The Mirror of Simple Souls

Author:

Marguerite Porete

Form:

mystical dialogue-treatise

Approx. date:

c. 1295 CE

Marguerite Porete (c. 1250–1310), the Beguine of Hainaut who was burned alive in Paris on June 1, 1310 for refusing to recant or withdraw her book — the only medieval mystical writer condemned to death by name for the contents of a treatise still extant. The Mirror of Simple Souls is a dialogue of seven personified speakers (the Soul, Love, Reason, Free Will, the Virtues, Holy Church the Less, Holy Church the More) tracing the seven stages by which the soul is annihilated into Love and crosses into a freedom beyond the works of the Virtues. THE FULL MIRROR IS NOW COMPLETE — Sections I-XV shipped, covering both Prologues, all 20 divisions of the body, M.N.'s closing signed gloss (M en Dieu desormes N), and M.N.'s Translator's Epilogue (~56K English words total). All in-text M.N. signed glosses found in Kirchberger 1927 have been rendered with footnoted attribution. Section I covers the Translator's Prologue by 'M.N.,' Marguerite's Author's Prologue with the three named approving readers (Brother John of Querayn OFM, Dom Frank of Villiers OCist, Master Godfrey of Fontaines), Division I (the king-loved-by-a-distant-lady image), Division II (charity and the commandments), and the opening three chapters of Division III — climaxing in the Soul's manumission speech ("I take my leave of you, Virtues, for evermore") with M.N.'s signed gloss explaining the reversal of mastery between Soul and Virtues. Section II continues with Division III chapters IV-XI: the character of the freed Soul (what she no longer regards; how she is mortified of all outward desire; how she has nothing of will); the twelve proper names Love gives her (Most Marvelous, Unknown, Most Innocent of the Daughters of Jerusalem, ... Forgetful); and the first seven of the Soul's nine points (none may find her; she saves herself by faith without works; she is alone in love — the phoenix; she does naught for God; she leaves naught for God; none may teach her; men may not rob her). Five further signed M.N. glosses in this section, including M.N.'s long defense of the theologically explosive desires not masses, sermons, fastings, or prayers sentence which contributed to Marguerite's condemnation. Source: the medieval Middle English translation by 'M.N.' (later 14th c.), as edited by Clare Kirchberger from BL Add. 37790 + Bodleian 505 + St John's Cambridge MSS (London: Burns Oates & Washbourne, 1927). Per recent scholarship (Lerner; the Brill Companion to Marguerite Porete 2017; Hasenohr's 1999 Valenciennes fragments), M.N.'s exemplar is now considered the best surviving witness to Marguerite's lost original — closer to her own dialect than the c. 1500 Loire-valley Chantilly Old French recension. The Old French critical edition (Verdeyen-Guarnieri 1986, CCCM 69) is in copyright; modern English translations (Babinsky 1993, Colledge-Marler-Grant 1999) are also in copyright. Sections II-V planned in subsequent sub-pilots.

• 1Section I — Prologues + Divisions I-III opening — the Soul's manumission from the Virtues

  The two Prologues (M.N.'s Translator's, Marguerite's Author's) and Divisions I-II together with the opening chapters of Division III. Closes with the Soul's manumission speech — 'I take my leave of you, Virtues, for evermore' — the celebrated passage that announces the work's distinctive doctrine.

  5,869 words
• 2Section II — Division III.4-11 — the character of the freed Soul

  Marguerite develops the character of the freed Soul: what she no longer regards (shame, worship, poverty, riches, ease, hell, paradise); the twelve proper names Love gives her; the first seven of the nine points by which the Soul naughted in life may be recognised.

  4,702 words
• 3Section III — Division III.12-15 — Dilige, et quod vis fac

  Completion of the nine-points framework. Reason puts the great difficulty: how is it the Soul gives nature all it asks 'without grudging of conscience'? Contains the famous invocation of Augustine's Dilige, et quod vis fac — 'Love, and do what you will' — as God's own witness to the soul who holds the two cords of faith and love.

  3,220 words
• 4Section IV — Division III.16-22 — three load-bearing pieces

  Closes Division III with three structurally load-bearing pieces: the great catalogue-passages of what the freed Soul has and does not have, the deepening of the naughted doctrine, and the first transitions into the apophatic intensification that opens Division IV.

  3,911 words
• 5Section V — Division IV.1-6 — the apophatic-erotic height

  Marguerite at the height of her apophatic-erotic writing. Six chapters, each carrying one of the Mirror's signature images: the soul on the heights of nothingness, the love that loves without why, the union beyond knowing, the witnessing of the Trinity to the annihilated soul.

  4,275 words
• 6Section VI — Division IV.7-10 — incomprehensibility, complaint, the most

  Closes Division IV. Chapter VII: the incomprehensibility of God, Love's word that all that can be said of God is naught compared to what cannot be said. Chapter VIII: Marguerite's most personally voiced complaint. Chapter IX: 'there where is most of my love, there is most of my treasure.' Chapter X: the catalogue of Trinity-visions, with M.N.'s gloss on usage.

  2,965 words
• 7Section VII — Division V.1-6 — first naming of the Far-Near

  The signature figure Loign-prés (Far-Near) is first named — the Beloved as simultaneously infinitely distant and intimately close. M.N.'s twelfth signed gloss falls in chapter II — his most doctrinally important — distinguishing three manners of unions, the highest being the ravishing-union where (1 Cor 6:17) 'God and the soul is one spirit.'

  3,204 words
• 8Section VIII — Division V.6-11 — the death of Reason

  Six chapters culminating in the death of Reason — one of the Mirror's most dramatic scenes, the moment when the personified faculty that has interrogated Love throughout the dialogue is undone. Opens with the Soul as 'continual spring of divine love' and closes with Reason's astonishment-unto-death.

  4,122 words
• 9Section IX — Division V.12-18 — the planted will; the Red Sea

  Closes Division V. The planted will (the Soul has so planted her will in the Trinity that she may not sin unless she unplants it); the two life-rules (life of spirit vs life of freedom); the Red Sea image ('she has passed the Red Sea and her enemies therein left'); Marguerite's far-reaching 'I disencumber myself of you both of myself and of my fellow Christian.'

  3,543 words
• 10Section X — Divisions X-XII + Division XIII opening — the short central divisions

  The Mirror's short central divisions — X, XI, and the only-chapter Division XII — together with the opening of Division XIII. Unusually compressed prose, dense with image and direct address. Kirchberger's published division numbering preserved with anomalies flagged.

  3,159 words
• 11Section XI — Division XIII.4-5 — M.N.'s thirteenth gloss on the summe

  Closes the central doctrinal stretch of Division XIII. M.N.'s thirteenth signed gloss falls in chapter V — Marguerite's word summe identified by M.N. with the Soul's knowledge of God's goodness, the Holy Ghost's working in her, and the gift of free will.

  1,992 words
• 12Section XII — Division XIV — the seven states of the Soul

  The most important single doctrinal text in the Mirror and the schema by which Marguerite organises the whole work: the seven states of the Soul, from the first state of commandment-keeping through the sixth (the brightened Soul) to the seventh (reserved for after this life).

  3,326 words
• 13Section XIII — Divisions XV-XVII — the Soul under the gaze of Truth

  Three short divisions tightly woven in compressed apophasis: Marguerite reflects on the book itself, on the Soul under the gaze of Truth, and on the Trinitarian charge given to the Soul to withhold the secrets she speaks of.

  2,370 words
• 14Section XIV — Division XVIII — three meditations

  The whole of Division XVIII: three chapters, three kinds of meditation — on the unencumbered Soul whose understanding is in the Trinity; on the working that nature does, and that the Soul accepts; and on the comparison of the freed Soul to a fish in the sea, hidden from view yet wholly in her element.

  3,864 words
• 15Section XV — Divisions XIX-XX + M.N.'s closing gloss and Epilogue

  The closing section. Divisions XIX and XX, M.N.'s signed m en dieu desormes n closing gloss (his fourteenth), and M.N.'s Translator's Epilogue. The book reaches its declared end; M.N.'s authorial frame closes with his own pastoral commendation of the work to its readers.

  3,659 words

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