Honoring Professor David Johnson
Lover Extraordinaire: Holy Spirit in Marguerite Porete’s The Mirror of Simple Souls Ellen L. Babinsky
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strong Christian women’s movement emerged during the 12th and 13th centuries in Western Europe. This movement involved Cistercian and Dominican nuns, Franciscan women called Poor Clares, and beguines, to name a few. Beguines drew attention particularly because these women did not fit set categories. They formed their own communities in various places, many in northern France and Belgium. Some church leaders esteemed beguines as holy women and other leaders suspected they were heretics. In the northern French areas, beguines were dependent upon regional or local protection, both secular and religious. One beguine, Marguerite Porete, remains mysterious. We do not know where Marguerite came from, nor do we know when she wrote her book, The Mirror of Simple Souls.1 She was most likely a solitary beguine, meaning she had no status as a member of a particular beguine house, and she thus received no official protection of any kind. She was probably an itinerant teacher/preacher in the region of Hainaut in northern France, and she very likely expounded her teachings to small groups of interested listeners. Her daring statements regarding union with God were condemned as heresy, yet her book was copied, translated, and preserved; however, the book was burned in her presence around 1306 by the Bishop of Cambrai. In 1308 Marguerite was arrested and left in prison for a year and half. The official condemnation of Marguerite was declared on May 31, 1310, and she was given over to the flames on June 1, 1310. What Marguerite Porete states about the Holy Spirit only once, or perhaps a few times, may carry sufficient interpretive weight to affect how the text is understood. These gems may be found in a sentence, in a subordinate clause, or in the juxtaposition of words. Suffice it to say, the reader could read past these opportu-
Ellen Babinsky is Professor Emerita of Church History at Austin Seminary where she taught from 1988-2009; she also served as Associate Dean for Student Academic Affairs. She translated Marguerite Porete’s The Mirror of Simple Souls (Classics of Western Spirituality series, 1993). 20
