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The daring life of Marguerite Porete ended on the first of June, 1310, when she was burned at the stake as a heretic at the Place de Grève in Paris.1 This was the culmination of a long, arduous and undeniably politically motivated ordeal, presided over by inquisitor William of Paris, confessor to the King of France.2 Nevertheless, she refused to compromise her beliefs and paid with her life. A Beguine from the northern border city of Valencinnes, she stayed steadfast until the last, standing by the work that had condemned her to death.3Le Mirouer des simples âmes anienties et qui seulement demeurent en vouloir et désir d'amour, or The Mirror of Simple Souls, as it is referred to in English, was written around 1290 in the Picardy dialect at a time when all serious literary and clerical treatises appeared in Latin. The full translation of its title, "The Mirror of Simple Souls, brought to nothing, and who live only in the will and desire of Love," already hints at the complexity of the text, its enigmatic and even erotic qualities.4
In a mixture of styles and philosophies current at the work's inception, Marguerite Porete details a philosophy of humanity's mystical relationship with the divine in a manner not dissimilar to those of Saints Augustine or Paul.5,6 Yet, her effort was judged sacrilegious by the Catholic Church. The enigma of her life, exacerbated by the trial of heresy and the destruction of all known copies of her manuscript, is at the heart of the text itself. Both singular in its message and theologically akin to certain aspects of the mystical tradition of the mendicant orders and to the independent Beguines,Mirror of Simple Souls is nearly impossible to classify as belonging to any spiritual tradition, though it is a deeply spiritual text.
The Beguine tradition was active between the twelfth and sixteenth centuries in northern Europe, particularly the Low Countries, the Rhineland, and northern France.7,8 Vaguely affiliated with the Free Spirit movement, which had itself been under scrutiny from the Church for suspected heresy, the Beguines (and their male counterparts the Beghards) were a community of laypersons who did not take official orders, but who chose nevertheless to devote themselves to a spiritual life. In contrast to...