Marguerite Porete: the flame that defied the church
At the end of the thirteenth century, in the mists of Hainaut in present-day Belgium, a woman was born whose soul would burn longer than her body…
Marguerite Porete. We know almost nothing of her origins, no parents, no children, no husband, but this silence itself deepens the mystery of her destiny. In a world where women's voices fade into the murmurs of cloisters, Marguerite raises hers in the fire of thought and prayer.
She belongs to the Beguines, those women who live a life of devotion without the chains of the monastery: they pray, work, and contemplate, while preserving their independence. In this closed and closely watched world, Marguerite stands out for her rare audacity: she writes Le Mirouer des simples âmes (The Mirror of Simple Souls), not in Latin, the language of clerics, but in French, the language of the people, so that the minds of women and the humble might reach God directly.
Her message is radical: the soul united with divine love transcends the sacraments, the priests, and the moral rules imposed by the Church. In this perfect union, the soul is free, silent, and whole. A heresy in the eyes of the authorities, but a vision of absolute love for those who seek God beyond human constraints.
The Church's response is swift and merciless. Her book is condemned and publicly burned, and Marguerite is ordered to recant. She refuses. Her steadfastness leads her to Paris, under the jurisdiction of the Inquisition. For more than a year, she remains silent before her judges, refusing to plead, refusing to submit, recognizing only the judgment of God.
On June 1, 1310, the Place de Grève is set ablaze. Marguerite Porete is bound to the stake. The fire consumes her body, but not her soul nor her thought. Witnesses report her strange serenity: not a cry, not a retraction. Some see madness or the work of the devil; others, the proof of a mystical union with the infinite. This silence in the face of death becomes the final act of her theology: the freedom of the soul cannot be shackled by any earthly power.
Yet her work survives, passed anonymously from hand to hand, copied, translated, read in secret. Centuries pass before the historian Romana Guarnieri reveals, in 1946, the identity of its author. Marguerite Porete then fully enters history, not only as a victim of the Inquisition, but as a visionary figure of Christian mysticism. Her book, a masterpiece of contemplation, would influence mystics such as Meister Eckhart and resonate through debates on religious authority up to the first stirrings of the Reformation.
Marguerite died to affirm that divine love surpasses all hierarchy, that the soul can encounter God directly, and that spiritual truth needs no human intermediary. She left neither grave nor heirs, only the trace of an inner flame that time has not extinguished. Even today, her voice murmurs in the silences of cloisters and libraries: a woman who defied the fire to proclaim that God dwells in the free heart.
SWSP
(Translated from French)