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Christological transformation in The Mirror of Souls, by Marguerite Porete
Theology Today, Apr 2003 by Babinsky, Ellen L
Theology Today 60 (2003): 34-48
During the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, medieval Europe witnessed a remarkable flourishing of women known as beguines, who were committed to holy living unaffiliated with any formal monastic order. A beguine might live alone or in small communities of ten or less, in larger communities of over fifty women, or in very large communities of four hundred or more. These communities flourished in Paris, as well as northern France, what is now Belgium and the Netherlands, Germany, southern France, and northern Italy.
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The beguine form of spiritual life, however, faced an ambivalent social context. On the one hand, beguines were honored locally for their piety and good works. They educated the young, cared for the sick in hospitals, and prayed for those in purgatory. On the other hand, the beguines faced ongoing suspicion and criticism from secular authorities. For example, in the mid-thirteenth century, one detractor from the University of Paris insisted that, since beguines were not an established ecclesiastical order, they ought not to live as if they were. They ought not to wear special dress or cut their hair. He declared that the beguines' behavior violated church order and therefore deserved excommunication.1 Criticism also was directed at the beguines from diocesan and monastic circles, leading eventually to the papal condemnations at the Council of Vienne in 1311. One decree explicitly condemned the beguines' religious status, citing them as violating the 1215 ban on new orders. Another decree equated beguines with the Free Spirit heresy that was accused of radical mysticism and antinomianism. From the fourteenth century to beyond the fifteenth, the Vienne condemnation was unevenly enforced, and beguines continued to be both revered and vilified. Such was the context from which emerged one extraordinarily rich spiritual text, The Mirror of Simple Souls, by Marguerite Porete, written sometime in the late thirteenth century.
We know little about the life of Marguerite Porete; nonetheless, the brief account of her arrest, condemnation, and death is striking in its portrayal of an intrepid woman's spiritual strength. On 1 June 1310 in Paris, Marguerite Porete, a beguine referred to in the trial documents as a "pseudo-mulier," was burned at the stake as a relapsed heretic, having written a book "filled with errors and heresies."2 According to the chronicler, her demeanor to the last was such that many were moved to tears at the sight of such piety. Her book, The Mirror of Simple Souls, had been condemned twice and burned before her eyes as if in literal anticipation of what was to come. She had languished in prison for a year and a half before submitting to the flames. The inquisitor had summoned the beguine theologian numerous times to appear before the inquisitorial commission, but she had remained in her cell, persistently refusing to appear in court. He himself went personally to conduct her from her cell to his court, and, even though she was fully aware that she was before the inquisitor himself, she contumaciously refused to speak or swear the oath according to the inquisitorial regulations. The inquisitor offered her the benefits of absolution if she would recant her views, but Marguerite Porete did not care either to ask for or to accept this absolution. She remained silent from the first day of her imprisonment until her final fiery release. Later, representatives of the theological tribunal carried portions from Porete's book to the Council of Vienne, where it was determined that such excerpts served to document the existence of the Free Spirit heresy, which was then condemned.
Marguerite Porete's Mirror of Simple Souls offers us a powerful and fearless portrayal of how the soul is transformed into her exemplar, Jesus Christ; that is, the soul becomes by grace what Jesus Christ is by nature, truly human and truly divine. This essay highlights three components of this spiritual transformation, demonstrating the daring dynamic of this process in the beguine's theology. First, I outline Porete's portrayal of the trinitarian relation of the faculties of the soul. Next, I sketch the contours of the christological themes of the soul's transformation. Finally, we shall see that the goal of the text itself is the reader's own transformation. Porete's designation of Jesus Christ as exemplar is the divine energy driving the soul's transformation. It constitutes the transforming nature of the text. My concluding remarks briefly reflect on the significance of the Mirror for spiritual living in our time.
THE TRINITARIAN NATURE OF THE SOUL
Marguerite Porete's Mirror opens by declaring that the soul received the image of the Trinity at creation, which sets the conditions for the soul's spiritual transformation from sinful separation from God into incorporation in the divine life itself, a return of the soul to her eternal preexistence in God.3 The nature of the soul-specifically, the relations among the faculties of the soul-provides the framework for this transformation. In sketching Porete's trinitarian portrait of the soul, I will attend to the more doctrinal aspects of the Mirror. First, I outline the text's portrayal of the doctrine of the procession of the Persons of the Trinity. Then I show that the faculties of the soul mirror the procession of the Persons of the Trinity.
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