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Annihilation and Deification in Beguine Theology and Marguerite Porete's Mirror of Simple Souls

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2010

Juan Marin
Juan Marin*
Affiliation:
Harvard University
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Extract

In 1309 ecclesiastical leaders condemned as heresy Marguerite Porete's rejection of moral duty, her doctrine that “the annihilated soul is freed from the virtues.”1 They also condemned her book, the Mirror of Simple Souls, which includes doctrines associated decades earlier with a “new spirit” heresy spreading “blasphemies” such as that “a person can become God” because “a soul united to God is made divine.”2 In his study, The Heresy of the Free Spirit, Robert E. Lerner identifies these two doctrines of annihilation and deification as characteristic of the “free spirit” heresy condemned at the 1311 Council of Vienne. The council claimed that this heresy's sympathizers belonged to an “abominable sect of certain evil men known as beghards and some faithless women called beguines.”3 Lerner found that this group was composed of a disproportionate number of women, including Marguerite Porete. Many of the men were also involved with the group of pious laywomen known as beguines.4 Lerner shows that among those charged with heresy, many sympathized with a “ ‘free-spirit style’ of affective mysticism particularly congenial to thirteenth century religious women.”5 He suggests that beguines in particular radicalized affective spirituality into what he calls an “extreme mysticism.”6 Here I wish to follow Lerner's suggestion that we ought to search for the roots of Porete's doctrines among the beguines. I will argue that distinctive doctrines of annihilation and deification sprouted from a fertile beguine imagination, one that nourished Porete's own distinctive and influential ideas in the Mirror of Simple Souls.7 It is among the beguines that we find the first instance in Christianity of a women's community creating an original form of theological discourse.

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ARTICLES
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Harvard Theological Review , Volume 103 , Issue 1 , January 2010 , pp. 89 - 109
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Copyright © President and Fellows of Harvard College 2010

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References

1 Quod anima adnichilata dat licentiam virtutibus. “Paris Condemnation,” quoted in Joanne Maguire Robinson, Nobility and Annihilation in Marguerite Porete's Mirror of Simple Souls (Albany, N.Y.: State University of New York Press, 2001) 109.

2 Bernard McGinn, The Essential Writings of Christian Mysticism (New York: Modern Library, 2006) 491.

3 McGinn, “Ad Nostrum,” in Essential Writings, 493. See also Robert E. Lerner, The Heresy of the Free Spirit (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1972).

4 Lerner, Heresy, 229, 35.

5 Lerner, introduction to 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, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 1995).

6 Lerner, Heresy, 61 [italics mine].

7 In this I am revisiting some of the ground already covered by Robert E. Lerner in his “The Image of Mixed Liquids in Late Medieval Mystical Thought,” Church History 40 (1971) 403. Lerner's focus is on blurring the line between orthodox and heretical uses of liquid imagery. I will extend the discussion to include beguine authors and their relation to Porete. For Porete's relation to other medieval authors, especially concerning her nobility motif, see Robinson, Nobility and Annihilation, 1–26.

8 Among the many examples that I cannot discuss here we find that “Jacopone da Todi's daring formulations regarding overwhelming love, divine nothingness, and a state of sinlessness beyond all willing suggest interesting comparisons with Angela of Foligno (whose work he may well have known), as well as with the French beguine, Marguerite Porete, with whom he could not have been familiar” (Bernard McGinn, The Flowering of Mysticism: Men and Women in the New Mysticism [New York: Crossroad, 1998] 127). McGinn also finds “daring” expressions in the post-Eckhart fourteenth-century Theologia Deutsch, which brings the text close to “the radical mystical oneing found in mystics like Marguerite Porete and Meister Eckhart” (Bernard McGinn, The Harvest of Mysticism in Medieval Germany [New York: Crossroad, 2005] 402). I cannot argue for, but hope to indirectly illuminate here, how all these can be traced to the beguines’ influence on Franciscan male “beguines” such as Jacopone da Todi and on the Theologia Deutsch via Eckhart. Two women I originally planned to discuss here are Angela of Foligno, whose language of annihilation McGinn describes as “radical,” and Na Prous Boneta, whose claim to divinization not only “must have astonished and horrified” her orthodox examiners, but was part of a “message more dangerous than anything found among the northern Beguines” (McGinn, Flowering of Mysticism, 124, 183).

9 Bernard McGinn, “The Abyss of Love: The Language of Mystical Union among Medieval Women,” in The Joy of Learning and the Love of God: Studies in Honor of Jean Leclercq (ed. E. Rozanne Elder; Kalamazoo, Mich.: Cistercian Publications, 1995) 113.

10 Amy Hollywood, The Soul as Virgin Wife (Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 2001) 24 [italics mine].

11 McGinn, “Abyss of Love,” 108.

12 See ibid. and Bernard McGinn, “Ocean and Desert as Symbols of Mystical Absorption in the Christian Tradition,” JR 74 (1994) 155–81.

13 Robinson, Nobility and Annihilation, xii.

14 Kent Emery, “Margaret Porette and Her Book,” forward to Margaret Porette, The Mirror of Simple Souls (trans. Edmund Colledge et al.; Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 1999) xxiv.

15 See Jean Orcibal, “Le Miroir des simples âmes et la ‘secte’ du Libre Esprit,” Revue de l'histoire des religions 176 (1969) 35–60.

16 Sean Field, “Annihilation and Perfection in Two Sermons by Gilbert of Tournai for the Translation of St. Francis,” Franciscana (Centro Italiano di Studi Sull'Alto Medioevo Spoleto, 1999) 248. My own more recent and extended search came to the same conclusion.

17 Ibid., 256.

18 Ibid. [translation mine].

19 Ibid., 254.

20 For a beguine history that pays attention to significant linguistic elements see Hans Geybel, Vulgariter Beghinae (Turnhout, Belgium: Brepols, 2004). This “vulgar Gallic tongue” is a predecessor of Old French, the vulgar piccardo in which, as Guarnieri suggests, Porete wrote the lost original text of the Mirror (2004, 268). Guarnieri suggests that “French” beguines and Porete would have understood the dialects of beguines such as Beatrice of Nazareth and Hadewijch of Brabant. If Saskia Murk-Jansen's assumption of mutual intelligibility between Dutch and Germanic languages is correct, then all beguine authors I discuss here could have shared a French-Germanic oral background without the need for translation. (Saskia-Murk Jansen, “Hadewijch and Eckhart: Amor Intelligere Est,” in Meister Eckhart and the Beguine Mystics [ed. Bernard McGinn; New York: Continuum, 1994] 17)

21 Hadewijch, The Complete Works (New York: Paulist Press, 1980) 145.

22 Ibid., 90.

23 Jan Van Ruusbroec, Van Den XII Beghinen (Turnhout, Belgium: Brepols, 2000). Ruusbroec appropriates the abyssal language but rejects annihilation in Vanden blinkenden steen, 10. McGinn argues that Ruusbroec qualifies the beguines’ radical language in order to mitigate its unorthodox potential. Mystical Union and Monotheistic Faith: An Ecumenical Dialogue (ed. Moshe Idel and Bernard McGinn; New York: Macmillan, 1989) 79. This leads me to disagree with Paul Verdeyen's claim that Ruusbroec's brothers collected his unpublished writings and published them as “The Twelve Beguines.” R uusbroec and His Mysticism (Collegeville, Minn.: Liturgical Press, 1994). For Ruusbroec to be the author would require us to assume not only that he became more radical in his last years, but also that he picked up an interest in astrology. Verdeyen explains the latter as part of the medieval worldview, adding that Ruusbroec did not reject free will, but does not explain the superior's objections to the text. If instead, as I assume here, the texts are from less orthodox beguine authors, it does explain his objections. For some views that Ruusbroec did not author this text see Teodoro H. Martin, “Notas,” in Juan Ruusbroec, Obras (Madrid: Fundación Universitaria Española, 1984) 10. For another perspective on the text's authorship see Mikel M. Kors, “Ruusbroec en de crisis van de mystiek,” Ons geestelijk erf 75 (2001) 116–24.

24 Ruusbroec, Van Den XII, 63.

25 Hollywood, Soul as Virgin Wife, 29.

26 Beatrice of Nazareth, “Seven Manners of Holy Love,” in The Life of Beatrice of Nazareth (ed. Roger de Ganck; Kalamazoo, Mich.: Cistercian Publications, 1991) 325.

27 Ibid., 331.

28 Ibid., 305.

29 “Atque in Deo penitus transfundi voluntatem.” Bernard, De diligendo Deo 10.28, in Sancti Bernardi Opera (ed. Jean Leclerq et al.; Paris: Editiones Cisterciences, 1957–1977) 3:119. For a comprehensive history of these three metaphors see Jean Pépin, “ ‘Stilla aquae modica multo infusa vino, ferrum ignitum, luce perfusus aer’. L'origine de trois comparaisons familiaires à la théologie mystique médiévale,” Divinitas (Miscellanae André Comb è s) 11 (1967) 331–75.

30 Richard of St. Victor is the other important Western example. For an introduction insisting on the orthodoxy of the doctrine see the chapter on deification in McGinn, Essential Writings. For the ingenious way in which church fathers would have been able to separate wine from water see Pépin, above.

31 McGinn, “Love, Knowledge and Unio Mystica in the Western Christian Tradition,” in Mystical Union and Monotheistic Faith, 79.

32 Beatrice, “Seven Manners,” 305.

33 That is, in Western Christianity. I am not taking into consideration Evagrius's use of the image, for which there is no evidence of transmission (McGinn, “Ocean and Desert,” 158).

34 Beatrice, “Seven Manners,” 202. Quote in Hollywood, Soul as Virgin Wife, 31.

35 Hadewijch, The Complete Works, 244.

36 Hadewijch, Das Buch der Visionen (Stuttgart: Bad-Cannstatt, 1998) 97 [translation mine].

37 Ibid., 96.

38 Hadewijch, The Complete Works, 118

39 Beatrice, “Seven Manners,” 317.

40 “Schwester Catherine,” in Franz-Josef Schweitzer, Der Freiheitsbegriff der deutschen Mystik (Bern: Peter Lang, 1981).

41 Lerner, “Liquids,” 403.

42 “The ‘Sister Catherine’ Treatise,” in Meister Eckart: Teacher and Preacher (ed. Bernard McGinn; trans. Elvira Borgstadt; New York: Paulist Press, 1986) 10.

43 Lerner, “Liquids,” 403. See also the collection Meister Eckhart and the Beguine Mystics (ed. Bernard McGinn; New York: Continuum, 1994).

44 Schweitzer, Freiheitsbegriff, 337.

45 Borgstadt, “Sister Catherine,” 358.

46 Ibid., 385.

47 Marguerite Porete, Le Mirouer de simples â mes (ed. Romana Guarnieri and Paul Verdeyen; Brepols: Turnholti, 1986) 326.

48 Marguerite Porete, Mirror of Simple Souls (trans. Ellen L. Babinsky; New York: Paulist Press, 1993) 192; eadem, The Mirror of Simple Souls (trans. Edmund Colledge et al.; Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 1999) 144 [last translation mine].

49 Porete, Mirror of Simple Souls (trans. Babinsky) 192.

50 Borgstadt, “Sister Catherine,” 12.

51 Porete, Mirror of Simple Souls (trans. Babinsky) 223.

52 Ibid., 90.

53 McGinn, “Introduction,” 13.

54 Michael Sells, Mystical Languages of Unsaying (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994) 131. See also Hollywood, Soul as Virgin Wife, ch. 4.

55 Schweitzer, Freiheitsbegriff, 337 [translation mine].

56 Ibid., 337.

57 See Sells, above.

58 James C. Franklin, Mystical Transformations: The Imagery of Liquids in the Work of Mechthild von Magdeburg (London: Associated University Presses, 1978).

59 Hollywood, Soul as Virgin Wife, 79.

60 For an introduction to the latter see Mary Jeremy Finnegan, The Women of Helfta: Scholars and Mystics (Athens, Ga.: University of Georgia Press, 1991).

61 Saskia Murk-Jansen, Brides in the Desert (New York: Orbis, 1998) 65–68. See also Caroline Walker Bynum, Jesus as Mother (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984).

62 Frank Tobin, “Mechthild of Magdeburg and Meister Eckhart: Points of Coincidence,” in Beguine Mystics, 54.

63 Grundmann, Movements; Tobin, “Mechthild of Magdeburg,” 47.

64 Tobin, “Mechthild of Magdeburg,” 55.

65 For Beatrice see especially the seventh of her seven stages.

66 Porete, Mirror of Simple Souls (trans. Babinsky), 158.

67 Elsewhere I intend to address in depth other uniquely Poretian concepts such as “grace,” which translators assume is the same as the scholastic concept. I briefly discuss grace here and, in more detail, the feudal context in which Poretian “grace” subverts scholastic gratia by becoming courteous “gracefulness.”

68 Verdeyen, Ruusbroec and his Mysticism, 150 [translation mine].

69 Mechthild von Magdeburg, Das fliessende Licht der Gottheit (ed. Hans Neumann; Munich: Artemis, 1990) 239.

70 Ibid., 30.

71 Ibid., 256.

72 McGinn, Union, 78.

73 McGinn, Harvest, 296.

74 McGinn, Union, 79.

75 Ibid., 79.

76 Hadewijch, The Complete Works, 252.

77 Porete, Mirror of Simple Souls (trans. Babinsky) 128.

78 Hollywood, Soul as Virgin Wife, 109.

79 Verdeyen, Ruusbroec and his Mysticism, 82.

80 Porete, Mirror of Simple Souls (trans. Babinsky) 104, 224.

81 Porete, Mirror of Simple Souls (trans. Colledge) 41.

82 Porete, Mirror of Simple Souls (trans. Babinksy) 129.

83 Marguerite Porete, Lo specchio delle anime semplici (Classici del pensiero cristiano; Cinisello Balsamo, Milan: San Paolo, 1994).

84 Porete, Mirror of Simple Souls (trans. Babinksy) 161.

85 Ibid., 228.

86 Verdeyen, Ruusbroec and his Mysticism, 244.

87 Porete, Mirror of Simple Souls (trans. Babinksy) 125.

88 Ibid., 156.

89 Ibid.

90 Ibid., 200.

91 Porete, Mirror of Simple Souls (trans. Colledge) 41.

92 Mechthild, Fliessende Licht, 234.

93 E.g., ibid., 236.

94 Porete, Mirouer de Simples Ames (ed. Guarnieri and Verdeyen) 162.

95 Ibid., 166.

96 Porete, Mirror of Simple Souls (trans. Babinsky) 168.

97 Porete, Mirouer de simples â mes (ed. Guarnieri and Verdeyen) 260.

98 Porete, Mirror of Simple Souls (trans. Babinsky) 132.

99 Porete, Mirouer de simples â mes (ed. Guarnieri and Verdeyen) 344.

100 Porete, Mirror of Simple Souls (trans. Babinksy) 113.

101 Romana Guarnieri, “Beghinismo d'oltralpe e Bizzochismo italiano tra il secolo XIV e il secolo XV,” Analecta tertii ordinis regularis sancti Francisci 17 (1984) 1. See also eadem, Donna e chiesa tra mistica e istituzioni (Rome: Storia e Letteratura, 2004).

102 Lerner, Heresy, 242.

103 Emery, “Margaret Porette,” xxiii; Guarnieri, Donna e Chiesa; Paolo Simoncelli suggests that a Catalan version of the Mirror may have once existed. He does so in his study of the circulation in the Catalonian region of a few extracts from Porete via Bartolomeo Cordoni's Dialogue of the Union of God with the Soul. Paolo Simoncelli, “Il ‘Dialogo dell'unione spirituale di Dio con l'anima’ tra alumbradismo spagnolo e prequietismo italiano,” Anuario de l'Istituto storico italiano per l' età moderna e contemporanea 29–30 (1977–1998) 565–601; Elena Botinas i Montero et al., Les Beguines (Barcelona: Abadia de Montserrat, 2003); La perle evangelique (ed. Daniel Vidal; Grenoble, France: Jerome Millon, 1997)

104 Hollywood, Soul as Virgin Wife, 263; McGinn, Flowering, ix.