Marguerite Porete (1250–1310)

Marguerite Porete was born in the county of Hainault in present-day Belgium, around 1248 or 1250. Not much else is known about her early life except that she began her spiritual life as a Béguine. These were lay Catholic women who lived in communal dwellings with other women devoted to the religious life, but did not take formal vows of as a nun. Marguerite is remembered today as the author of the mystical book Mirouer des simples ames anienties (Mirror of Simple Souls), written around 1300. It was structured as a dialogue between personified characters such as Love, Virtue, Reason, and the Soul, a common trope in medieval religious texts. Through the person of Love, Marguerite explored the idea of radical annihilation of the self to experience the divine while still alive. At some time between 1296 and 1306, the Bishop of Cambrai declared the Mirror heretical and ordered all copies of it to be burned in the public square of Valenciennes. Marguerite objected and sent the book to three other theological authorities for their approval. Even though they agreed that the Mirror was technically within the guidelines of the Church, Marguerite and her book were brought before William of Paris, the Grand Inquisitor of France. After a lengthy trial, during which she refused to recant her views, she was found guilty of heresy and burned at the stake.