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Women religious virtuosae from the middle ages: a case pattern and analytic model of types
Sociology of Religion, Spring, 2002 by Barbara R. Walters
"66. The Seraph who belonged to me and who had brought me there lifted me up, and instantly I saw in the eyes of the Countenance a seat. Upon it sat Love, richly arrayed, in the form of a queen. The crown that rested on her head was adorned with the high works of the humble, who pay homage to veritable Love and suppose it true that they are not serving and loving Love; this their veracity continually swears, for they know themselves to be nothing, and they know Love alone to be all...
97. The Seraph who had lifted me up placed me upon it [the seat] and said to me: 'Behold, this is Love, whom you see in the midst of the Countenance of God's Nature; she has never yet been shown here to a created being."'
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Margaret Porette
"Margaret Porette's solitary, steadfast, and courageous stand against the mighty engines of cultural authority is bound to evoke the sympathy and enkindle the imagination of every modern reader. There is nothing in the medieval record quite like her story ..." (Emery 1999:viii.). Yet, historians actually know little about Porette; she lived in Hainaut at the beginning of the fourteenth century and was burned at the stake on June 1, 1310, in the Place de la Greve in Paris. Her book, Mirror of Simple Souls, had been condemned as heretical by a commission of twenty-one distinguished teachers of theology in Paris in April of 1310, who advised that the book be destroyed. Seven weeks later a second commission reviewed additional evidence indicating that Bishop Guy had earlier condemned and publicly burned the book in Valenciennes. Bishop Guy had expressly forbid further copies or possession of the book, and Margaret had persisted (Colledge et. al. 1999). The Mirror was written and circulated in vernacular French.
Like Hadewijch, Margaret's writings demonstrate familiarity with the fin' amour tradition and its courtly love poetry. The structure of her book is a dialogue derived in style from Boethius -- De Consolatione Philosophiae -- with interactions between Love, Soul and Reason. The Mirror compares divine illuminations of an elect through perfect love with the dull discursive reason of the clerics. There is no special devotion to the humanity or Passion of Christ, no Eucharistic fervor and she expresses contempt for school learning. Ultimately, she wrote directly against the teachings of the Church in explicit statements, indicating that the Soul in its highest states of union with God -- ecstasy -- could take leave of the Virtues and the Sacraments of the Church. It was for these theological reasons the book was condemned (Emery 1999). She lived among the beguines but there is no evidence that she was part of any beguine group; rather she was one of the vagae, or wanderers. The following passage quotes from the C olledge et. al. (1999:171) translation.
"How the Soul has attained to perfection of being when Holy Church cannot take example from her life. Chapter 134.
Love. Such a Soul, says Love, has attained to the greatest perfection of life, and has come nearer to the Far-Near, when Holy Church can take no example whatever from her life. Then she is beneath the work of Humility, and beyond the work of Poverty, and above the work of Charity. She is so far from the work of the Virtues that she could not make out what they say. But the works of the Virtues are all enclosed within such a Soul, and they obey her with no Gainsaying, and because they are shut away like this, Holy Church is not able to recognize her. Now this same Holy Church praises especially the Dread of God, for this blessed Dread of God is one of the gifts of the Holy Spirit. And nonetheless the Dread of God would destroy the state of freedom, if it could force its way into such a state of being, but perfect freedom has no hesitation."
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