Marguerite Porete lived in northern France during the 13th century, at a time when the church held tight control over spiritual authority — and when laywomen began to carve out spaces of their own. She was part of a larger, loosely connected movement of women called Beguines — pious, often unmarried women who lived in communities or alone, dedicated to prayer, care for the sick, and mystical contemplation. They weren’t nuns, and they didn’t follow formal vows. That made them hard to pin down — and sometimes threatening to church hierarchy.
Marguerite’s book, The Mirror of Simple Souls, was written not in Latin, the language of scholars, but in Old French — for readers like herself. It is no tidy treatise. Instead, it’s a dialogue between allegorical figures: Love, Reason, the Soul, and others. Through their voices, Marguerite explores the stages of the soul’s journey toward God — all the way to a mysterious state she calls annihilation.
"Love makes herself known by forgetting herself."
— The Mirror of Simple Souls
For Marguerite, the truly loving soul must empty itself of self-will — so completely that it no longer acts out of desire, fear, or even a need for salvation. Such a soul, she writes, “wills nothing of God’s will, for she has no will.” This was dangerous language. In an age of obedience and hierarchy, Marguerite described a soul so united with God that it no longer needed the Church, sacraments, or even reason.
She refused to recant her ideas, even after her book was condemned as heretical. In 1310, she was burned at the stake in Paris as a heretic — anonymous, unrepentant, and unafraid. Her name was nearly lost. But her words survived.
“The soul that is annihilated and stripped of will is not content with anything less than God Himself.”
— The Mirror of Simple Souls
Today, readers and scholars return to Marguerite not just for her defiance, but for her voice — lyrical, layered, strange and blazing. She speaks of love as fire, of the soul as mirror, of a God who desires no service but simple being. In doing so, she joins the ranks of other mystics — Meister Eckhart, Hadewijch, Julian of Norwich — but with a voice all her own.
What were the Beguines?
The Beguines were a medieval spiritual movement of laywomen — especially active in the Low Countries, France, and parts of Germany. They weren’t bound by religious vows and could leave their communities at any time. Many lived in begijnhoven — semi-monastic urban dwellings — while others lived independently. They practiced charity, nursing, and prayer, and many engaged in mystical contemplation. Though admired for their piety, they were also scrutinized and sometimes persecuted for their unregulated, female-centered religious life.
Further Reading:
The Mirror of Simple Souls, trans. Ellen Babinsky (Paulist Press, 1993)
Barbara Newman, From Virile Woman to WomanChrist
Amy Hollywood, The Soul as Virgin Wife
Sean L. Field, The Beguine, the Angel, and the Inquisitor
Marguerite Porete, The Mirror of Simple Souls, Chapter 35 (Dialogue of the Soul and Reason).