The seamless glass

09 June 2020

Selected poems Marguerite Porete

'I am God, says Love, for Love is God and God is Love, and this Soul is God by the condition of Love. I am God by divine nature and this Soul is God by righteousness of Love. Thus this precious beloved of mine is taught and guided by me, without herself, for she is transformed into me, and such a perfect one, says Love, takes my nourishment.'

(The Mirror of Souls, Chapter 21: Love answers the argument of Reason for the sake of this book which says that such Souls take leaves of the Virtues)

You were burned at the stake

in the 13th century for not removing your book,

The Mirror of Simple Souls from circulation.

Member of the Beguine movement of mystics,

who practiced the imitation of Christ,

your writing exhibits a resemblance to

Meister Eckhart’s beliefs of finding the Lord

within us. Your only recorded life is that of

your trial for heresy, which was biased

and a farce, due to your book, which remains

to be ahead of its time, which you wrote

in Old French rather than in Latin,

and to whom you gave a copy to the local

Bishop in Chalons-en-Champagne, in 1308,

after which you were handed over to

the Inquisitor of France, the Dominican,

William of Paris, to whom you also refused

to speak to, or any of the other inquisitors,

during your imprisonment and trial.

During the trial a commission of twenty-one

theologians explored a series of fifteen

heretical propositions regarding the book,

but you refused to recant your ideas

and to take the oath exculpating you,

which then lead to your being found guilty,

and sentenced to be burnt at the take

in Paris on the first day of June 1310

at the Place de Greve. The Inquisitor

accused you of being a pseudo-mulier,

a fake woman, although your writing style

is compared to works of the time regarding

courtly love, such as Romance of the Rose,

which is a dreamy visionary allegory,

a love affair, an abstract symbol of female

sexuality, but you chose to depict the soul

needing to become one with God, and you

believed in 'The Annihilated Soul' that

has to give up the rational mind in order

to love God, that such a divine union

constitutes divine grace, and that we return

to God through love, and specifically, agape,

'the highest form of love,' which is 'the love

of God for man and love of man for God.'

Two hundred years later, St. John of the Cross,

would propose similar ideas in his book,

The Ascent of Mount Carmel, but

ARTS AND CULTURE

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