not
equally. Aristotle divides justices into distributive and rectifying. The
distributive is according to merit. The rectifying justice is to equalize
things by means of the penalty, ‗taking away from the gain of the
assailant.‘266 This definition includes Durand‘s division into
vindicative and retributive justice. Although Aristotle concludes his
discussion about justice with the conclusion that it should not be a
man who administers justice, it is not surprising that both the
Speculum Morale and Durand ignored this conclusion, as did all the
French Aristotelians of the time.
After demonstrating his relationship to the great thinkers of the
time, Durand lays out his distinctions using Ambrose as his
authority this time. ‗Ambrose said that the first part of justice is in
264
Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, Bk. V, Ch. 4, 1132a, p. 1008-9.
Sd I, 4, 26, Dubrulle, p. 288.
266
Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, Bk. V, Ch. 4, 1132a, p. 1008.
265
118
God, second is in himself, third in the fatherland, forth in parents,
then in all the others.‘267 Consistent with the tradition he develops
only three of these. The first part is divided into three. First part
speaks about fear of God that should induce us to do justice, second
is to choose to do goodness because God had chosen us the
unworthy, unjust and ungrateful and gave us his blood for the
salvation of our souls. The third is making one‘s subjects obey the
Divine law.268 Under justice for the fatherland Durand discusses the
commutative, vindictive, distributive and the retributive justice.
Everyone participating in this discussion of right kingship debated
the ways to administer justice to assure the common good. Some
thought that the personality of the king was important others
assumed the worse and stressed the importance of the laws. They
all implied that there are two main sources of control: the will of the
monarch and his laws. They each suggested different measures of
the sources in the mix of the royal power over the people. There
was never a question of whether both were needed or whether they
might not be enough. Durand de Champagne adds his own, original
outlook on the subject.
Durand states that even when the man is perfect and the laws are
perfect the common good is not assured. He argues that even when
the king is perfect in virtue and does his best to rule in the best
interests of his people, his government cannot cover all the land
and all the people. He also thinks that laws cannot by themselves
cover the entire kingdom and need to be applied by a strong and
virtuous ruler. For Durand, however, there is no equilibrium to be
gained from only the sum of king and laws. Sometimes these
lacunae are so big that people‘s lives might be at risk. To illustrate
267
Sd I, 4, 22, Dubrulle, p. 283, „Ambrosius autem dicit quod prima pars justicie est in Deum secunda
in seipsum, tercia in patriam, quarta in parentes, deinde in omnes.‟
268
Sd I. 4, 23 Dubrulle, pp. 284-5.
119
his point Durand brings an example of an invalid widow who chased
a noble man all her life. He owed her six pennies for her work but
she died before she could reach him. When he himself was dying,
punished by the saints Anthony and Gregory, he saw her in his
mind‘s eye chasing his servants to no avail and felt her despair
when she had no reply for her fervent prays and cries. With this
example Durand pinpoints the inadequacy of the combination of
good laws and a good man, who felt very bad about his inability to
care for everybody in his domain. And to stress the point further he
depicts in great detail the scene where the creditors unwilling to be
pacified with any other offering drag the woman with them. Durand
concludes with a pointed criticism. All this, he says, is done
according to justice and reason.269 This is the crux of Durand‘s
argument. In this example everyone is doing everything right, but
no one is happy. To avoid such suffering of the innocents he
suggests the queen as a supplement to the king‘s reign. When the
power of the king does not reach everyone then the queen should
step in and bolster the strength of the government.
The Queenship
When considering the exalted position of the queen, Durand is
aware of the traditional view on the correct behaviour for women in
his times. In the beginning of his treatise, after describing the
wretched state of all men, Durand expounds on the inferiority of all
women, the queen included. Moreover, he fears that because of her
status she might be led to believe that she is above other women.
He makes sure she, and everybody else reading his treatise,
understands that the queen is obviously subjected to her husband
the king.270 She should listen and learn meekly so that she might be
269
Sd, I, 4, 26, Dubrulle, p. 290, „juste et racionabiliter estimato‟.
270
Sd 1, 2, 15, Dubrulle, p. 90, „Item sit viro suo ex amore subdita‟.
120
taught the right behaviour.271 She should be so because it is
pleasing to God and men, he says.272 And finally, she should best be
quiet because when she speaks she does so vainly and
frivolously.273 However, in between these categorical statements
that correlate to typical statements concerning the desired female
behaviour at the time, there are also quite opposite requirements.
The queen should be able, for example, to discern truth from
falsehood and justice from injustice. This quality, Durand
emphasizes, is needed for the judgement of people. After reaching
her decision the queen should remain firm and not change her mind,
not allowing her mind to be easily changeable as is usual with
women.‘274
The qualities that Durand demands of the queen as a woman and
the ones he demands of her as a ruler are mutually exclusive.
However, Durand sees fit to include both sets of qualities in his
treatise; the conventional view on the correct behaviour of women
alongside the unconventional demand for unwavering self assurance.
I would suggest that such a presentation was deliberate and aimed
at securing the attention of his intended audience.
Scholars looking into the sources of authority for any Capetian
queen are divided between those who claim that they had no power
at all and those who speak about an unofficial authority. Blanche of
Castile, who is described as the most active leader, could claim her
motherhood of a son and the opportunity for regency as her best
271
Sd I, 2, 3, Dubrulle, p. 82, „Item sit docilis in suscepcione doctrine, sicut Apostolus docet: mulier in
silencio discat‟.
272
Sd I, 2, 8, Dubrulle, p. 85, „Item sit mansueta, quia mansuetudo facit personam amabilem Deo et
hominibus‟.
273
Sd I, 2, 14, Dubrulle, p. 90 „Et quia magis est vituperabile in ecclesiis divino cultui dedicatis in
verbis vanis et frivolis effluere quam alibi‟.
274
Sd, I, 3-4, 12, Dubrulle, p. 88, „Valde commendabile est in domina quod sit constans in prosito suo.
Prius quidem debet deliberare de opera, an liceat, deceat et expediat, an sit justum vel injustum, an utile
vel inutile, an bonum vel malum. Sed postquam deliberaverit, debet stare immobilis in eo quod
racionabiliter ordinavit‟.
121
claims for power.275 One recognizable and important basis of power
for women like Blanche, for example, was patronage, in her case
especially patronage of the Cistercian Order.276 Jeanne of Navarre
was a renowned supporter of the Franciscan order. Yet counting on
patronage as their only hope for actual influence was no longer
sufficient for the Franciscans, as it had half a century earlier with
the help of Isabelle of France. They did not have access to the king,
as he surrounded himself with the Dominicans, so they set on a
course of advancing the importance of their supporter to a greater
role than just a royal wife.
Convincing the queen that she needed to aid her husband in his
rulership was not going to put her in this position of power, however.
The king and his advisors were the ones who needed to be
convinced to allow her to participate, in order for queen's role as his
assistant to be considered seriously. If we shift the focus of the
treatise to the king and his advisors as the intended audience, then
the description of the qualities the queen should possess makes
perfect sense. The meek and subordinate status of all women was
presented in hopes of reassuring the audience of Durand that he
himself was not a heretic. At this time active roles for women
tended to be more pronounced in heretical movements. After
assuring his audience that he was not promoting women's rulership
or rulership of someone weakened by a woman, he proceeded to
explain the usefulness of the queen to the rulership of the king. In
this capacity Durand ascribed the queen the determination and
judgment necessary for the role of a substitute ruler.
The queen’s allies
275
Miriam Shadis, „Blanche of Castile and Facinger‟s „Medieval Queenship‟ Reassessing the
Argument, in Kathleen Nolan, ed., Capetian Women, New York, 2003, p. 153.
276
Miriam Shadis, „Blanche of Castile and Facinger‟s „Medieval Queenship‟, p. 149.
122
In this atmosphere of creation and development of new concepts of
kingship there were no purely theoretical writers; every position
came with an agenda, almost always relating to other groups. More
often than not it was concerned with each group‘s relative position
in regards to the controversy with the Pope or the new and evolving
image of the French monarchy. At this time at the court of the
queen a manual was written with the expressed intention of
educating the queen on the right behaviour. Looking at the declared
intention of the manual in view of the political propaganda debates
progressing in Paris, it seems to mean a great deal more than just
the edification of one‘s character for the sake of salvation.
This was not the only conversation on ethics the Franciscans took
part in. Nor did they exhibit a uniform voice on any of the other
subjects. Bonnie Kent has demonstrated that there was no clear
dichotomy between the orders on questions of virtue ethics. Each
order produced various approaches to questions of virtue, will, and
Aristotelian ethics as basis for the Christian ones.277 The Speculum
dominarum was however the only Franciscan treatise written on the
subject of rulership. Moreover, it was not written as an independent,
speculative and purely theoretical treatise; it was written for the
queen by her confessor. Whether the queen needed an excuse to
get involved in political matters, or the Franciscans pursued their
interests using the queen‘s influence, the treatise afforded both.
The queen‘s unusual involvement in state matters allows us to
presume that there was an interest and it was manifested in this
treatise.
The objective of the treatise was both conventional and innovative.
On one hand the treatise needed to address the major points on the
277
Bonnie Kent, Virtues of the Will, The Transformation of Ethics in the Late Thirteenth Century,
Washingon, 1995.
123
correct government and the ideal person the king should be, on the
other it needed to create a space for until then unimaginable
inclusion of a woman in state affairs. Evaluating every ethical notion
against the ethics of Aristotle and supporting it with all the eminent
Christian authorities, treating the subject of just rulership, a subject
that was widely addressed in France under Philip IV, structured as a
thematic sermon and describing the inferiority of all females, it is
highly conventional. Its only novelty is a radically new notion of
queenship. The strengthening of the queen‘s house, ‗Sapiens mulier
edificat domum suam‘, is formed as cause and effect. The four
houses of the queen are strengthened when she treats her real
house, her kingdom right. The queen, Durand claims, should
become this wise judge and efficient substitute ruler in order to
strengthen her home, the French kingdom. When the queen
exercises her wisdom to benefit the kingdom she also adorns two of
her metaphorical houses the external and the internal. The external
is adorned by her actions and the internal by her intentions while
performing these actions.
Writing for the queen and stepping on the delicate line between
accepted female roles and the aspired queen‘s activities at the court
the Franciscans hoped to encourage her involvement in political
matters and through her to advance their own interests in the court.
I would propose that Jeanne of Navarre used her connection to the
Franciscan order as a source of her power and influence in court.
And in turn the Franciscan order created this opportunity for the
inclusion of the queen in the government of France as a way of
promoting the Franciscan ambition through the incorporation of the
queen in the government. It was hoped that being the ardent
supporter of the Franciscan order, and especially her Franciscan
confessor, the queen would include them in her works. This
however does not retract from the revolutionary character of the
124
Franciscan treatise. It shows their openness to a more active and
central contribution of a female. Regardless of their own needs
dictating this treatise as it was written, it shows that such an
innovation was acceptable in their mind to a certain extent. The fact
that Jeanne of Navarre was indeed included in the kings‘
government shows that they were successful in their appeal for his
sense of duty as a ruler to assure that justice is administered to the
best of his abilities.
The Mirror of Ladies is very different from The Mirror of Simple
Souls, yet both had a place in women‘s religious though encouraged
and influenced by Franciscans. Both drew on the Franciscan
tradition emphasising different parts of it. Marguerite Porete‘s Mirror
was aiming at a removed existence of a stripped down to
nothingness soul. Hers was a manual for a life of spiritual
development, aimed at an individual and her journey back to her
creator. Durand‘s Mirror aims at constructing a place in this world
where the queen can embrace her spiritual development to extend
her influence in the kingdom. Such an active role was created for
her in hopes of her including the Franciscans in her works, and
expanding their influence in the kingdom. Both treatises reflect a
Franciscan ideology, but they do so in variance from each other.
They addressed different aims and audiences. While royal women
were being accorded attention by significant figures within the
Franciscan Order, the situation was not so easy for those who
lacked royal protection.
125
Chapter five – Closing Ranks
But in the end we add one single thing, which can
incline towards great danger. There are among us,
women who are called Béguines, and certain of them
thrive on subtleties and rejoice in novelties. They have
translated mysteries of the Scriptures even in the
general French idiom, which nonetheless are scarcely
passable by experts as Sacred Scripture. They read
them communally, irreverently, audaciously, in little
assemblies, in cells, in the streets. I myself saw, read,
and held a French Bible, of which the exemplar was put
out publicly by Parisian stationers to compose heresies
and errors, uncertain and clumsy interpretations. Which
things they (vernacular Bibles) contain in such
abundance, that brevity of writing/parchment, or even
prolixity can scarcely capture, and the capacity of ears
with sobriety having been defiled can scarcely hear.
Should the sickness prevail, there will rise as many
scandals as listeners, as many blasphemies as broad
ways.
Therefore so that, with the fountains having been
stopped up, by which the invention of these vanities
might more easily come to an end, the exemplars may
be destroyed, the translators may be confined, that
which is found to be false be consumed by fire, lest the
divine sermon be defiled by vulgar diction, lest it be said
in the recesses: ‗Lo! Here is Christ, Behold There he is!‘
lest that which is holy be given to the dogs, lest the
126
most precious pearl be exposed to the feet of swine to
be trampled.
Among foolish women of this kind there is one in
particular and the report has already risen as if official,
that she herself has been inscribed with the stigmata of
Christ. Which, if it is true, should not foster subterfuge
but this should be known more openly; if it is not true,
hypocrisy and deceit should be confounded. For the
glory of God is to conceal the word, and the glory of the
king to seek out the speech. Even if it is good to conceal
the secret of a king, nevertheless it is honourable to
reveal and confess the works of God.278
This call to deal with women interpreting Scripture unsupervised
was made by the same author as had addressed a treatise of
spiritual edification for Isabelle of France (1253-55). It occurs in the
last part of the very critical treatise About the Scandals of the
Church, or Collectio De Scandalis Ecclesiae, written by Gilbert of
Tournai (1200-1284) for the Second Council of Lyons in 1274.
278
Collectio De Scandalis Ecclesiae, ed. A. Stroik, Archivum historicum Franciscanum, „23 (1930), 341, 273-299, 433-466, with edition on 24 (1931), 33-62. esp. pp. 61-2: „sed in calce subnectimus
unicum, quod vergere potest in magnum periculum. Sunt apud nos mulieres, quae Beghinae vocantur,
et quaedam earum subtilitatibus vigent et novitatibus gaudent. Habent interpretata scripturarum
mysteria et in communi idiomate gallicata, interpretata scripturarum mysteria et in communi idiomate
gallicata quae tamen in sacra Scriptura exercitatis vix sunt pervia. Legunt ea communiter, irreverenter,
audacter, in conventiculis, in ergastulis, in plateis. Vidi ego, legi et habui bibliam gallicatam, cuius
exemplar Parisiis publice ponitur a stationariis ad scribendum haereses et errores, dubietates et
inconcinnas interpretations. Quae continentur in talibus, chartae non capit exiguitas, immo vix
prolixitas, et aurium capacitas inspurcata cum sobrietate vix audit. Si morbus invaluerit, tot surgent
scandala quot auditores, tot blasphemiae quot plateae. Ut igitur, fontibus obturatis, quo facilius
conquiescat huius adinventio vanitatis, exemplaria deleantur, interpretes arceantur, quae falsa inventa
fuerint comburantur, ne sermo divinus a dictione vulgari vilescat, ne dicatur in angulis: Ecce hic est
Christus, ecce illuc, ne sanctum detur canibus, ne pretiosissimae margaritae porcorum exponantur
pedibus conculcandae. Inter huiusmodi mulierculas una est et fama surrexit iam quasi publica, quod
ipsa est Christi stigmatibus insignita. Quod si verum est, non foveat latebras sed apertius hoc sciatur, si
vero non est, hypocrisis et simulatio confundatur. Nam Gloria Dei est celare verbum, et Gloria regis
investigare sermonem. Etsi enim sacramentum regis abscondere bonum sit, tamen honorificum est
revelare et Dei opera confiteri.‟
127
Although the Collectio as a whole is little known to the modern
reader, its last part has been widely known and cited in every
discussion about the beguines.279 I would argue that this text
reflects the multifaceted approach to women‘s spirituality and
devotion developing during the later part of the thirteenth century
and into the early fourteenth. Gilbert of Tournai had earlier
encouraged the French princess to develop into her very active role
as a founder of a female Franciscan house of Longshamp and cowriter of its rule, through a spiritual journey he prescribed for her in
his letter in 1253-5. Here we can see how Gilbert had come to
reflect on a general phenomenon of women practicing their own
exploration of the divine message, through both mystical and
Scriptural ways. He represents, I believe, two aspects of dealing
with female devotion: a differentiation of groups and individuals on
the question of desirable access to God‘s word, and an increase of
intolerance towards what was perceived as insubordination to
clerical instruction.
Barbara Newman has very usefully pointed out that the distinction
between the supporters and the opponents of creative spiritual
individuals and communities was neither between newer and older
orders, nor between regulars and extraregulars, or men and women.
The division was mainly between people who could and who could
not tolerate ambiguities of profession.280 I would expand on this
statement. As the century progressed and the inquisition gained
momentum, the feeling increased of loss of control in general and
over female devotion in particular, brought about demands for
tighter affiliation.
279
Walter Simons, Cities of Ladies, Beguine Communities in the Medieval Low Countries, 1200-1565,
Philadelphia, 2001, p. 126 for example.
280
Barbara Newman, introduction to her edition, Thomas of Cantimpré : the collected saints lives :
Abbot John of Cantimpré, Christina the Astonishing, Margaret of pres, and Lutgard of Aywi res,
trans. Margot H. King and Barbara Newman, Turnhout, 2008, p. 15.
128
The Collectio de Scandalis was written as one of the documents that
were requested by the council to generate discussion. The letter is
critical of all sectors of the Church. Gilbert does not write it as a
plaintiff, or a lower servant, but a harsh critic of an equal standing.
‗They, who do not know how to navigate a boat, are given a boat to
drive‘, for example.281 He starts with a lengthy criticism of the
Roman curia, moves to the clerics, then to the orders in general,
the mendicants, and then to the merchants and labourers and
finishes with women that were called beguines. Although he
specifically names them as beguines, he does not mean any specific
form of life, whether enclosed communities, living together in
beguinages or single women living religious lives at their home.
When Gilbert talks about the beguines he means lay women, who
live religious lives, outside of a recognized religious order. They are
described as reading the Scriptures together and interpret them as
they see fit.
Women are accused of frivolity. The main danger, in Gilbert‘s mind,
is the joy they exhibit in experiencing and adopting every novelty.
Their rush to experience more intense religious connection is
presented by Gilbert as something reprehensible. Susceptible to
every new idea, right or wrong, they are not exhibiting, he claims,
proper reverence to the Holy Scripture and tradition. Their drive to
religious experiences threatens the control Gilbert feels must be
exerted over them. Their activity, unlike the scholars who do not
need the aid of translation, is made possible by the fact that the
Holy Scripture was made accessible to them in the Gallic idiom. He
states in a very precise manner that he saw, read and had held the
281
Collectio, ed. Stroik, p. 43: „Eis qui regere navem nesciunt, dant gubernaculum tempore naufragii‟,.
129
French Bible in many copies done by a stationary in Paris.282 They
read it, including the many heresies and inaccuracies, in public and
private, he says.
The drive of women to independent exploration of the mysteries of
God is presented as similar to the drive of new and inexperienced
scholars to learn and teach Scripture independently embracing new
ideas with no concern given to proper traditional learning and
teaching conventions. Gilbert uses the same arguments against the
women‘s zeal for unsupervised knowledge through their access to
the scriptures, as he does when describing the students of scholars.
Just like the masters of the university they investigate the text and
draw their own conclusions from it with no regard to the proper,
traditional way of interpreting the Bible. When describing the
undignified rush of young students to acquire and spread knowledge,
he treats young scholars and women in the same manner. Both are
accused of chasing novelties and not taking the necessary
precautions with the biblical text. ‗Having lapsed into confusion in
almost all studies of books, the students applaud novelties and seek
glory rather than teaching, they hold their listeners with perplexities
of words that express subtleties without benefits, introduce daily
novelties…‘283 They are accused of having the audacity to teach
what they do not yet understand instead of staying in a state of
learning for a sufficient time. Preferring secular texts in which truth
cannot be found, according to Gilbert, to the text of the revelation,
they rejoice in their discoveries and spread this nonsense from the
position of authority, from which only accepted/pre-approved truth
should be taught. ‗…shamelessly, demand their magisteria, also
282
Collectio,ed. Stroik, p. 62 : „vidi ego, legi et habui bibliam gallicatam, cuius exemplar Parisiis
publice ponitur a stationariis ad scribendum haereses et errores, dubietates et inconcinnas
interpretationes‟.
283
Collectio, ed. Stroik, p. 47: „lapsa sunt in confusionem fere omnium studia leterarum, dum discipuli
solis novitatibus applaudunt, et magistri potius invigilant gloriae quam doctrinae, verborum
perplexitatibus detinent auditors, subtilitates sine fructu excogitant, adinveniunt quotidie novitates…‟ .
130
unwisely demand their right to teach, the beardless ones sit on the
throne of their elders, those who are disciples seek the right to be
called masters. Having thrown away the rules and authentic books
of arts, lying down in the web of spiders, with a sophistication of
words, always learning and never arriving at the knowledge of
truth…‘.284 Young scholars and women are presented as doing the
same thing, learning what they choose and discussing ideas in
public. However, scholars cannot be completely controlled; their
knowledge of Latin makes it impossible to block their access to
knowledge. Women‘s access depends on the translated Bible that
Gilbert saw them using.
The women are deemed so dangerous that Gilbert demands that
their actions be stopped. To express the great danger Gilbert
equates them to pigs, to whom (Matthew 7, 6) pearls should not be
given because they might trample them. Pigs have no
understanding of the value of the pearls. For them pearls and dirt
hold the same significance. Therefore someone needs to supervise
what the pigs have access to because they cannot be trusted to
discern the valuable from invaluable. In Gilbert‘s mind, women are
the same. They cannot decide for themselves what is valuable.
Therefore their access to the Bible in French is dangerous. They
cannot be trusted to discern the true significance of the revelation,
which they cannot achieve anyway, because the translation is full of
errors and heresies, he says. Their treatment of the holy of the
holies can, therefore, harm them and others they preach to.
284
Collectio, ed. Stroik, p. 47 : „… et adolescentes comatuli iam earum magisteria vindicant
impudenter et etiam imprudenter. Sedent imberbes in cathedra seniorum, et qui non noverunt esse
discipuli, magistri appetunt nominari, abiectis atrium regulis et libris authenticis, aranearum tendiculis
et verborum sophismatibus incumbentes, semper discentes et nunquam ad veritatis scientiam
pervenientes‟.
131
Gilbert was not the first cleric to warn about the dangers of the
translated Bible to the integrity of the teachings of the Church. The
patterns of language he employs in his Scandalis are similar to
these used by the bishop of Metz in his latter to Pope Innocent III in
1199. ‗It had been brought to the papal attention that there are
many lay people and women in Metz who have a translation of the
Bible and they discuss it among themselves in secret meetings and
in their conventicles.‘285 The same motif of a group of people,
including women, reading, interpreting and discussing the Bible
among themselves, with no need or reverence for proper
supervision or interpretation of clerics stands in the middle of this
accusation. Had it just been a translation that was bothering the
bishop, he would have said that he saw a translation, and it should
be burnt. Yet he talks about secret meetings, with people who
neither required nor deemed it appropriate to be supervised in their
access to God‘s word. Innocent did not order the copies burnt, the
people involved arrested. He simply asks to look into the matter
further. And if the complainant/bishop had already punished the
accused, he asked his legates/messengers to relax his punishment,
or at least to convince him to relax it. Gilbert is much more
aggressive in his approach. He requests the books extinguished and
the women stopped. No doubt Gilbert wants to invoke the earlier
conclusions of heterodoxy, but describes it as much more
dangerous.
Seeing women reading and interpreting the Bible was not the only
concern of the official leaders of the church. Several reports were
written in preparation for the Second Council of Lyons 1274. Three
285
Innocent III, Opera Omnia, in Patrologiae Latinae tomus 214, f. 112, epis 141, „…in urbe Metensi
Laicorum et mulierum non modica multitudo Gallicae euidam translationi divinorum lilbrorum
intnedens, secretis conventiculis etiam inter se invicem eructare preaesumerent…‟. See also Leonard E
Boyle, „Innocent III and vernacular versions of Scripture, in ed. Katherine Walsh and Diana Wood, The
Bible in the Medieval World, Essays in Memory of Beryl Smalley, Oxford, 1985, pp. 97-107.
132
of these reports survive: that of the Dominican Order, probably
prepared by Humbert of Romans (1194? – 1277), on behalf of his
successor as minister general, that of Gilbert of Tournai, and that of
the bishop of Olmutz.286 The most striking fact in the Dominican
report is that there is nothing positive mentioned about the lives of
devout, uncloistered women. ‗There are certain religious pauper
women that run around the villages and cities for the sake of
seeking necessities, which is truly indecent and especially
dangerous for women.‘287 In such a short and efficient manner the
Dominican Humbert of Romans projects the formal sentiment of his
order towards the mystically inspired women whom the Dominicans
and the Franciscans had celebrated only a few decades before.288
Regardless of the criticism of their mendicancy one would expect
even a small acknowledgement of their religious value. Humbert
elects to ignore it or he sees none. The women are described in an
undignified manner, as running around the cities and villages in
their search for material support. Dignified women in his period did
not run around the cities. There was only one other kind of women
who wondered around in male territory, in search of financial
benefit. These women were prostitutes. By describing the religious
women as such, Humbert implies they were of the same ilk. His use
of the term ‗religious women‘ is thus euphemism. Furthermore,
Humbert of Romans does not bother distinguishing between the
different lifestyles of uncloistered religious women; he speaks of the
solitary wondering women as the only existing kind. He states that
there should be no religious observance for women without
enclosure. He does not mention unsupervised access to Scripture;
286
Herbert Grundmann, Religious Movements in the Middle Ages: The Historical Links Between
Heresy, the Mendicant Orders, and The Women’s Religious Movement in The Twelfth and Thirteenth
Century, with The Historical Foundations of German Mysticism, Notre Dame, 1995, p. 144.
287
E. Brown, Appendix ad Fasciculum rerum expetendarum et fugiendarum, London, 1690, p. 224.
288
John Coakley, „Friars as Confidants of Holy Women in Medieval Dominican Hagiography‟, in
Images of Sainthood in Medieval Europe, ed. Renate Blumenfeld-Kosinski and Timea Szell, Ithaca and
London, 1991, p. 245.
133
he is much more concerned with modesty. However, indirectly his
criticism touches on the subject of supervision. If the women are
roaming around the country, there is no knowing what they can be
up to.
The papal decree of the Second Council of Lyons from 1274, for
which these treatises were written, echoes the feeling of loss of
control, not only in women exploring lives of devotion, but spiritual
diversity in general: ‗presumptuous rashness of some has produced
an almost unlimited crowd of diverse orders, especially
mendicant‘.289 Not only does it forbid all forms of new religious life,
the ‗presumptuous rashness‘ sounds curiously familiar. The traits
that were desirable in the male branches of the Dominican and
Franciscan orders were seen as ‗presumptuous rashness‘ in women
and were expressed as such by Humbert of Romans and Gilbert of
Tournai. The Papal decree was aimed, therefore, at all the
‗presumptuous‘. Devout, mystically inspired and inquisitive women
were definitely among them.
The Beguinage of Paris
The great Beguinage in Paris was founded in 1264 by Louis IX.
Although the charter that we have was prepared many years later,
it specifies that the Beguinage was founded by Louis IX but great
changes in its organizational structure were made by Philip IV.290 Its
new charter affirms the rules of conduct of the beguines, describes
the roles of the Mistresses of the house and the role of those
responsible for the Beguinage, the prior of the Dominicans of Paris.
289
Decrees of the Ecumenical Councils, trans. Norman P. Tanner, London, 1990, p. 326: „verum etiam
aliquorum praesumptuosa temeritas diversorum ordinum, praecipue mendicantium, quorum nondum
approbationes meruere principium, effrenatam quasi multitudinem adinvenit, repetita constitutione
districtius inhibentes, ne aliquis de cetero novum ordinem aut religionem inveniat vel habitum novae
religionis assumat…‟.
290
Statuts Du Béguinage De Paris (1341), in Mémoires de la Société de l’histoire de Paris et de l’ile–
de–France, 20 (1893), 342-57.
134
In what follows I will examine the management of this Beguinage
compared to the Beguinage of Ghent. Both were court beguinages,
both favoured and endowed by Louis IX. I shall explore how the sea
change towards the end of the thirteenth century, that demanded
greater control to be put on all aspects of religion and especially on
that of women‘s devotion, was reflected in the life of the Beguinage.
The Beguinage of Saint Elisabeth of Ghent was established by the
countesses of Flanders and Hainault, Joanna and her sister Margaret
in view of providing a sanctuary for respectable but impoverished
damsels who wished to live in chastity.291 Saint Louis visited this
Beguinage and impressed by the zeal of the beguines arranged for a
church to be built for them, and bestowed on them many privileges.
He also established the Beguinage in Paris based on the example of
the one in Ghent.292 The Beguinage of Ghent was run by one
principal mistress who was elected each year by conventual
mistresses. She appointed the conventual mistresses to their
positions with the advice and consent of the convents and
respectable men. It is not specified who these respectable men
were. And her own appointment was not based on anyone‘s decision
but the individual mistresses of the convents. The building and
demolition of any houses within the Beguinage was under her
control, as much as allocation of living quarters to each of the
beguines. She was the one to install the rules of conduct in the
Beguinage and the one to punish or remove transgressors.293 In this
Beguinage the major characters were women. The Beguinage was
founded for them and was run by them. The foundation of the
institution answered a need to house women who wanted to lead
291
WHAT IS PRIMARY SOURCE? In Emilie Amt ed., Women’s Lives in Medieval Europe : a
Sourcebook, New York, 1993, p. 263.
292
Amt, Women’s Lives in Medieval Europe, p. 267.
293
Amt, Women’s Lives in Medieval Europe, p. 266.
135
this life and indeed it answered this need in its structure.
Undoubtedly there were visiting confessors, who also took the
beguines‘ vows and gave mass. They were probably of the
mendicant orders, as most beguine communities in the north
preferred the mendicants as closest to them in their religious zeal.
However, no priest of friar is mentioned as living with the beguines,
nor is one mentioned as their supervisor.
We do not know what the social structure of the Beguinage in Paris
was when it was first established by Louis IX. The charter only
reaffirms the statues that were established by Philip IV.294 However,
if Louis IX structured it according to the model of the Beguinage of
Ghent, it is probable it was similar. When we look at the charter,
which reveals the situation after the changes installed by Philip the
Fair the differences are striking. The Paris Beguinage was not
autonomous. The management of the Beguinage was in the hands
of the king. He ran it through his almoner, who had the final
jurisdiction over the Beguinage. He was the one to install the
mistress and was responsible for the proper running of the
Beguinage to the king. Further, the role of the mistress was vastly
different from the one of the Beguinage of Ghent. As soon as she
was chosen she moved under the immediate supervision of the prior
of the Dominicans of Paris. The mistress was not free to make any
decisions. She was obliged to seek his advice in all matters;
spiritual, organizational and financial. His approval was needed to
built and demolish, to allocate new beguines and to decide on the
294
„Statuts du beguinage de Paris, Confimatio fundationis Beguynarum in villa Parisiensi in loco qui
dicitur la Porte Barbel, in Appendice, Mémoires de la société de l’histoire de Paris et de l’ile-deFrance, 20 (1893), p. 342, „… et après ce noz très chiers seigneurs le roy Philippe le Bel, nostre oncle,
et les roys Loys, Philippe et Charles derrenièrement trespassez, nos cousins et devanciers, roys de
france, aient fait, ordené et confermé plusieurs ordenances es et statuz pour le bon estat et
gouvernement dudit béguignage et des personnes demourans en ycelli, si comme ès letters et chartres
sur ce faites est plus plainement contenu‟.
136
price of a property to be sold to a new beguine joining the
Beguinage.295
The prior‘s management was not restricted to the financial matters;
he was the one to approve the appointment of elder beguines who
would serve as the council of the mistress. His title, I believe,
signifies his role in the Beguinage best, ‗gardien et gouverneur‘,
guardian and governor. As a guardian he took a patronizing role for
the Beguinage, just like a father or a male relative would for a
houseful of women. As a governor he took full responsibility for the
management of the Beguinage, leaving only nominal power for the
mistress. He is the one mentioned first on any issue that needs
approval. For example, if there is a transgression of a beguine and
she is expelled her house is to be sold. The price will be determined
by the governor and the mistress and her council, in that order.
By installing the Dominican prior as the guardian and governor of
the Beguinage of Paris, Philip the Fair in effect changed the nature
of the Beguinage from a semi-independent institution; a fruit of
religious aspirations of women in the thirteenth century, into a
quasi monastery under Dominican supervision. With the Dominicans
being the governing force responsible for every significant decision,
the women themselves were allowed lower management positions
only. Moreover, the Dominican prior acted in the Beguinage as a
general manager, ruling over secular matters. It seemsthat the
spiritual guidance of the beguines was also entrusted to him.
Although there is no mention of this in the charter, it stands to
reason that there would not be another order or secular cleric to
take the spiritual responsibilities while the Dominicans only
supervised the secular maters. This position overrules the very
295
Statuts du beguinage de Paris, p. 347, „dudit gouverneur, de ladite matresse et de son conseil‟,
mentioned four times for example.
137
specific compromise declared by the papacy, which the Dominicans
achieved in 1267. They were not to be involved in the temporal
affairs even in their own female houses. Yet in this ordinance Philip
the Fair put them in full charge of a Beguinage.
The case of the Beguinage of Paris does not refer to a sporadic
gathering of women wanting to explore a more religious way of life,
by expounding on the Scripture. However, it does present an image
of a desired level of supervision of devout women. Philip‘s
intervention in the Beguinage of Paris is very different from his
grandfather‘s in the Beguinage of Ghent. Louis IX did what is
considered to be an act of patronage; financial support with no
actual influence on the spiritual nature of the community. Although
the person in charge of the Beguinage of Paris was Philip the Fair‘s
almoner, the king‘s interaction with the Beguinage was not a typical
patronage. The patrons sometimes affected the daily lives of the
communities they patronized by the instalment of new buildings,
churches, or by the additional prayers the community added in
return for the financial support. The patron however, did not
drastically change the structure of the organization of the
community. A good example for such an attempt and its results was
the donation the countess of Flanders and Hainaut wished to bestow
on the Franciscan community of Saint – Barthélemy in 1226. She
built a new and refined monastery that was too luxurious in the
eyes of the Friars. The papacy ruled in favour of the countess but
after several years of conflict the Friars stayed in their original
dwellings.296 Her actions were about to change the religious
observance of the community therefore her patronage was rejected.
The Beguines in Paris did not or could not reject the invasive
patronage of Philip IV therefore their community changed greatly
296
Erin Jordan, „A Clash of Wills: Religious Patronage and the Vita Apostolica in Thirteenth – Century
Flanders‟, in Religious and Laity in Western Europe 1000 – 1400., Interaction, Negotiation, and Power,
ed., Emilia Jamroziak and Janet Burton, Turnhouts, 2006, pp. 241-62, esp. p. 245.
138
with his interference. It was no longer an institution founded by
women for the women‘s spiritual needs. It became a royal
establishment that answered the needs of the King more than
anything else.
The Dominican convent of Poissy
The Dominican house at Poissy was very different from the
Beguinage of Paris, as it involved professed nuns. However, I
believe its remarkable creation can illuminate the way boundaries of
desirable control, and the value of women‘s religious vocations in it,
were being increasingly controlled by Philip IV in conjunction with
the Dominican Order. Twenty three years after Gilbert wrote his
letter to the council, Philip IV set out to commemorate the life of his
grandfather, by founding a female Dominican monastery at Poissy.
Pope Boniface VIII announced the canonisation of Louis IX on 11
August 1297.297 Already by November 1297, as soon as the
canonisation had been secured, if not before, demolition of buildings
had begun on the site in Poissy where the king planned to found a
religious institution in honor of the saint. Louis had been reputedly
born in Poissy and was certainly baptised there. He is also said to
have referred to himself among his intimates as ‗Louis de Poissy‘.
Philip the Fair intended the house to cater for Dominican nuns, and
presumably had already approached the Order to ensure support for
his scheme. Official approval, however, could not be granted until
the next General Chapter, held at Metz in May 1298, the earliest
opportunity after the canonisation.298
Among the accounts of the Royal Treasury are twelve entries with
the king‘s payment to Dominican Friars for books for his new
297
Joan Margaret Naughton, „‟Manuscripts from the Dominican Monastery of Saint-Louis de Poissy‟,
PhD thesis, Department of Fine Arts, The University of Melbourne, 1995, p. 37.
298
Ibid., pp. 38-9.
139
monastery. The king‘s initiation of book production for his
foundation preceded the official approval given in May 1298.299 It
also preceded the instalment of the first nuns. Philip the Fair had
paid the Dominican friars for manuscript production for Poissy over
a period between three and six years before the nuns‘ admission.300
One could imagine that spiritual education and promotion of
creative theologies was the King‘s aim. However looking at the
shaping of the community obliterates this notion.
Bernard Gui tells us that Philip the Fair had began to establish the
monastery of Poissy in 1297, immediately after hearing of the
canonization of Saint Louis, his grandfather.301 Philip started
building this monastery without having a specific community of
nuns in mind. The reason he was founding this monastery was to
preserve the memory of his glorious grandfather. After relating the
main accomplishments of Louis‘ life Bernard Gui describes the way
this monastery came under the care of the Dominicans. ‗The
definitors of the order and the general chapter devoutly undertook
the care of the monastery in the way in which other monasteries of
such sisters are annexed to the Dominican Order.‘302 This, however,
was not how communities of women usually came under the
Dominican care. The Dominicans reluctantly annexed existing
communities to their Order providing them with spiritual care only.
This monastery was to become Dominican by Philip IV‘s will and
funding. While other women‘s communities were pushing to get
inside the order, this monastery was endowed first and then the
299
Ibid., p. 41.
Ibid., p. 42.
301
Bernard Gui, E Notitia Provinciarum et Domorum, Ordinis Praedicatorum, in Rerum Gallicarum et
Francicarum Scriptores, Recueil des Historiens des Gaules et de la France, vol. 23, Paris, 1876, pp.
190-1.
302
Bernard Gui, E Notitia Provinciarum et Domorum: „…precibus nostris humiliter annuens, devote
suscepit eo modo quo alia monasteria talium sororum vestro ordini sunt annexa;‟
300
140
Friars were entrusted with gathering nuns and creating a
community.
The way the king monitored the creation of this community also
signifies how the nuns‘ reading was not restricted because the
control was not in doubt. Philip IV asked the brothers of the Order
to search for a hundred nuns who can read and sing, and who could
continue the tradition in later generations of nuns to come. He
instructed them to report back to him about every new candidate
they found for his approval. Her spiritual condition was to be
approved by the king personally before her inclusion in the
community. Bernard Gui then says that Philip did not wait for the
nuns to be found, but moved forward with the construction. The
presence of nuns thus seems of the same importance as the other
elements of the monastery created by the king.
The nuns, unlike the books or the buildings, were not so easy to
find, however. Bernard Gui reports that the King specified that the
nuns who were to occupy the first generation of Poissy were
expected not only to be able to read and sing but to teach the
subsequently received nuns ‗by word and by example‘, specifying
not only the accepted female way of instruction by example of their
devout ways, but more direct instruction, as implied ‗by word‘,
which actually implied preaching of the older nuns to the younger.
He may have envisioned a community of nuns that absolutely did
not need further efforts from him after the initial foundation. If the
older nuns are capable to install in the hearts of younger nuns the
proper behaviour and the proper skills of worship this community
would be suitably ordered. The endowment of books was in this
context an aide, approved for the already controlled situation, and
closed the community to a greater extent by establishing routine of
self sufficiency. It did not go exactly as the king planned, however.
141
In the year 1304 professed nuns were taken from other
monasteries, Bernard Gui calmly reports, and taken and placed
there, and also recluses, since the brothers could not find the right
number of nuns. The nuns who were taken from existing
communities of the Order did not need a place to practice their
religion, nor did they initiate the creation of an institution so that
they can realize their religious needs; they already had a place in
other communities. The supplementation of these nuns with
recluses, who chose to live another form of religious observance
altogether is even more striking. Regardless of their affiliation or
the form of their religious observance, these women were taken into
the monastery of Poissy to build up the numbers specified by the
king.
The monastery was constructed by Philip IV and endowed the way it
was to make the best memorial for his grandfather, and in this way
to amplify his own prestige. All the elements of its construction
indicate the wish of the king to create a competent, self supporting
and sustainable organization that would magnify the name of the
saint and by connection his own status as his descendant. The
books that the king supplied should be seen as an element of
centring and directing the religious service of these women in a way
that enhanced the image of the perfect female community
constructed by the king. They were not means for women‘s
exploration of God‘s truths or their own spirituality, as they appear
to be in the case of unsupervised reading mentioned by Gilbert of
Tournai.
Teaching supervision
Supervision was also encouraged through treatises of moral
education of women. Even when a treatise was speaking of
142
internalized devotion and development of inner strength through
imagery of an abbey, it instructed that when encountered doubt the
woman should seek intervention from outside of herself. Vernacular
treatises, written as edification manuals for women, were widely
diffused, especially in circles of noble women, like La sainte abbaye,
the abbey of the Holy Spirit, during the early fourteenth century.303
Structured in the language of the courtly love they employed an
imagery of an enclosed space where the virtues played the leading
roles. I shall examine here how they encouraged the reader and
practitioner to always turn outside of themselves when trouble
arouse.
But it sometimes happens, that when this abbey is thus well
founded, guarded and ordained, and God is well served there
as you have heard, that the doorkeeper by her fault and
negligence lets in four ugly daughters of a wicked usurer of
the region. This is the devil from hell, who is the biggest
usurer there is, for just for a little honour, a little joy, a little
delight that he lends in this world which is so fleeting, he
wants us to repay him in the next, which will last forever, with
such great usury that each of his debtors will pay him in
endless and unrelieved shame and confusion, pain and
torment. This same usurer, by his malice, and through the
fault of the doorkeeper who fails to guard the doors, passages
and windows, and all the ways in, is often able to get his four
daughters, who are so ugly, into this abbey. One of them is
called Envy, and she is cross-eyed and cannot look straight,
but must always look sideways, as it seemed to Saul in
relation to David. Another is called Presumption, and she has
a swollen chest, for she thinks she knows more than others,
303
La sainte abbaye, draft edition and translation from MS British Library Yates Thompson 11, fols 2r7r by Janice Pinder.
143
and has a hunchback, for she thinks she is better. The third is
called Murmuring and Detraction, and she stammers, for she
cannot speak or say any good of another, but sows contention
and dissension around the abbey. The fourth is called False
Judgement and Suspicion, and she is lame, for she cannot go
straight, nor believe others to be good, or true or loyal. Thus
through these four ugly and wicked daughters of this wicked
usurer, the whole abbey and order of the heart is troubled
and disturbed. But my lady Charity the abbess, when she sees
this, must straight away ring the bell for chapter, and
assemble the whole convent, and lady Discretion will advise
them all to go and pray to the Holy Ghost to come and visit
them by his grace, for they have great need, and therefore
they should sing with great reverence/devotion Veni…And
when it gets to this verse, Hostem… he will throw them out of
the order like wicked hoydens, these four daughters of that
wicked usurer, the devil. And thus the abbey will be ordained
and reformed as it was before. 304
304
La sainte abbaye, 5va: „Mais aucune foiz est avenu, et avient souvent que quant ceste abbaie est si
bien fondee, gardee, et ordenee, et Dex i est si bien servis comme vous oez, que la portiere par
negligence, et par sa defaute, i laisse entrer et demourer quatre filles a un mauvais userier du païs, que
il a mout laides. C‟est li deables d‟enfer qui est le plus [5va] fort userier qui soit, car pour un pou
d‟oneur, un pou de joie, un pou de delit qu‟il preste en cest monde qui si pou dure voudra que l‟en li
rende en l‟autre qui touz jourz durra si grant usure que chascuns de ses deteurs li rendra honte et
confusion, doleur et affliction, sanz fin et sanz consolacion. Icil meismes useriers par sa malice, et par
la defaute de la portiere qui mauvaisement garde les portes, les huis et les fenestres, et toutes les entrees,
met souvent en ceste abbaie ses quatre filles qui tant sunt laides. Dont l‟une a non Envie. et ceste est
borgne, qu‟ele ne puet regarder droit, mais touz jorz de travers. si comme il parut de Saul contre David.
L‟autre a non Presumption, et ceste est enflee ou piz, car ele cuide plus savoir que les autres, et est
boçue seur les espaules, car ele cuide mielz valoir. La tierce a non Murmure et Detraction, et ceste est
begue, qu‟ele ne set [5vb] paller, ne dire nul bien d‟autrui, ainçois met contenz et dissension par
l‟abbaie. La quarte a non Faus Jugement et Soupeçon, et ceste est boiteuse, car ele ne puet aler droit, ne
nul bien penser d‟autrui, ne verité ne leauté, si que par ces quatre filles a ce mauvais userier laides et
mauvaises, est toute l‟abbaie et la religion du cuer troublee et destourbee. Mes ma dame Charitez
l‟abbaesse, quant ele voit et aperçoit ceste chose, si doit tantost soner chapitre, et assambler tout le
couvent, et damoisele Discrecion leur donra conseil, que eles aillent toutes en oroison, et prient le Saint
Esperit que il par sa grace les viegne visiter, car granz mestiers leur est, et adonc doivent chanter en
grant devocion: Veni creator spiritus et cetera, qui doucement et volentiers vendra et descendra. Et
quant ce vendra a cest ver: Hostem repellas longius, il les getera hors de l‟ordre comme mauvaises
garces, ces .iiii. filles a [7ra] ce mauvais userier, les filles au deable. Et einsi sera l‟abbaie ordenee et
renformee comme devant.‟
144
The author of the treatise creates an image of an abbey as the
desired female conscience, furnishing it with virtues, using an image
of a real abbey with its parts and inhabitants to create as close as
possible a picture for the female mind. At some point the devil
sends his four daughters, envy, presumption, murmuring and
detraction, false judgement and suspicion to spoil the tranquillity of
the abbey, or the female conscience and to bring everlasting
ruination to the soul. When these intruders are identified as parts of
the mind there is an interesting resolution. ‗But my lady Charity the
abbess, when she sees this, must straight away ring the bell for
chapter, and assemble the whole convent, and lady Discretion will
advise them all to go and pray to the Holy Ghost to come and visit
them by his grace, for they have great need, and therefore they
should sing with great reverence/devotion Veni … And when it gets
to this verse, Hostem … he will throw them out of the order like
wicked hoydens, these four daughters of that wicked usurer, the
devil. And thus the abbey will be ordained and reformed as it was
before.‘ The lady is not encouraged to detect the intruders and
acknowledge them as the messengers of the devil. She is not
encouraged to chase them away as such. She is instructed to sound
an alert and wait. The chasing away is done by an outsider. And
then the tranquillity is restored until the next episode.
I have discussed in an earlier chapter how Hadewijch identified
such visitors with those friars who were unwanted intruders. When
she describes ‗baseness, anger and hate‘, disguised as ‗humility,
just zeal and reason‘ she infers that visitors come to harm the
community and encourages other women to fight the intrusion. This
is the only time she mentions an outside influence. In the Abbey of
the Holy Spirit the visitation is described as the saving grace, which
should chase away unknown forces that brought about ‗envy,
145
presumption, murmuring and detraction, false judgement and
suspicion‘ to the community. In this treatise the women are
encouraged to pray and sing and are promised a reward in a form of
ordination of the abbey. If a woman sustains this proper enclosure,
does not rebel even when threatened and quietly waits for help
from outside, she will be considered ‗ordained‘ or approved. In
Hadewijch‘s writings the women don‘t need help from the outside.
They are however presented with unwanted visitation which
introduces into the community these traits which the abbey of the
Holy Spirit is trying to battle.
Anke Passenier has noted that the dualistic view of the beguinal
movement coincided with the dualistic view of women in general.305
Women who chose to live a religious life, wether in the cloister or in
a less enclosed community could be seen either as good, orthodox,
and enclosed, ether in the family home or a Beguinage,
alternatively they are represented as inquisitive, and therefore
disordered and heterodox. The former adopted the spirituality
outlined in ‗La sainte abbaye‘, the latter, sought their own answers,
gathering with others in public places and reading and deciphering
the Bible together and in general seeking a more active religious
experience. They are the ones who needed to be disciplined, in
Gilbert‘s opinion, and the way to do so was to eliminate all public
activity and to order the cloistered activity so that whatever was
read and apprehended would fit in within the proper order of society
instead of disturbing it. Ordering the women‘s communities, as well
as controlling women‘s spirituality by the demand to stop the
unsupervised reading supported the drive to curtail the spiritual
consumption and output of the women. It would be articulated in
305
Anke Passenier, „Women on the loose‟: Stereotypes of Women in the Story of the Medieval
Beguines‟, in Female Stereotypes on Religious Traditions, ed. Ria Kloppenborg and Wouter J.
Hanegraaff, Leiden, 1995, p. 62.
146
1311-12 in the decrees issued by the council of Vienne, but in a
sense it was always there, alongside the forces which supported and
encouraged women‘s religious activity. The delicate shift that
became more pronounced as the thirteenth century progressed was
not in promoting devotion, but rather in preferring the structured
supervised order, when the two conflicted.
It is therefore not surprising that Gilbert of Tournai was so indignant
about lay women‘s‘ reading of the translated Bible. Such activity
seemed to put them on the same level with the university masters,
inquiring independently and irreverently into the God‘s intentions in
this world, taking them further away from the image of a ‗proper‘
women‘s behaviour of internal cloistered spirituality. But most of all
it embodied their ability to become self-sufficient in their religious
experiences. Reading and interpreting the bible, they did not need
anyone to visit them to resolve their difficulties. They could in fact
see such intervention the way Hadewijch perhaps would, as
interference.
The beguinal movement and the establishment of beguinages were
created by the women wanting to experience life in the world,
contributing to the poor and helping the needy. Their religion was
based on that wish; chastity was preserved so that devout women
were not burdened by a family and could lead a religious life in the
world, while supporting themselves and doing public service. The
main aim was to realize a religious life and it was their choice as to
the precise way to do it. These women, who did so outside of an
established order felt closest to the Franciscans who wished to live
out ideals of care and exemplary life. Towards in the end of the
thirteenth century Paris these ideals of the Franciscans took a step
back allowing for closer involvement of the Franciscan leaders in the
matters of the French monarchy. As such these Franciscans were
147
much more concerned with appearing as guarding the correct
observance among the people, than with encouraging the right
connection with God while still alive, when the two conflicted. Such
a change brought about a shift in the equilibrium between spiritual
development and spiritual supervision, towards the enclosing and
regulating forces in the leadership of the Franciscan Order. The
example of beguines‘ lives was lost in the change the Beguinage of
Paris underwent. Instead of mirroring their zeal to the world such
women were directed and organized to such an extent that their
lives were no longer anything but an enclosed establishment that
catered to preservation of chastity and order. They were funded,
their financial affairs were supervised, and their spiritual care was
so insignificant that it was not even included in the charter.
The documents examined in this chapter point to a subtle shift in
official attitudes towards devout women in Paris as the thirteenth
century drew to a close. The Franciscan ideology as such did not
change, but one part of it was favoured more than another. The
treatise of Gilbert of Tournai on scandals within the Church reflects
this shift. Instead of concentrating on the need to encourage the
development of spirituality of certain ladies, he concentrated on two
very specific radical cases: one of unsupervised Bible reading and
interpretation and another of unsupervised beatification of a devout
woman (who claimed to have experienced stignmata). Both cases
were mentioned as dangerous and needing to be dealt with and
stopped; both stressing the need for control rather than the need
for expansion of spirituality and devotion. When describing Gilbert
of Tournai‘s criticism of the beguines in his Collectio de Scandalis
Ecclesiae, Walter Simons attributes the conflict to the sphere of
clerical privileges.306 He claims that the attack on the beguines was
a way for clerics to protect their monopoly against new claims from
306
Collectio, ed. Stroik, pp. 61-2; Simons, Cities of Ladies, p. 126.
148
the outside. I would argue that had this been the intent, Gilbert
would have appended it to another part of his treatise, about the
tension between preaching from papal authority and preaching as a
calling, and the ways the latter was suppressed by the former.307
Instead he chose the two cases where women‘s transgressions were
in not being subjected to supervision, rather than in any challenge
to clerical authority.
The new structures being imposed on religious women at the
Beguinage of Paris and at Poissy reflect the increasing dominance of
the Dominican Order in the regulation of religious women within
Paris in the late thirteenth century. To nuance the assertion of
Viennot, who has claimed that the clerics formed a group of their
own and suppressed all the marginal groups who challenged their
dominance, the Franciscans in Paris changed from being spearheads
of creative spirituality to more cautious protectors of the proper
order.308 In late thirteenth-century Paris, observing and supervising
a perfect conduct of the various groups in the kingdom, be it
religious groups or lay, and especially their own image in this
setting became all important. Promoting a singular goal of a perfect
union with God by means of the vita apostolica, became less
important if it compromised the proper order of women in society.
This was the situation in which Marguerite Porete, an enthusiast for
Franciscan spirituality, found herself in after the death in 1305 of
Jeanne of Navarre, Queen of France.
307
308
Collectio, ed, Stroik, p. 44.
Éliane Viennot, La France, les femmes et le pouvoir, Paris, 2006, p. 293.
149
Chapter six – Preaching Her Way
‗You have communicated the above mentioned book after it was
condemned and burnt to the reverend father lord John, bishop of
Chalons and to other persons as if it were good and lawful …‘309
At the trial of Marguerite Porete in 1309, the Parisian masters of the
schools were very clear on the question of whether women could
teach doctrine, even when they accepted that they might have
something to communicate to others. Thomas Aquinas wrote in his
Summa Theologiae (1266 – 1272) that women were unsuited for
preaching because preaching was a public activity suited more for
prelates and not for subjects. Women, as such, were subordinate to
men, and therefore it was not their place to teach men in public.
Further, he claimed that women by their nature would lead men
into sexual desire and thus harm men rather than benefit them. And
finally, he said that women were not very smart and therefore could
not be entrusted with public preaching.310 Henry of Ghent, who had
lectured at the University of Paris 1276 – 1292, had claimed that
women could not preach because they lacked consistency for
teaching. They were changeable, he thought, easily led astray and
could not endure long hours of strenuous public speaking, to which
they could not freely arrive, since their movements were rightly
controlled by men, and were more adept at promoting sin than
destroying it.311
309
Paul Verdeyen, „Le Procès d‟inquisition contre Marguerite Porete et Guiard de Cressonessart (1309
– 1310)‟, Revue d’histoire ecclésiastique, 81, 1986, pp. 47-94, p. 82.
310
Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, 2a2ae, 177, 2, trans. Roland Potter O.P., vol. 45 (PLACE,
YEAR?), pp. 132-3.
311
Henry of Ghent, Summa Quaestionum Ordinarium, Book 1, Article 11, Question 2, reprinted in
Alcuin Blamires and C.W. Marx, „Woman Not to Preach: A Disputation in British Library MS Harley
31‟, in Journal of Medieval Latin: A Publication of the North American Association of Medieval Latin,
3 (1993), 34-63, p. 52.
150
The animosity towards women‘s preaching was never uniform,
however. The need to convey messages as being received from the
Holy Spirit was widely acknowledged even if the messengers were
women and examples of female preachers from the past became
known by the diffusion of hagiography.312 Moreover, regardless of
the resolve of the theologians, there were examples of
contemporary women preaching. In the middle of the thirteenth
century Rose of Viterbo (1235-52) had presented a case of a very
visible and public lay woman who was preaching on the streets of
Viterbo. She was tolerated if not officially sanctioned.313 She was
however not the only one. At about the same period, Hadewijch had
written letters to the community of women she was chased away
from, and perhaps to the people she mentioned in her list of the
perfect. Recluses, of whom there have been hundreds in northern
Europe, had operated as teachers and preachers even though they
were never ordained or had any institutional power.314 By the late
thirteenth century, however, the situation had changed. Marguerite
Porete is different from these earlier women not only because she
promotes an original well structured theology, but because she
structures it in the form of philosophical dialogue, in which she
debates whether stages the debate as taking place between Love
and Reason. She is also the first woman to write such a treatise in
the French language, and to become known beyond her native
Hainault in Paris itself. In this chapter I would like to look at the
ways her theology drew out the progressing intolerance to such an
activity in the area, and ask what it was in Marguerite‘s Mirror that
312
Alcuin Blamires, „Women and Preaching in Medieval Orthodoxy, Heresy, and Saints‟ Lives‟, in
Viator, 26, (1995), pp. 135-52, esp. p. 136.
313
Darleen Pryds, „Proclaiming Sanctity through Proscribed Acts, The Case of Rose of Viterbo‟, in
Women Preachers and Prophets through Two Millennia of Christianity, ed. Kienzle and Walker, p.
166.
314
Anneke B. Mulder-Bakker, „Maria Doctrix: Anchoritic Women, the Mother of God, and the
Transmission of Knowledge‟, in Seeing and Knowing, Women and Learning in Medieval Europe 12001550, ed. Anneke B. Mulder-Bakker, Turnhout, 2004, p. 199.
151
required such a violent response. I shall look at this question from
the point of view of conventions of discourse, rather than
conventions of belief.
Marguerite wrote her book to be delivered as is to her audience.
The Mirror is not a compressed version of a speech that was
actually delivered. It is also not a guide to the preacher how to
create a sermon from the given material. It presents itself as the
complete text of a sermon, to be delivered as is to the listeners.
Even if the Mirror was actually read to the audience and not spoken
from memory it would still have been delivered aloud. Most reading
during the twelfth and thirteenth century was oral. When people
were depicted reading at this time they were depicted reading in
groups, which by necessity would have been aloud.315 The literary
genres, largely letters and sermons, were composed with oral
composition in mind. Longer and more complex literary works,
including biblical exegesis, were often composed as expanded
letters and sermons and were primarily for oral group
presentation.316 Although private silent reading became more
pervasive in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, it did not
replace the oral reading even at the university.317
Not only was The Mirror read to be heard by an audience, but it was
directly addressed to them in second person plural. This is evident
from the initial address of Marguerite to her audience. She does so
for the first time when she explains the reason for her speech. She
says in the character of Love that she wrote this book in order for
them to hear how to become more worthy of the perfection of life
and being of peace: ‗affin que vous oyez pour mieulx valoir la
315
Paul Saenger, „Silent Reading: Its Impact on Late Medieval Script and Society‟, in Viator, 13 (1982),
367-414, esp. p. 379.
316
Saenger, „Silent Reading‟, p. 382.
317
Saenger, „Silent Reading‟, p. 391.
152
perfection de vie et l‘estre de paix.‘318 In this direct speech,
Marguerite addresses her hearers and explains to them the
objective of her project. The sole concern of the Mirror, says
Marguerite in the character of Love is to urge you, the listeners, to
become more worthy and to reach the perfection of life and being of
peace The Mirror speaks about. She explains to them that the way
to this perfect being lies in the virtue of perfect charity, and that
she has created this book in order to direct them, her audience, to
that life. ‗…which gift you will hear explained in this book through
the Intellect of Love and following the questions of Reason.‘319 The
address is vocal and direct from the preacher to audience.
Beverly Mayne Kienzle has claimed that ‗a sermon is an oral
discourse, spoken in the voice of a preacher who addresses an
audience to instruct and exhort them on a topic concerned with
faith and morals and based on a sacred text.‘320. Scholars have
investigated a host of disciplines, in order to reconstruct the actual
act of a delivery of a sermon.321 The main obstacle is to determine
the relationship between the actual preaching event and written
text that we have. The preacher might have adjusted the written
material to the different audiences and occasions.322 Further,
sermons in the thirteenth century were usually recorded in Latin,
either as a guide to the preacher or as minutes taken at the act of
preaching. Its delivery, however, was almost always in the
vernacular. Therefore, even when the preacher wanted to deliver a
precise version of the written sermon there was still an issue of
translation, which could not have always been exactly the same.323
318
Margarite Porete, ed. Verdeyen, p. 14
Ibid., p. 15.
320
Beverly Mayne Kienzle, Introduction to The Sermon, ed. Kienzle, Turnhout, 2000, p. 151.
321
John W. O‟Malley, Introduction to De Ore Domini, Preacher and World in the Middle Ages, ed.
Thomas L. Amos, Eugene A. Green, Beverly Mayne Kienzle, Kalamazoo, 1989, p. 2.
322
Kienzle, The Sermon, p. 968.
323
Kienzle, The Sermon, pp. 973-4.
319
153
The one to actually utter this speech is the character of Love. The
Mirror is indeed a conversation between multiple characters, Love,
Reason and Soul being the main ones. One could actually question
which of these characters actually represents Marguerite herself, if
any. Amy Hollywood in her excellent study has argued against the
tendency to view medieval women‘s religious writing as
autobiographical. In the case of Marguerite it is even more
complicated to make such a claim, when the book is written as a
continuous conversation between the characters. However, I would
like to argue that the different characters represent not just figures
in a philosophical dialogue, but to a certain extent the various sides
in Marguerite‘s psyche. They are the various urges, tendencies and
beliefs that she considers in her mind and she allows them all
freedom of speech. I believe she does that so that every hearer will
relate to this dialogue that might play in his or her mind and so will
believe that they could embark on the journey Marguerite urges
them on. So when Marguerite says to the audience ‗you will hear
explained in this book through the Intellect of Love and following
the questions of Reason‘, she actually situates herself as the
director of the following play. She stages the characters as her tools
that will assist her at her task and not as opposed parties, and
herself as one of the contestants.324 Therefore, even though the
character of Love is actually the one to address the audience, it is
nevertheless Marguerite who lays out the program of the event in
front of an attentive audience.
A closing address of Marguerite to her audience corroborates this
image of there being a single narrator. Towards the end of her book,
after explaining in great detail the merits of the souls and the
methods of arriving to the prescribed state, Marguerite relinquishes
324
Porete, Speculum, ed. Verdeyen, p. 15.
154
the different characters in order to speak plainly and relate to her
listeners some of the difficulties she faces and her ways to
overcome them. She names this part as: ‗..some considerations for
those who are in the stage of the sad ones and who ask the way to
the land of freeness.‘325 In this she elects to speak to her audience
in her own persona. She relates to them some of the thoughts that
helped her to endure the suffering. In this single persona
Marguerite acts in the same capacity as the previous character of
Love. She addresses her audience in the same manner of answering
questions. However this time the questions and the answers come
from the same person, or narrator. She also addresses them in the
second person plural as the previous character of love, in the
manner of direct speech to an audience. ‗Now you might ask how
this can be, that a work of goodness through true intent can be in
the soul through the sin of deficiency.‘326 Therefore, when speaking
as Love as well as when speaking as herself Marguerite stages her
speech as a direct address to her listeners aiming to urge them and
exhort them on a way directly connected to their faith, making her
book an effective sermon.
The three clerics, whose approvals Marguerite appended to her
Mirror, approached the issue of the book from two aspects. First
they examined whether the book was genuine then they discussed
its dissemination. Brother John, the cleric Marguerite mentions first,
said: ‗this book was truly made by the Holy Spirit‘ and asked that:
‗it is well guarded for the sake of God and few see it‘.327 The second
cleric, a Cistercian monk Dom Franco said ‗that he proved through
Scripture that truth is what this book speaks‘. The third cleric,
Master of Theology, Godfrey of Fontaines acknowledged the
theology of Marguerite as the only divine theology, claiming that all
325
Porete, Speculum, ed. Verdeyen, p. 349.
Porete, Speculum, ed. Verdeyen, p. 356.
327
Porete, Speculum, ed. Verdeyen, p. 407.
326
155
the others were human. Godfrey of Fontaines was an important
philosopher and theologian. Born near Liège within the first half of
the thirteenth century, he became a canon of his native diocese,
and also of Paris and Cologne, and was elected, in 1300, to the
bishopric of Tournai, which he declined.328 Godfrey limited the
numbers of people to whom this book should be taught and
explained why: ‗they could set aside the life to which they were
called in aspiring to the one at which they will never arrive.‘ He
acknowledged this teaching as the true way to reach God and the
only one at that, but he restricted it to the few, who could actually
do it. In the end he doubted if there were any such people. A
person, he claimed, must be of an exceptional spiritual strength to
attain the heights described in the book and he did not believe there
were many people like that and maybe none at all.329
The approvers discussed the distribution instantly after asserting
that the material from the Mirror had been received from a divine
source. The dissemination of such messages from God was assumed,
since it was acknowledged by the Church that whatever was
received from Him had to be offered for the salvation of souls. This
conviction was so strong that some considered even women as valid
messengers. In fact the same clerics, who opposed female
preaching with all their might, discussed whether to allow women to
deliver messages received from God, even though they could not
think of an evil worse than women speaking in public instructing
men.330 This underlying assumption is seen clearly by the fact that
there was no discussion whether or not the knowledge revealed in
the book should be taught, only that it should be taught to a few.
328
Godfrey of Fontaines, New Catholic Encyclopedia, ed., Thomas Carson, Joann Cerrito, 2nd ed.,
VOL. ? Detroit, London, 2003, PP. ?? http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/06626a.htmTHIS WEBSITE
IS NOT TO THE 2003 EDITION.
329
Porete, Speculum, ed. Verdeyen, pp. 407,409.
330
Blamires, „Women and Preaching‟, p. 141.
156
Although there is a slight possibility that this limitation was raised
because of the gender of the writer of the Mirror, it was not
expressed by any of the approvers. What is set forth by the
acknowledgement of the theology of the Mirror as divine and the
approval for its distribution is the fact that they considered the
Mirror to be a complete guide to the improvement of the soul. It
was, therefore, written in such a way that would proclaim it as a
mystical treatise or a written sermon.
The Inquisitor and the canon lawyers consulted in the case of
Marguerite have judged her status as a relapsed heretic based on
continuous distribution of the Mirror even after it was condemned
and publicly burned in Valenciennes. Underlying this accusation was
the charge of preaching to the simple folk and to Church officials.
Guy, the bishop of Cambrai, who condemned Marguerite, prohibited
her from disseminating her book further. He stipulated that it
should be circulated neither by speech nor by writing: verbo vel
scripto.331 When finally she was accused the Inquisitor and the
Canon Lawyers used the word communico to articulate her
spreading her ideas to a host of recipients: communicavit ac
necdum dicto domino sed et pluribus aliis personis simplicibus….332
And: communicasti reverendo patri domino Johanni, Cathalaunensi
episcopo, et quibusdam personis aliis..333 Had they wanted to say
that she had only sent the book, they would have used mitto or lego.
They however used the form that indicates direct transfer of ideas.
Marguerite therefore communicated her ideas written in a form of a
book to multiple others, many of them public figures of the Church.
There is little chance that she read the book to them in private. And
as the reading was at this time mostly aloud, what the accusers of
331
Verdeyen „Le Procès‟, p. 82.
Verdeyen „Le Procès‟, p. 78.
333
Verdeyen „Le Procès‟, p. 82.
332
157
Marguerite were actually saying is that she preached her ideas out
aloud in public to many people including respected Church officials.
In the prologue Marguerite explains the purpose of her book with an
example of a distant relationship between lovers. She describes a
young woman, who heard of the character of a far away King and
fell deeply in love with him. In order to relieve some of her
loneliness and suffering she created an exact image of him to help
her to dream about him more easily. ‗In similar fashion‘, says
Marguerite, ‗I heard tell of a King… and for the sake of my memory
of Him, He gave me this book, which makes present in some
fashion His love itself.‘334 The story of the princes outlines the
tension between the two forces, the male and the female, Reason
and Love, clerical and lay in Marguerite‘s mind. The princess in the
exemplum does not love just any king. She loves Alexander the
great.335 Alexander was not just considered to be great, but the
Great. Alexander‘s achievements, after all, far exceeded those of
any Christian dux, even those of Charlemagne and the Crusaders.336
The ones who appreciated the achievements of the great king the
most were the scholars of the Universities, who received an influx of
ideas both from the ancients and of the highly-civilized nonChristian cultures and learned to appreciate them.337 The princess in
this exemplum, who loves Alexander, thus represents scholars who
strive to better understanding through intellect in order to get closer
to the ancient and foreign ideas which they see as very desirable. At
the same time the rapidity of his fall and the frailty of his empire,
shown by Walter of Chatillon in his Alexandreis, together with his
334
Porete, Speculum, ed. Verdeyen, p. 13.
Amy Hollywood has already referred to the fact that Marguerite took the story of Alexander from
the Roman d’Alexandre by Alexander of Bernay, The Soul as Virgin Wife, Mechthild of Magdeburg,
Marguerite Porete and Meister Eckhart, Norte Dame and London, p. 88.
336
Maura K. Lafferty, Walter of Chatillon’s Alexandreis, Epic and the Problem of Historical
Understanding, Publications of The Journal of Medieval Latin, Turnhout, 1998, p. 13..
337
Lafferty Walter of Chatillon’s Alexandreis, p. 18.
335
158
moral failings, made him a useful exemplum for the vanity of
human achievement.338 Throughout the Alexandreis, Walter of
Chatillon interrogates the usefulness of ancient learning and
literature in medieval society. He exposes the false promise of the
path offered by ancient epic and by human science. Aristotelian
logic and curiosity about Nature, lead the hero of the Alexandreis
towards peripheral, rather any inner awareness.339 While there is no
explicit reference by Marguerite Porete to the character of
Alexander made by Walter of Chatillon, the way Marguerite uses the
exemplum to make a moral statement shows that she knew the tale.
Before narrating the exemplum Marguerite asks the listeners to
listen humbly to a little example of worldly love: ‗Or entendez par
humilité ung petit exemple de l‘amour du monde…‘.340 The words
‗humbly‘ and ‗worldly‘ encapsulate the criticism Walter of Chatillon
compiled against the lovers of human science, who put their trust
into the created temporal instead of the eternal. The use of these
specific words show the familiarity of Marguerite with the character
of Alexander as it was created by Walter of Chatillon.
By comparing herself and her book to the princess Marguerite
shows that not only the masters of the universities are on the
opposite side to what she is trying to teach, but the approach of
striving to achieve a better understanding of God and the world
through intellect, or Reason is wrong. The story of the princess,
therefore, presents, by an unequal comparison, a conflict between
Love and Reason and asserts the superiority of Love, allowing
Marguerite to show her advantage as a representative of those
whose relationship with God is through Love. Moreover, using the
figure of Alexander the Great and his dubious claim for fame and
success she implies that the male cleric‘s claims for authority are
338
Walter of Chatillon, The Alexandreis, trans. R. Telfryn Pritchard, Toronto, 1986.
Lafferty Walter of Chatillon’s Alexandreis, p. 172.
340
Porete, Speculum, ed. Verdeyen, p. 10.
339
159
inferior to the authority for her book, namely God. Notwithstanding
the arguments Marguerite compiled in favor of the supremacy of her
theology over the perceived way of the clerics, the story of the
princess shows that she had profound understanding of their ways.
Therefore she argues the benefits of her theology in the Mirror, but
she does it in a textual framework that speaks to their sense of
order.
Thematic sermon
The Mirror was, therefore, structured by Marguerite as a ‗thematic
sermon‘, a form that became common towards the end of the
thirteenth century. In addition to their having a single point of
departure in a form of a single thema or quotation from Scripture,
the thematic sermons were very structured and based on the Artes
Praedicandi, or handbooks instructing clerics how to preach.341 The
thematic method of preaching was closely related to the new
methods of intellectual inquiry, especially disputation, a primary
method of discovery and instruction in the universities, which
appeared around the end of the twelfth century and developed
during the thirteenth.342 It is disputed how much the true written
sermons resembled the guidelines presented in the Artes, and still
even more so the resemblance of the actual preached sermon to
them. However most sermons that have survived in the published
form from the later Middle Ages show at least some influence of the
Artes.343
It is improbable that Marguerite had access to Artes Praedicandi.
What is provable however is that she knew several Church officials,
341
O‟Malley, Introduction to De Ore Domini, p. 8.
Marianne G. Briscoe, Artes Praedicandi, Turnhout, 1992, p. 30.
343
O‟Malley, Introduction to De Ore Domini, p. 9.
342
160
to whom she preached her book and who she probably had in mind
as an image of the clerical approach which she disputed in her
Mirror. Because we do not know what clerics or what sermons she
heard it is fruitless to try and trace similarities to surviving sermons.
If, however, some aspects of the guidelines provided in the Artes
are present in her work, then it is probable that she heard actual
sermons and learned from them, wanting to speak to the clerics in
their language if only to encourage them to listen to her ideas. The
measure of the resemblance to the guidelines of The Mirror will
suggest the number and the quality of the preachers that she had
heard, before or during the writing of her Mirror. In order to see
exactly how The Mirror of Marguerite Porete correlates with these
concepts of the sermon it is best to examine it compared to the
directions for a good sermon in the Summa of Alan of Lille, fortified
by the later additions, especially regarding the expansion of the
sermon that Alan mentions but does not go into detail about.
Although Alan of Lille does not use the words Artes Praedicandi, his
is the first comprehensive preaching manual. Many of the manuals
after that of Alan of Lille quote or paraphrase his Summa. The
themes and the terminology set forth in his work became the
standard for Artes praedicandi throughout the middle ages.344
Alan begins his guide for good preaching by discussing in general
the point of departure of a good sermon. First he deals with the
preparation of the preacher for the task, and then he presents the
thematic source of the desirable sermon. The preparation for the
preacher entails six steps, before being ready with the seventh.
Alan uses the parable of Jacob‘s ladder to create the sense of
climbing to the sky, or striving to reach God. 345 He names seven
steps a man can make. The first three stages seem to be between a
344
345
Marianne G. Briscoe, Artes Praedicandi, Turnhout, 1992, p. 20.
Alanus de Insulis, Summa De Arte Praedicatoria, in J.P. Migne, PL, 210, cols 111-98
161
man and God: confession, prayer and thanksgiving. Next three
steps are gained by mastering the Scripture. Then in the seventh
stage, or rung, the man teaches the knowledge he has acquired
from learning the scripture in public: Septimum gradum ascendit,
quando in manifesto praedicat quae ex Scriptura didicit. The
learning from the Scripture comes as the more advanced level of
learning. After he has established a basic relationship with God by
acknowledging his sins, praying and thanks giving, he learns how to
become even better, using the Scripture. In other words the means
by which a man moves closer to God is a more profound
understanding of Scripture. He then reaches the highest level of
development not only by teaching others what he has learned
himself, but teaching them in public. More precisely, he preaches to
them, exhorting them to follow him on the right way to God, which
he has discovered in the Scripture.
Marguerite, too, embarks on her apostolate on the seventh step of
her alternative development. The seven steps of Marguerite greatly
differ from those of Alan, but the seventh stage seems to be the
same. Marguerite describes, in her theology, the six steps that can
be made while still alive and the seventh stage that can only be
achieved after death.346 Nevertheless Marguerite Porete is at a
stage which reaches beyond the six stages she prescribes for her
followers. She believes that after reaching her destination, God has
given her this book to be an evidence of His love itself. Therefore
Marguerite preaches in public not what she has learned from
Scripture, as Allan would recommend had she not been a woman,
but what she believed she has learned directly from God. She does
not prescribe preaching as the goal for her followers, the ones who
reach the freedom of the soul or the sixth stage. However, she
chooses to do so herself. The Mirror of Simple Souls then, according
346
Marguerite Porete, summary of the steps are in Speculum, ed. Verdeyen, pp. 189-194
162
to its author, is the fruit of Marguerite‘s learning, which brought her
into constant connection with God. In addition, Marguerite perceives
the Mirror as being on the same level with the Holy Scripture,
because it was given to her by God. As such, she believes it to be
an authority for preaching. Therefore, just as Allan prescribed,
Marguerite preaches the fruits of her learning in public, for what is a
book if not means of mass communication?347
After expounding the necessary preparations for the preacher Alan
turns to the specifics of sermon writing. A sermon, he says, should
develop from a text which is a theological authority, ‗ab auctoritate
theologica‘.348 For him, theological authorities are primarily texts
taken from the Evangelists, the Psalms, the Epistles of Paul or the
book of Solomon. However, if other Holy texts might facilitate the
preaching on a particular theme they should be included as well.
Marguerite, too, deals with authority at the outset of her book. In
the prologue Marguerite compares herself to a princess who has
fallen in love with Alexander the Great and her book to the image
the princess created to assuage her longings for him.349 Marguerite
presents this comparison as an exemplum, but the two parts of an
equation are not identical. Although in both cases the images are
created to bring the lover and the object of love closer to each other,
the creators of the images are different. The princess creates the
image of her lover according to rumors about him. In the case of
Marguerite, she believes that God created his own image in the
form of this book to serve as a memory of himself to Marguerite.
The princess created the relationship by herself and within herself.
Marguerite is convinced that she was given this book as the image
of love of the lover by the lover himself. The authority Marguerite
347
David L. D‟Avray, The Preaching of the Friars, Sermons Diffused from Paris Before 1300, Oxford,
1985, p. 163.
348
Summa De Arte Praedicatoria, p. 113.
349
Porete, Speculum, ed. Verdeyen, p. 13.
163
proclaims for her book is, therefore, God himself. Marguerite does
so to conform to clerical male sensibilities of the proper way for
women to acquire such knowledge. However, this in no way retracts
from the fact that she deals with the matter of authority in the
opening of her treatise.
This said, Marguerite wanted her book to be considered as having
been written in a proper form. She brings forward a scriptural
quotation as a source of her elaborate argument. ‗One thing is
necessary for you to do if you want to be perfect. It is: go and sell
all the things which you possess and give them to the poor, and
then follow me, and you will have treasure in the heavens.‘ 350 The
second beginning Marguerite provides for her treatise allows her to
begin with a traditional starting point to a thematic sermon. But
Marguerite had a reason for choosing this particular verse and not
any other. The two beginnings support each other even on a
mystical level. The first beginning enables Marguerite to indicate
that there was a communication with God, who has given her the
book to demonstrate to the world what his divine love can do for a
soul. The second beginning hints of a promise that was given a long
time ago that Marguerite‘s treatise now came to fully explain and
set into action. Jesus, Marguerite says, was asked what was
necessary for perfection. The answer was: give up all material
things. Marguerite chooses to understand this verse allegorically. In
her mind the answer Jesus gave the young man was: neutralize all
things inside yourself and then you will be able to follow me. The
fact that this understanding underlies her choice of a verse is made
abundantly clear in the following paragraph: ‗…the one who would
have perfect charity must be mortified in the affections of the life of
350
Porete, Speculum, ed. Verdeyen, p. 82.
164
the spirit…‘351 This proves that Marguerite meant the mortification of
one‘s spirit as the things one should give up in order to follow Jesus.
The next mission of the preacher, according to Alan of Lille, is to
capture the good will of the audience; ‗captare benevolentiam‘.352 In
Alan‘s case this is accomplished through the humble demeanor of
the preacher himself, an explanation of the usefulness of the matter
to be discussed and the assumption that the preacher is merely the
vehicle for the truth of his sermon. Marguerite invests much space
and effort in her book for the explanation of the usefulness of her
theology, because unlike orthodox preachers, who preached well
known morals using the known texts, she needed to propagate
something new. The sole purpose of Marguerite‘s theology is to
benefit her listener or the follower. The happiness of the person is
at the centre of her attention. The theology of the Mirror seems to
be an attempt by the author to address an everlasting question of
salvation. Since the intentions and the thoughts of men carry the
same potential of sin as deeds, there is no assured salvation.353
Every day has the potential to endangering the salvation of even
the most devout person. Marguerite‘s theology attempts to solve
the problem entirely by replacing human sinfulness with the Divine
Goodness of God. The solution, if achieved, provides the soul with a
certainty that no other existing practice offered. Marguerite explains
again and again the attributes of such a happy state after she lists
them in the beginning: ‗A Soul who is saved by faith without works,
who is only in love, who does nothing for God, who leaves nothing
to do for God, to whom nothing can be taught, from whom nothing
can be taken, nor given and who possesses no will‘.354 The comfort
of salvation Marguerite offers to her listeners is permanent. Nothing
351
Porete, Speculum, ed. Verdeyen, p. 17.
Summa De Arte Praedicatoria, p. 113.
353
For example Matthew 5, 27.
354
Porete, Speculum, ed. Verdeyen, pp. 19, 21.
352
165
can be taken from the soul that completed the journey Marguerite
offers in her book. Nothing new can be taught to it that will change
that. There is nothing required from the soul in terms of practice as
well, so there is nothing that can be done wrong. From the point of
view of the consumers of her theology, for whom life was a constant
fear from the afterlife, the promise of static assurance must have
been a prize worth every effort.
When the benevolence of the audience was captured the preacher
was to introduce the protheme, consisting of a second quotation
relevant to the sermon‘s general message. This element is
apparently discussed in most of the Artes Praedicandi , but rarely
evident in any surviving sermons. 355 It is hardly surprising,
therefore, that The Mirror does not have any identifiable protheme.
As Marguerite has probably acquired her percept of proper sermon
by listening to real sermons, and the multitude of surviving sermons
does not include a protheme, it is therefore not very plausible that a
demand for a protheme would have been known to her.
After the protheme was presented, the preacher was supposed to
restate the theme and to declare to the audience which divisions or
dilations he has made in order to treat the subject in his sermon.
The part of the expansion of a sermon was the most detailed part in
most of the Artes Praedicandi, but unfortunately it was also the last
part they treated and not fully at this. The guides were adamant
that the topic of the sermon was to be expanded by three divisions
which were in turn then subdivided, but apparently the actual texts
were not keeping with these rigid instructions and usually the
divisions blurred towards the end of the sermon. 356 Marguerite
outlines her divisions very distinctly; enumerating them. The
355
356
Briscoe, Artes Praedicandi, p. 55.
Briscoe, Artes Praedicandi, p. 57.
166
number of her divisions greatly conforms with the instructions for
good sermons, not so, however, is the significance she gives each
part. The Artes Praedicandi instruct the preacher to have three main
parts and subdivide each in three. Marguerite does not indicate that
any of the parts are inferior to others, but she does have nine
divisions.
1. a soul
2. who is saved by faith without works
3. who is only in love
4. who does nothing for God
5. who leaves nothing to do for God
6. to whom nothing can be taught
7. from whom nothing can be taken
8. nor given
9. and who possesses no will.357
Marguerite then begins to develop the first part of her distinction.
First she elaborates on the nature of the soul, using a triple
subdistinction: ‗this soul, say love, has six wings like the
Seraphim. … with two wings she covers her face from Jesus Christ
our lord. That means that the more this soul has understanding of
the divine goodness, the more perfectly she understands that she
understands nothing about it …with two other wings she covers her
feet, which means that the more she has understanding of what
Jesus Christ suffered for us, the more perfectly she understands
that she understands nothing about it …‗with the two others the
Soul flies, and dwells in being and rest. Thus all that she
understands and loves and praises of the divine goodness are the
wings by which she flies. Dwelling in being she is always in the sight
of God; and in rest she dwells forever in the divine will.‘ 358
357
358
Porete, Speculum, ed. Verdeyen, pp. 18, 20.
Porete, Speculumr, ed. Verdeyen, pp. 19, 21.
167
This passage, as so many others throughout the Mirror also
abounds with a kind of sermon expansion that was very commonly
used in mystical sermons, to the extent that it has become
prerequisite of the genre: the four part exegesis on the Scripture.
Since the purpose of a mystical sermon is creation of a union
between man and God, it usually presents a discourse in which the
metaphysical or transcendent realm is made real.359 Michael D.
McGuire and John H. Patton have studied the patterns of the
mystical sermons of Meister Eckhart, who lived after Marguerite
Porete and was greatly influenced by her work.360 They have arrived
at a conclusion that there was a certain pattern which abounded in
mystical sermons and thus distinguished them from all the other
sermons. Mainly, Eckhart greatly magnified the role of amplification
by the ‗sensus allegoricus‘ and ‗anagogicus‘ in order to bring the
divine reality closer to the reader/listener. In essence he had
opened for the listeners a new level of reality. In medieval exegesis
the senses were considered to be multiplied by the use of four ways
of interpretation of Scripture: 1. according to the sensus historicus
or literalis. This interpretation of the Biblical text included only the
simple explanation of the words; 2. according to the sensus
tropologicus, which provided the meaning of the text that looked at
instructing on the correction of morals. 3. according to the sensus
allegoricus, which looked for a meaning other than literal. This
interpretation assumed that the Biblical text had an additional
mystical meaning that used exemplification by simile. 4. ‗sensus
anagogicus‘, that was used mystically or openly, to stir and exhort
the minds of the listeners to the contemplation of heavenly things.
359
Michael D. McGuire and John H. Patton, „Preaching in the Mystic Mode: The Rhetorical Art of
Meister Eckhart, in Communication Monographs, 44/ 4 (1977), 263-72, p. 270.
360
Amy Hollywood, The Soul as Virgin Wife, Mechthild of Magdeburg, Marguerite Porete, and
Meister Eckhart, Notre Dame, 1995, p. 121.
168
This interpretation gave an interpretation to the text which involved
divine beings and their interactions.361
The Mirror of Marguerite Porete overflows not only with ‗sensus
allegoricus‘ and ‗anagogicus‘, but also with the ‗sensus tropologicus‘,
which seems at first glance out of place in a treatise so preoccupied
with the abandonment of the virtues. I would like to consider this
small portion of the text: ‗Christ was transfigured on Mount Tabor,
where there were only three of his disciples. He told them that they
must neither speak about it nor say anything about it until His
resurrection.‘362 After citing Scripture Marguerite divides this small
text into three sectiones. First, she explains why he only showed
himself to three disciples: ‗He did it so that you might know that
few folk will see the brightness of His transfiguration, and He shows
this only to His special friends, and for this reason there were only
three. And still this happens in this world when God gives Himself
through the ardour of light into the heart of a creature. Now you
know why there were three.‘ All senses are engaged in Marguerite‘s
explanation of this single part of the Transfiguration. First she
explains this bit in the literal sense: there were three of his
followers so that everybody will know that God will not reveal his
true nature to large masses. Then Marguerite moves to the sensus
tropologicus. Who will be those who will gaze God‘s true nature, she
asks? Only His special friends, those ones who engage His special
favour by doing something above and beyond Christian duty, will
see his true face: ‗It happens in this world when God gives himself
through the ardour of light into the heart of a creature.‘ The sensus
allegoricus is next with the meaning that takes the similar but uses
it in an original way. Just as God gave the vision of his true self, as
light, to his three special disciples, he will give himself as true
361
Harry Caplan, „The Four Senses of Scriptural Interpretation and the Mediaeval Theory of Preaching‟
in Speculum, 4 (1929), 282-90, p. 283.
362
Porete, Speculum, ed, Verdeyen, p. 209.
169
ardour of light that will flow into the properly prepared creature,
who has become his special friend and deserves this. The sensus
anagogicus is the essence of this discussion; God and the revelation
of his true self.
The characters Marguerite uses to progress through the treatise of
the Mirror are another set of divisions. Marguerite progresses
through the Mirror stating her arguments then dividing/discussing
them by her created characters. The Mirror of Simple Souls is
designed as a disputation of adversaries on every subject.
Marguerite uses the character of Reason to pose the most difficult
questions and challenges imaginable. Therefore the argument veers
occasionally from the main flow, and then rejoins the main
argument again just to be divided on the next point in question.
Notwithstanding the argument of Peter Dronke that Marguerite‘s
deepest inspiration was poetic borrowing its literary ideals from fine
amor, I would point out that it does not contradict the
argumentative nature the characters, or that the same three are
pulling the argument forward throughout the treatise.363 Marguerite
clearly states in the beginning of her book to her hearers: ‗you will
hear explained in this book through the Intellect of Love and
following the questions of Reason.‘364 The fact that she puts herself,
the narrator, outside this disputation of her characters, pronounces
them as her means of movement throughout the discourse in The
Mirror.
Exempla
363
Peter Dronke, Women Writers of the Middle Ages, A Critical Study of Texts from Perpetua (+203)
to Marguerite Porete (+1310), London, 1984, pp. 218-221.
364
Porete, Speculum, ed. Verdeyen, p. 15.
170
The way to end a sermon was rarely treated in the Artes
Praedicandi at all.365 Alan of Lille is one of the few who does include
some sort of ending at all by concluding his treatment of the subject
of the sermon with a recommendation that the preacher ‗should
also use exempla to make his points, because people remember
familiar things.‘366 Alan does not expound on this matter. Humbert
of Romans on the other hand deals with the nature of the
exemplum in the prologue to his collection of exempla. Incidentally
he enumerates seven considerations for the selection and delivery
of the exemplum. The seventh deals with the matter of authority.
No exemplum, he says, should be invented by the preacher. They
should be taken from the various sources of exempla and there are
degrees of quality of the authorities, with the best being the ones
taken from the Scripture.367
Marguerite Porete concludes her teachings with seven
considerations. I would like to consider two of them which look very
much like exempla. She does take her characters for the exempla
from the Scripture but gives them an entirely different impetus for
their actions than the conventional one. She claimed their actions
were guided by the same aspirations that guided her and they
entered our collective memory after completing the steps described
in The Mirror. In other words Mary Magdalene and Saint John the
Baptist were free annihilated souls when their actions were seen
and recorded in the Holy Scripture. The soul of John the Baptist was
filled with God without himself as well, according to Marguerite.
John the Baptist showed Jesus Christ to two of his disciples so that
they might follow him but he himself never left the desert to go see
Jesus Christ in human nature. Moreover, he held a sermon in the
365
Briscoe, Artes Praedicandi, p. 57.
Summa De Arte Praedicatoria, p. 114.
367
Humbert of Romans, TITLE? IN Early Dominicans: selected writings, ed. Simon Tugwell, New
York, 1982, p. 376.
366
171
presence of Jesus without being distracted. Marguerite argues that
these two actions were against the natural inclination of a follower.
A person devoted to a teacher would not have elected to stay put
and direct others to the teacher. He would have followed him
wherever he went. Also the knowledge of the nature of Jesus Christ,
as the truth itself, should have naturally filled the voice of the
sternest of speakers with awe. John the Baptist, however, kept his
calm and completed the sermon. The explanation Marguerite gives
for such occurrences is that God had filled his soul instead of him,
becoming solely responsible for his decisions and actions. ‗Divine
Goodness accomplished her works in him…so much had the divinity
taken over his intention.368‘ John the Baptist is a mere vehicle for
the words of God on their way to the people, according to
Marguerite. It is shown by his alleged inability to act the way he
acted, had he not been replaced by God completely. Mary
Magdalene is also portrayed as one of the freed souls: ‗After Mary
had done what she could and had to do‘, ‗then Mary rested without
doing any work of herself and God accomplished his part gently in
Mary, for Mary‘s sake without Mary. For Mary had done her part and
she held on to nothing more except the Master…‘.
369
What
Marguerite is actually saying is that Mary accomplished the total
annihilation of her human essence and God replaced her in her soul
and thereupon He acted in the soul of Mary in her place. This is the
explanation Marguerite gives for the actions of Mary Magdalene.
It was not incidental that Marguerite chose the character of Mary
Magdalene to illustrate her point. Using the character of Magdalene
Marguerite was trying to argue for the validity of her book. She has
written instructions for a theology which she hoped to make known
to all Christian world if she could. She had an image of the male
368
369
Porete, Speculumr, pp. 361,363.
Porete, Speculumr, p. 353.
172
clerics as the ones that could stop her from her desire. The reason
she saw for their possible objection was the fact that she was a
woman and women were not allowed to pronounce the word of God
in the world. So she made her best to accommodate them at least
on the external level of structuring her book in the required
standard of the preaching. But in the end she wanted to make the
strongest argument, therefore she brought in the figure of Mary
Magdalene, praised as Apostolorum Apostola and considered in
every discussion on the preaching of women.370 Although some
clerics tried to diminish the effect of the apostolate of Mary
Magdalene, they were never successful in eliminating it
completely.371 Marguerite Porete does not explicitly point out the
preaching of Mary Magdalene. However, using this particular
protagonist enables Marguerite to bring out all the arguments for
the preaching of women that were installed deeply in the hearts of
the readers or the listeners of her book.
The character of John the Baptist serves Marguerite to treat the
idea of the right kind of preaching from the opposite side. Although
he is a man and can, in theory, claim the right to preach without
complete annihilation of self, he is nevertheless shown preaching in
the accepted female space, of speaking the word of God with no
participation of self. He is a mere vehicle for the words of God on
their way to the people. It is shown by Marguerite in his alleged
inability to act the way he acted, had he not been replaced by God
completely. In her interpretation of the character of John the Baptist
Marguerite insinuates that there are no rightful preachers, whether
male or female, unless they serve only as vehicles for the words of
God.
370
Alcuin Blamires, „Women and Preaching‟, p. 138.
Katherine Ludwig Jansen, „Maria Magdalena: Apostolorum Apostola‟, in ed., Beverly Mayne
Kienzle and Pamela J. Walker, Women Preachers and Prophets through Two Millennia of Christianity,
Berkely and London, 1998, p. 79.
371
173
To continue the literary framework outlined by Zan Kocher,
Marguerite strips her main character of the body, doing so by
moving away from gender based descriptions of mystical journey.
Body and mind are removed to allow the soul an easier journey
back to its creator.372 When the soul reaches this state it can be
‗embodied‘, by either male or female characters in the Bible and can
act freely without being burdened by human fears, desires or
conventions.
It is also not incidental that Marguerite chooses to close her
argument with illustrations from Scripture. As exempla, these two
stories are highly effective. Marguerite manages to convey to her
listeners the benefits of her theology using familiar and highly
admired characters. Additionally her unorthodox outlook provides
her with the perfect opportunity to legitimize her theology in the
eyes of her perceived judges. In the beginning of The Mirror she felt
compelled to provide Scriptural authority in addition to her claimed
divine authority for The Mirror. Now, in the conclusion of her book,
she brings Scriptural authority to provide legitimacy and merit to
her theology. It was generally accepted that the significant events
recorded in the New Testament had already been prefigured in the
Old. It was also believed that events and persons of the New
Testament times could be seen as foreshadowing the still hidden
mysteries of the kingdom of heaven and also of the life of Christian
souls.373 Marguerite used this understanding to her benefit. She
understood that if she could show in the closure of her book that
her theology was foreseen in the New Testament then it will be seen
372
Zan Kocher, Allegories of Love in Marguerite Porete’s Mirror of Simple Souls, Turnhout, 2008, p.
183.
373
John Hilary Martin, „The Four Senses of Scripture: Lessons from the Thirteenth Century‟, in
Pacifica, 2 (1989), p. 95.
174
as legitimate. What she did not know was the fact that there were
rules which governed exegesis.
The way Marguerite uses these well known figures of Mary
Magdalene and John the Baptist for her exempla show that she only
saw the living examples of sermons but not the actual rules for their
creation. She witnessed how the preachers seemingly with ease and
freedom interpreted the Scripture while providing examples for their
sermons. However, when a medieval preacher decided to use a
story from the Scripture for his exemplum, he needed to
understand all the meanings of this story in order to either use it in
the correct context or use all or part of its meanings to support his
arguments. A medieval exegete was not free to create new
allegorical meanings, or even to substantially extend the ones which
were already in use. The spiritual meanings were considered to be
chosen by the Lord just as much as the literal sense of the stories
was.374 They were believed to be the Word of God, and as such
needed to be observed carefully and according to the rules.
Throughout the middle ages it was believed that Scripture contains
all the revelation needed for human existence.375 Marguerite was
imaginative in the way she approached exegesis, creating new
meanings for the action of her stories. Had she realized that there
are rules she might have chosen to let alone the Bible characters or
to use them exactly as she has heard them used in the sermons.
Instead she elected to alter the exegesis and create a new meaning
for the actions of the protagonists of the stories.
The officials that had heard the ending of her book saw it as proof
why women should not preach. In their eyes the character of Mary
Magdalene was a reminder of the ongoing argument for the
374
Martin, „The Four Senses of Scripture‟, p. 94.
Henri de Lubac, S.J., Medieval exegesis, Vol 1 The four senses of Scripture, Mark Sebanc trans.,
Edinburg, 1959, English trans. 1998, p. 25.
375
175
apostolate of women. The authentic interpretation done by
Marguerite for the actions of both Mary Magdalene and John the
Baptist demonstrated their perceived fear from sermons that will
have created and delivered by women. They were convinced that
women would not or more precisely could not conform to the rules
of the interpretation and preaching. In their eyes it proved that
indeed women were incompetent, changeable and easily led astray.
They lacked the consistency to invest enough effort actually to learn
the proper use of the Bible and were fond of every new idea that
came alone and swept them away.
Furthermore, when discussing the character of a sermon in general
Alan of Lille describes two kinds of negative preaching. One should
be tolerated, Alan says, the other condemned. The first kind is bad
because it is prepared in order to gain the adoration of people. Alan
quotes St Paul in claiming that every pronunciation of Christ,
however insufficient is still profitable. Such sermons may be suspect
but they should be tolerated nonetheless. The other kind is done by
heretics and the way to distinguish this kind from all the others is
by the use it makes of the Scripture. ‗first they propound the truth
and then they draw false conclusions from it‘.376 Heretical
preaching was especially abhorrent because it made unconventional
use of the Scripture or in other words used the Scripture to prove
its points instead of using it in confirmative ways to prove accepted
and preapproved points, as the church demanded.
Marguerite‘s attempt at conforming to the literary genre of the
sermon has in fact emphasised her difference in the eyes of her
opponents. When the inquisitor said that her book contained heresy
and errors these were the errors that were especially abhorrent to
him and for which she was indeed condemned. This is why she was
376
Summa De Arte Praedicatoria, p. 113.
176
accused of an attempt at preaching, especially to Church officials,
and not of creating her theology. What the Inquisitor wished burnt
on the stake was a concept of uncontrollable wilful woman who
manipulated the Scripture to meet her ideas.
The beginning of the fourteenth century saw such theologies as
disturbance of the order rather than proof of orthodoxy to the
heretics. The focus shifted and the proper observance of the orders
of society and church became more important than extraordinary
fits of theological genius. Marguerite Porete was very visible in her
attempt to promote her theology, especially in the new forming
climate of constraint. For this reason she was made an example for
the people, and especially women, and brought to Paris. There her
ideas were very carefully and publically examined and found
heretical.
177
Conclusion - Enforced order
The women commonly known as Beguines, since they
promise obedience to nobody, nor renounce possessions,
nor profess any approved rule, are not religious at all,
although they wear the special dress of Beguines and
attach themselves to certain religious to whom they
have a special attraction. We have heard from
trustworthy sources that there are some Beguines who
seem to be led by a particular insanity. They argue and
preach on the holy Trinity and the divine essence, and
express opinions contrary to the catholic faith with
regard to the articles of faith and the sacraments of the
church. These Beguines thus ensnare many simple
people, leading them into various errors. They generate
numerous other dangers to souls under the cloak of
sanctity. We have frequently received unfavorable
reports of their teaching and justly regard them with
suspicion. With the approval of the sacred council, we
perpetually forbid their mode of life and remove it
completely from the church of God. We expressly enjoin
on these and other women, under pain of
excommunication to be incurred automatically, that
they no longer follow this way of life under any form,
even if they adopted it long ago, or take it up anew. We
strictly forbid, under the same penalty, the religious
mentioned above, who are said to have favored these
women and persuaded them to adopt the Beguinage
178
way of life, to give in any way counsel, help or favor to
women already following this way of life or taking it up
anew; no privilege is to avail against the above. Of
course we in no way intend by the foregoing to forbid
any faithful women… wishing to live a life of penance
and serving the Lord of hosts in a spirit of humility. This
they may do, as the Lord inspires them. (Cum de quibus
dam)377 … …we have therefore heard with great
displeasure that an abominable sect of wicked men,
commonly called Beghards, and of faithless women,
commonly called Beguines, has sprung up in the realm
of Germany. This sect, planted by the sower of evil
deeds, holds and asserts in its sacrilegious and perverse
doctrine the following errors. ( Ad nostrum)378
377
Decrees of the Ecumenical Councils, trans. Norman P. Tanner, London, 1990, no. 16, p. 374: „Cum
de quibusdam mulieribus, Biguinabus vulgariter nuncupatis, (quae, cum nulli promittant oboedientiam
nec propriis renuncient, neque profiteantur aliquam regulam approbatam, religiosae nequaquam
exsistunt, quanquam habitum, qui Beguinarum dicitur, deferant et adhaereant religiosis aliguibus, ad
quos specialiter trahitur affection earundem), nobis fide digna relatione insinuatum exstiterit, quod
earum aliquae, quasi perductae in mentis insaniam, de summa Trinitate ac divina essentia desputent et
praedicent ac circa fidei articulos et ecclesiastica sacramenta opiniones catholicae fidei contrarias
introducant et, multos super his dicipientes simplices, eos in errores diversos inducant aliaque quam
plura periculum animarum parientia sub quodam velamine sanctitatis faciant et committant, nos tam ex
his quam ex aliis, de ipsarum opinione sinistra frequenter auditis, eas merito suspectas habentes, statum
earundem sacro approbante concilio perpetuo duximus prohibedum et a Dei ecclesia penitus
abolendum, eisdem et aliis mulieribus quibuscunque sub poena excommunicationis, quam in
contrarium facientes incurrere volumus ipso facto, iniungentes expresse, ne statum huiusmodi, dudum
forte ab ipsis assumptum, quoquo modo sectentur ulterius, vel ipsum aliquatenus de novo assumant.
Praedictis vero religiosis, per quos eaedem mulieres in huiusmodi Beguinagii statu foveri et ad ipsum
suscipiendum incuci dicuntur, sub simili excommunicationis poena, quam eo ipso, quod secus egerint,
se noverint incursoros, districtium inhibemus, ne mulieres aliquas, praedictum statum, ut praemittitur,
dudum assumptum sectantes, aut ipsum de novo forsitan assumentes quomodocunque admittant, ipsis
super eo sectando vel assumendo praebentes ullo modo consilium, auxilium vel favorem, nullo contra
praemissa privilegio valitoro. Sane per praedicta prohibere nequaquam intendimus quin, si fuerint
fideles aliquae mulieres, quae promissa continentia vel etiam non, promissa, honeste in suis
conversantes hospitiis, poenitentiam agree voluerint et virtutum Domino in humilitatis spiritu deservire,
hoc eisdem liceat, prout Domino in humilitatis spiritu deservire, hoc eisdem leceat, prout Dominus
ipsis inspirabit.‟
378
Decree of the Council of Vienne 1311 – 1312, Decrees, no. 28, p. 383: „… non sine displicentia
grandi pervenit auditum, quod secta quaedam abominabilis quorundam hominum malignorum, qui
Beguardi, et quarundam infidelium mulierum, quae Beguinae vulgariter appellantur, in regno
Alemanniae procurante satore malorum operum, damnabiliter insurrexit, tenens et asserens doctrina sua
sacrilega et perversa inferius designatos errores.‟
179
… Since the duty of the office committed to us obliges
us to extirpate from the Catholic Church this detestable
sect…. they are to be punished with canonical censure.
The diocesans and the inquisitors of heresy … are to
exercise their office with special care concerning them,
making inquiries about their life and behavior and about
their beliefs in relation to the articles of faith and the
sacraments of the church. They are to impose due
punishment on those whom they find guilty, unless
there is voluntary abjuration of the above errors and
repentance with fitting satisfaction. (Ad nostrum)379
The execution of Marguerite Porete in 1310 was followed by two
decrees issued by the Council of Vienne in 1311-2, both mentioning
uncloistered women, or beguines: Cum de quibusdam mulieribus
(no. 16) and Ad nostrum (no. 28). Cum de quibusdam was not
directed at any single itinerant beguine or even a few wondering
women, as first claimed by Ernest McDonnell.380 Instead it appears
to battle against a much bigger threat. Although the decree speaks
of beguines, the term did not specify any particular kind of women.
The women who are condemned are described as choosing their
way of life without a proper approval of the church. They choose a
distinct dress, their companions, and most importantly decide what
379
Decree of the Council of Vienne 1311 – 1312, Decrees, no. 28, p. 384: „Cum autem ex debito
commissi nobis officii huiusmodi sectam detestabilem et praemissos ipsius exsecrandos errores, ne
propagentur ulterius et per eos corda fidelium damnabiliter corrumpantur, exstirpare ab ecclesia
catholica necessario habeamus, nos sacro approbante consilio sectam ipsam cum praemissis erroribus
damnamus et reprobamus omnino, inhibentes destrictius, ne quis ipsos de cetero teneat, approbet vel
defendat. Eos autem, qui secus egerint, animadversione canonica decernimus puniendos. Porro
dioecesani et illarum partium inquisitores haereticae pravitatis, in quibus Beguardi et Beguinae
huiusmodi commorantur, suum officium circa eos diligenter exerceant, inquirentes de vita et
conversatione ipsorum, qualiterve sentient de articulis fidei et ecclesiae sacramentis. In illos vero, quos
culpabiles repererint, nisi abiuratis sponte praedictis erroribus poenituerint et satisfactionem
exhibuerint competentem, debitam exerceant ultionem.‟
380
Ernest W. McDonnell, The Beguines and Beghards In Medieval Culture with special emphasis on
the Belgian Scene, New York, 1969, p. 490.
180
religious men they associate with. They are described as being
insane. Other devout women, who essentially live the same way,
are described in a positive way: ‗Of course we in no way intend by
the foregoing to forbid any faithful women, whether they promise
chastity or not, from living uprightly in their hospices, wishing to
live a life of penance and serving the Lord of hosts in a spirit of
humility. This they may do, as the Lord inspires them.‘ This
inconsistency in the decrees of the Council represents to a great
extent the paradox of dealing with devotion of women in the second
half of the thirteenth century and the beginning of the fourteenth
that I examined in my thesis.
While Ad nostrum speaks of errant women in Germany, the articles
of faith listed further in this decree correspond directly to the
articles used to convict Marguerite Porete, as Romana Guarneri has
demonstrated. In northern France, as in Germany, a process of
inquisitorial persecution sought to place controls over creative
individual spirituality, when it seemed to threaten the social order.
This process of defining and negotiating the differences between
what were presented as two camps, has been at the centre of this
thesis—the process of shifting the attention from right theology to
right behavior. This is why the two groups of women look similar in
their religious observance, with the only accusation and reason for
condemnation being lack of obedience: ‗The women commonly
known as Beguines, since they promise obedience to nobody… .‘381
Although obedience was one of the regular monastic vows, here it is
invoked as an ideal ignored by groups not obedient to a norm or to
the official church authorities. In other words in the beginning of the
fourteenth century it no longer mattered whether or not women‘s
spirituality was in line with the accepted theology of their age. If
381
Decree of the Council of Vienne 1311 – 1312, Decrees, no. 16, p. 374.
181
their obedience was not absolutely certain, their way of life was
banned.
My starting point has been guided by the need to situate the activity
and subsequent condemnation of Marguerite Porete in terms of two
main areas of activity around the middle of the thirteenth century,
the intellectual centre of Paris, and more creative and loosely
controlled area of the southern Low Countries. In particular, her
career must be situated in terms of flourishing of networks of
religious renewal in the first half of the thirteenth century,
supported by the mendicant Orders. Yet forces of constraint
developed alongside those of creativity. The support Porete gained
from figures like master Godfrey of Fontaines, the unidentified
Franciscan called John, and Franco, Cistercian monk of Villers
(whose authority she claimed in her support) were unable to
prevent her being executed in a show trial in Paris, largely driven by
inquisitors from the Dominican Order.
As David Burr has argued, the Franciscan Order cannot be boxed as
having one mind and one heart. 382 Burr has demonstrated how,
even in the later thirteenth century, many mainstream Franciscans
exhibited extremely sensitive affective devotional attitudes in their
writings, while Franciscans who can only be described as either
spiritual or who would subsequently be considered spiritual,
exhibited opinions in tune with the strictest orthodox ecclesiastics.
By 1260, the Franciscans were becoming more and more influential.
Burr has noted that the more prestigious the reputation of the
382
David Burr, The Spiritual Franciscans, From Protest to Persecution in the Century After Saint
Francis, Pennsylvania, p. 8-10.
182
Franciscans became the higher quality of men it attracted to its
ranks. This development stood in direct opposition to the aims of
Francis to his Order. But the development was unavoidable. Its new
members saw themselves as better fitted to tend to society from a
position of strength. The more educated and influential they were,
the more they felt they could be useful in teaching and in alleviating
poverty.383
Burr asserts that before 1270 there were just isolated cases of
dissatisfaction with this progress from within the Order. The
tendency to assume there was already then a division between
spirituals and conventuals is one that he explains as resulting from
too much credit to being given to the history written by Angelo
Clareno 1247-1337), a persecuted Franciscan zealot.. In the early
fourteenth century, Angelo Clareno would described the history of
the events of the century after Francis‘s death from the stand point,
of having spent much of his life in hiding from institutional
Franciscans and having associated with other zealots like himself.
This gave the events he described a different color from the
perspective of the years.384 In 1270, however, the spirituality of the
Franciscans had not yet divided, however, into two clear cut sects of
spirituals and conventuals. The main attribute that was common to
spiritually inclined Franciscans, beguines and various other groups
and individuals, was the recognition that people must make their
own decisions about their religious observance. This was not
restricted to the laity; clerics felt free to pursue and advise on
spiritual transformation as they saw fit.385
383
Burr, The Spiritual Franciscans, p. 8-10.
David Burr and E. Randolph Daniel, introduction to Angelo Clareno, A Chronicle or History of the
Seven Tribulations of the Order of Brothers Minor, New York, 2005, xx.
385
Burr, The Spiritual Franciscans, p. 313.
384
183
By the mid thirteenth century the freedom of some Franciscans to
offer theologies to women was facilitated by their own sense of
belonging to an established religious Order and of having access to
sources of power, in particular through their interaction with the
royal women of the French court. Men who joined the Franciscan
order were bound by a series of conventions that drew them to the
order, but also drew them to the female religion in all its
representations, whether within their Order or just sharing their
evangelical ideals. These connections were sought after as conduits
to Franciscan influence, so that they could pursue a more public
realization of their ideals in court and thus in the kingdom of France.
Where they hoped to promote the more devout/spiritual pursuit of
religion, whether they were from within the Franciscan
establishment, like Bonaventure and Gilbert of Tournai, or were
relative outsiders— like Marguerite‘s supporters, the unidentified
brother John, mentioned in her Mirror, and Guiard of Cressonessart,
who risked his life to defend her. Franciscan interaction with devout
women was not uniform across the order or supportive to all women.
While some women struggled for a bond with the friars as their
attempt to realize their spiritual connection to the ideas of Francis,
the friars battled for their right not to be obliged to provide them
with spiritual care. Their customary practice, however, did not suffer
from the legal battle, and the friars continued to care for nuns of
the Order of Saint Clare, for example. Bonaventure, the fifth
Minister General, presented the decision of the papacy in favor of
Franciscan ministry for these women as a triumph, stating that they
were no longer obliged to do so, and celebrating their voluntary
decision to care for the women.386
386
Lezlie Knox, „Audacious Nuns: Institutionalizing the Franciscan Order of Saint Clare‟ in Church
History, 69 (2000), 41-62, p. 61.
184
I am not disputing the general direction that was first articulated by
Herbert Grundmann that devout women in the course of thirteenth
century, as much as their male counterparts, wished to experience
a more immediate and intense form of religion. Such women who
exercised that wish did so either individually or formed communities,
of which some were orthodox; others were considered heretical. I
am looking at the ways in which devout women‘s activity brought
them into the ongoing discussion about authority, taking place
especially in northern France as part of Philip the Fair‘s construction
of his political agenda and negotiation of balance of power between
the mendicant Orders. The Franciscan Order was not the only such
group to experience this change, but it suffered more acutely as it
was so much involved in supporting devout women
To some extent this thesis has expanded on the division articulated
by Zan Kocher in his monograph, Allegories of love in Marguerite
Porete.387 He describes the Mirror as a story of an argument
between two opposing forces, Love and Reason, which needs to be
resolved in order to allow the soul to be empty. I expand on this
notion, examining the interaction between individuals of both sexes
and across religious professions, who favoured one over the other:
observance, order and obedience as prerequisite for any love
relationship or teachings. On one side, texts like Porete‘s Mirror can
be seen as reflecting the desire and right of women to access divine
authority. On the other side, women‘s observance of religion
sometimes encouraged male clerics to manipulate their allegiances
and enforce their own ambitions of authority.
This thesis has examined a series of texts that illustrate this tension
between dynamism and control. Dianne Elliot has described the
creation the female saint as a tool in the papacy‘s battle against the
387
Kocher, Allegories of Love, p. 183.
185
heretics‘ teachings.388 On the other hand, John Coakley has written
about how friars venerated these women for adding something to
their experience of the divine, without taking away their sense of
authority.389 I would argue that regardless of the way the lives of
the saintly women were created and presented to the heretics, the
interaction between them and the friars was very real and not at all
without frictions. These frictions helped divide the male clerics into
being sometimes supporters and sometimes adversaries of devout
women. The main criteria for this division were the measure of
control they needed to exert over devout women‘s lives.
I have explored the multi-layered interaction between the members
of the mendicant orders, Franciscans especially, and women of
various backgrounds in northern France. Noble women attracted
more attention from Franciscans, while those who were not noble
were more vulnerable. Royal women enjoyed a special privilege.
Their power was accepted as their birth right. They were, therefore,
encouraged to greater creativity, which in turn has allowed the
Franciscans in their lives some level of control. When Gilbert of
Tournai wrote to Isabelle of France he encouraged her to develop
her spirituality to the same extent and in the same way the friars
did. When he wrote about devout women and their ‗uncontrolled‘
behavior to the council of Lyon, he appeared much less encouraging
of creativity. Discussing the problem of women acting on their own
authority, he was only concerned with questions of supervision. The
Speculum dominarum, written for Jeanne of Navarre sometime
before her death in 1305, also cultivates the Queen for an active
role, using moral instruction to do so. The Mirror of Simple Souls,
388
Dyan Elliot, Proving Woman, Female Spirituality and Inquisitional Culture in the Later Middle
Ages, Princeton and Oxford, 2004, p. 65.
389
John Coakley, „Friars as Confidants of Holy Women in Medieval Dominican Hagiography, in
Images of Sainthood in Medieval Europe, ed. Renate Blumenfeld-Kosinski and Timea Szell, London,
1991, pp. 222-246, p. 245.
186
which similarly aims at creating a more active role within the
spiritual life, but written outside of carefully supervised structure, is
condemned.
This thesis has explored not just the tension between support for
and suspicion of religious women, but the decrease in tolerance and
freedom to encourage spiritual and devout lives within northern
France in the late thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries. With an
advancing Inquisitorial apparatus, this balance between control and
dynamism shifted towards control. Marguerite Porete‘s story
stretches over that period of change and demonstrates it. When she
was writing her Mirror, she evidently enjoyed certain freedom of
movement and believed that there was a place for her thesis among
not only her peers but also clerics. Even her criticism of some male
religious is indicative of her perceived ability to do so. By the time
she was tried, the balance between the need to be advised on the
divine mysteries, and to be able to control religious observance
shifted to the latter and was projected in the manner of her trial.
These attempts at self-expression by devout women, both within
and outside formal religious life, generated writings addressed to
women that were different from those created only for men. These
writings skirted the boundaries of logical, rational and contemplative
reasoning. They engaged in detailed exegesis of Scripture as a way
of asserting authority, and more affective interaction and
communication, which produced treatises on loving as conduit to
God‘s authority. These texts also differed in their need to compete
with each other for primacy and authority. Theirs was God; the
ultimate authority. However this public claim brought them into the
ongoing dialogue of authority, with varying success.
187
Controlling the observance of such women took a form of asserting
male clerical authority over them. It drove such women further
away from exploration of the male territory of Scripture and
towards internal devotion; back to love and away from the mind. It
is not coincidental, that this took the form of disconnecting women
from Franciscan influence, and putting them under Dominican
control. The division of the Franciscan Order into more clearly
defined groupings, resulted in withdrawal of the more spiritual wing
from public life, diminishing their powerful support of for devout
women, and sometimes bringing about their transfer to Dominican
care (as at the Beguinage of Paris). The process of becoming more
institutionalized and clericalized eventually brought about a greater
divide between those Franciscans who supported alternative ways of
life and those who supported order in observance. In France, the
death of Jeanne of Navarre in 1305 deprived spiritually inclined
Franciscans, like Bernard Délicieux, with an important patron.
Conventual Franciscans moved closer to the monarchy and the
establishment of the church; the more radically inclined withdrew
from this activity and disappeared from the public eye. Those who
remained in positions of influence became closer to the Dominicans,
who at that stage identified with the political agendas of the King.
In 1310 Marguerite Porete was marginalized and then executed,
signaling an end to a period of development and creativity. Her
execution also marked a temporary end to the relative freedom of
religious devotion in the Low Countries. Her trial and execution in
Paris brought that region under a tighter supervision and control of
monarchical church. Decrees ordering clerics in all the northern area
to remove their support and allow the women to be subjected to
inquisitorial measures finalized these steps. Order was the new
agenda, and these documents enable us to understand how it was
applied.
188
With the election of John XXII in 1316 the Dominicans assumed a
dominant influence in the French court. The king and the papacy
were now working in mutual agreement and respect and the
Dominicans in France embodied this collaboration. The official
ordering and silencing of devout women, that started with the trial
of Marguerite Porete was concluded in the council of Vienne. The
shift in the beginning of the fourteenth century was not towards
greater suspicion, but to a greater control. If during the previous
century clerics criticized spiritual ecstatic women, in the beginning
of the fourteenth century we witness a development of tools of
regulation. These tools were not perfected until later in the
fourteenth century, but already evident in the decrees of the council
of Vienne.
189
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