June 1^st, 1310 – the day she was burnt at the stake for heresy in Paris – is the only surviving chronological information about Marguerite Porete. Porete was a theologian who, rather than acting as a vessel for the divine Voice as claimed by Hildegard of Bingen, declared she spoke in the name of the «free and simple souls», the invisible community to which she felt she belonged. Porete’s Miroir des ames simples, written in Old French, is a text now considered «incomparably original» (Peter Dronke) and of an uncommon poetical and dramatic sensibility — a treatise on self-consciousness, religious piety, and an example of theology influenced by the Brethren of the Free Spirit. At the heart of the treatise is Divine Love, who «does not consider shame or honour, poverty or wealth, hell or paradise» and who succeeds to «look upon Death from the eyes of Reason» (the personification of scholastic philosophy).

Porete’s theology is willingly paradoxical and reflects in a simple language neoplatonic matters, themes of mysticism, the aspiration towards the annihilation of the self, and the topos of the distant lover of chivalric literature — in this case, God. Against the lesser Church of the powerful and learned, Porete elevates the idea of a true Church, «simple and invisible», bound by sole charity, without dogmas nor demonstrations. «Even if you theologians and clerics possess ingenuity, you will not be able to understand if you do not walk upon the path of humility, if Love and Faith will not help you to go beyond Reason…». Porete did not deign to respond to the accusations brought forth by the Inquisition: she preached heretical doctrines, she violated the law which prohibited women to teach publicly, and, above all, she presented a conception of religion as inner and artless faith, free of the constraints of the Church’s hierarchy. Her death sentence was inevitable. A single manuscript survived her excommunication: often copied in secret, but proved to be enough to ensure her fame for two centuries. After that, a long silence covered Porete’s memory until the rediscovery of her work in 1984 by latinist and medievalist Peter Dronke.


Translated by Fabrizio Luca Giannuolo.