The Mirror of Simple Souls

Introduction

Marguerite Porete, a beguine from Hainaut, wrote the book in Old French around 1300 as a conversation among allegorical figures, mixing prose dialogue with poems. Its most provocative claim is that the “annihilated” soul no longer needs to practise the virtues or rely on the Church’s works, because its will has become entirely God’s; inquisitors read this as heresy. The book was condemned and burned at Valenciennes; Porete kept circulating it, refused to answer the Paris inquisitor and was burned there on 1 June 1310. The text survived anonymously in Latin, Italian and Middle English versions and was identified as hers only in 1946 by Romana Guarnieri.