"Lover Extraordinaire: Holy Spirit in Marguerite Porete’s The Mirror of Simple Souls"

By Ellen L. Babinsky

A 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 opportunities without realizing that it might be more fruitful to read slowly and to pause from time to time. More importantly, it may take several readings before one can have a better idea of what is being said. The question of how the Holy Spirit is to be understood in the Mirror offers us a case in point. In The Mirror of Simple Souls we encounter portrayals of the Holy Spirit as Lover, as the fullness or totality of Trinity, and as Love itself. The Holy Spirit is named explicitly as the Lover of the Soul toward the end of her book:

Love has made me find by nobility

These verses of a song.

It is [of] the Deity pure,

About whom Reason knows not how to speak,

And of a Lover,

Which I have without a mother,

Who is the issue

Of God the Father

And of God the Son also.

His name is Holy Spirit,

From whom I possess such joining in the heart,

That He causes joy to remain in me …

Lover, you have grasped me in your love,

To give me your great treasure,

That is, the gift of your own self,

Which is divine goodness.2

The Holy Spirit named as Lover comes almost at the end of the text as we have it; in fact, this chapter ends with the word “explicit” which ordinarily signifies the end of a manuscript. The chapters which follow may have been added later. Porete’s designation of “Lover” for the Holy Spirit is something of a surprise; in many medieval mystical writings the Lover of the soul is Christ. Christ as the Bridegroom of the soul has a long textual history; but we have here the clear designation of the Holy Spirit as the Lover of the soul.

Much earlier in the text Porete offers her basic understanding of the Trinity. Love speaks:

She [the Soul] knows, says Love, by the virtue of Faith, that God is all

Power, and all Wisdom, and perfect Goodness, and that God the Father has accomplished the work of the Incarnation, and the Son also and the

Holy Spirit also. Thus, God the Father has joined human nature to the person of God the Son, and the person of God the Son has joined [human nature] to the person of Himself, and God the Holy Spirit has joined [human nature] to the person of God the Son.3

Porete pushes this assertion to mean that because the soul possesses the Holy Spirit, the soul therefore possesses the fullness of the Trinity, as the Holy Spirit declares:

And since [the soul] possesses all that I have, and the Father and the Son have nothing which I do not have in myself … thus this Soul possesses in her … the treasure of the Trinity, hidden and enclosed within her.4 Holy Spirit, explicitly identified as Love, occurs later in the text:

Love has carried [the Soul] from the place where she was, in leaving her senses in peace and so has seized their use. This is the completion of her pilgrimage … This is the captivity of the high sea, for she [the soul] lives without her will and so she is in being above her deliberation. Otherwise she would be reproached by the sovereign who places her there without herself, and so she would have war against Love, who is the Holy Spirit.5 Here the text identifies the Holy Spirit as Love. Further on we encounter this interesting, lengthy statement which seems to be an original formulation by Porete: [God] is one eternal substance, one pleasing fruition, one loving conjunction. The Father is eternal substance; the Son is pleasing fruition; the Holy

Spirit is loving conjunction. This loving conjunction is from eternal substance and from pleasing fruition through divine love … Divine love of unity generates in the … Soul, eternal substance, pleasing fruition, loving conjunction. From the eternal substance the memory possesses the power of the Father. From the pleasing fruition the intellect possesses the wisdom of the Son. From the loving conjunction the will possesses the goodness of the Holy Spirit. This goodness of the Holy Spirit conjoins [the will] in the love of the Father and of the Son. This conjunction places the Soul in being without being which is Being. Such Being is the Holy Spirit Himself, who is Love from the Father and from the Son.6

In this passage, Holy Spirit, clearly named Love, functions as a rich wellspring for the beguine’s thought.

These citations show us that the Holy Spirit is the Lover of the Soul, the fullness of the Trinity, and divine Love. We can now see that the Holy Spirit functions in a major role in the Mirror. The first thing to note is that the words “the Holy Spirit” and “Love” are used interchangeably. This interchangeable use occurs early in the text in a subtle manner. Since Holy Spirit is Love, then, I believe it is appropriate to understand “Holy Spirit” each time the term “Love” is used in the text. It becomes clear that the Holy Spirit has written the book:

I have said, says this Soul, that Love caused [the book] to be written through human knowledge and through willing it by the transformation of my intellect with which I was encumbered, as it appears in this book.

For Love made the book in unencumbering my spirit.7

Since Holy Spirit is Love, it then becomes clear that Holy Spirit is the primary speaker, teacher, and actor in this book. And so it is that the Holy Spirit powerfully transforms the reader, calling the reader to journey into the divine life.

The reader may be transformed by the Holy Spirit in the reading of the Mirror,

but not before she experiences a certain amount of frustration in the enterprise. Many willing students have wilted in the face of the daunting verbal tidal wave. Those readers, on the other hand, who patiently read to the end of the text are more likely to find some footing in Porete’s deep waters—or rather, fertile wetlands and estuaries. Because we have only this one text, the task of understanding is made more difficult. We have nothing else with which to make a comparison. Multiple readings bring certain aspects to light which were not apparent before and which may contribute to the transformative possibility of the text.

A closing reflection seems appropriate. In reading Porete’s text, it occurred to me that the Mirror offers a deep trust that the Holy Spirit hears, no, knows our prayers before we find the words. The Apostle Paul tells us in his Letter to the Romans that, “the Spirit helps us in our weakness; for we do not know how to pray as we ought, but that very Spirit intercedes with sighs too deep for words. And God, who searches the heart, knows what the mind of the Spirit is, because the Spirit intercedes for the saints according to the will of God.”8 I believe Marguerite Porete understood.

NOTES

1. Marguerite Porete, The Mirror of Simple Souls; translated and introduced by Ellen L. Babinsky, preface by Robert E. Lerner. Classics of Western Spirituality, (Mahwah, N.J.: Paulist Press, 1993).

2. Mirror, Chapter 122, p. 199.

3. Mirror, Chapter 14, p. 96.

4. Mirror, Chapter 42, p. 122.

5. Mirror, Chapter 110, p. 182 (emphasis mine).

6. Mirror, Chapter 115, p. 185 (emphasis mine).

7. Mirror, Chapter 119, p. 195.

8. Romans 8:26-27.

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).