Marguerite Porete has been of interest to those studying medieval women's writing.
15 Facts About Marguerite Porete
1.
2.
Marguerite Porete's life is recorded only in the accounts of her Inquisition trial for heresy at which she was condemned to be burnt at the stake.
3.
The information about Marguerite Porete is probably biased and certainly incomplete.
4.
Marguerite Porete was said to have come from the County of Hainaut, a French-speaking principality in the Holy Roman Empire, but that is uncertain.
5.
Marguerite Porete was associated with the Beguine movement and could therefore travel fairly freely.
6.
Marguerite Porete appears to have written the first version of her book in the 1290s.
7.
One of the taboos that Marguerite Porete had broken was writing the book in Old French, rather than in Latin, and she was ordered not to circulate her ideas or the book again though she continued to do so.
8.
Marguerite Porete was then handed to the Inquisitor of France, the Dominican William of Paris, known as William of Humbert, on the grounds of heresy in spite of her assertion in the book that she had consulted three church authorities about her writings, including the highly-respected Master of Theology Godfrey of Fontaines and had gained their approval.
9.
Marguerite Porete had been arrested with a Beghard, Guiard de Cressonessart, who was put on trial for heresy.
10.
Marguerite Porete refused to speak to William of Paris or any of her other inquisitors during her imprisonment and trial.
11.
The title of Marguerite Porete's book refers to the simple soul which is united with God, who gives only will.
12.
Marguerite Porete says that the Soul must give up Reason, whose logical conventional grasp of reality cannot fully comprehend God and the presence of Divine Love.
13.
Marguerite Porete's vision of the Soul in ecstatic union with God, moving in a state of perpetual joy and peace, is a repetition of the Catholic doctrine of the Beatific Vision albeit experienced in this life, not in the next.
14.
Where Marguerite Porete ran into trouble with some authorities was in her description of the Soul in this state being above the worldly dialectic of conventional morality and the teachings and control of the earthly church.
15.
Marguerite Porete argues that the Soul in such a sublime state is above the demands of ordinary Virtue, not because virtue is not needed but because in its state of union with God virtue becomes automatic.