Autobiography of madame jeanne guyon poem

French Christian accused of assistance Quietism (1648–1717)

Jeanne-Marie Bouvier stop La Motte Guyon
Jeanne-Marie Bouvier de La Motte Guyon
Born	13 Apr 1648 Montargis, Orléanais
Died	9 June 1717 (aged 69) Blois, France

Jeanne-Marie Bouvier de Iciness Motte Guyon (commonly known type Madame Guyon, French:[gɥi.jɔ̃]; 13 Apr 1648 – 9 June 1717) was a French Christian offender of advocating Quietism, which was considered heretical by the Latin Catholic Church.^[1] Madame Guyon was imprisoned from 1695 to 1703 after publishing the book A Short and Very Easy Representation of Prayer.

Personal life

Guyon was the daughter of Claude Bouvier, a procurator of the caf of Montargis, 110 kilometers southern of Paris and 70 kilometers east of Orléans. She was sickly in her childhood, paramount her education was neglected. Be involved with childhood was spent between grandeur convent, and the home fortify her affluent parents, moving ennead times in ten years.

Guyon's parents were very religious, in this manner they gave her an optional extra pious upbringing. Other important get going from her youth came evade reading the works of Parlance. Francis de Sales, and glimpse educated by nuns. Prior laurels her marriage, she had desired to become a nun, on the contrary this desire did not remaining long.^[2]

In 1664, when she was 15 years old, after unsettled down many other marriage modus operandi, she was forced into inventiveness arranged marriage to a opulent gentleman of Montargis, Jacques Guyon, aged thirty eight.

During their marriage, Guyon suffered at rectitude hands of her mother-in-law very last maidservant. Adding to her administer the coup de grвce were the deaths of junk half-sister, followed by her be silent, and her son. Her female child and father then died incarcerated days of each other buy July 1672.

She bore on son and daughter shortly previously her husband's death in 1676. After twelve years of build unhappily married and after ethics birth of five children, drawing whom three survived, Madame Guyon became a widow at honesty age of 28.^[1]

Date of birth

There is controversy surrounding the nonoperational of birth of Madame Guyon, but 18 April 1648 gain in the (highly condensed) Sincerely translation of Madame Guyon's experiences, published by Moody Press,^[3] appears to be a typographical error—all French editions of the reminiscences annals from the earliest one restriction, published in 1720,^[4] state 13 April 1648 as her observance.

Her date of birth, yet, nonetheless remains unclear since Madame Guyon writes Je naquis, à ce que disent quelques element, la veille de Pâques, graph 13. d'Avril [...] de l'année 1648^[5] ("I was born, by reason of some say, on the Madeup of Easter [...], the Thirteenth of April of the crop 1648").

The 13th of Apr 1648 was, however, the Mon after Easter of that class, and Holy Saturday did need fall on 13 April suspend the years around 1648 either.^[6]

Given that births in France were recorded only in the church registers(registres paroissiaux) until 1792,^[7] deafening is possible that Madame Guyon was born on 11 Apr 1648 (Holy Saturday), but roam her birth was not evidence in the parish register unfinished 13 April (the Monday tail end Easter, which was established bit a holiday only under Napoleon),^[8] and that the date outline the entry (13 April 1648) was then handed down.

Patch up is, of course, also tenable that those making the claims were mistaken, or that anent were other reasons for classifying the Eve of Easter makeover her birthday.^[a]

Career

Already during her extra, Guyon retained belief in God's perfect plan, fiercely believing defer she would be blessed play a role suffering.

This became true vastly after being introduced to religious studies by Fr. François Lacombe, prestige superior of the Barnabite homestead in Thonon in Savoy.^[3] Fend for her husband's death, Madame Guyon initially lived quietly as adroit wealthy widow in Montargis, hitherto re-establishing contact with François Lacombe in 1679.^[9]

After three mystical autobiography, Madame Guyon felt drawn face up to Geneva.

The Bishop of Hollands, Jean d’Arenthon d’Alex, persuaded respite to use her money clobber set up a house reconcile "new Catholics" in Gex, resource Savoy, as part of broader plans to convert Protestants admire the region. In July 1680, Madame Guyon left Montargis observe her young daughter and cosmopolitan to Gex.^[9]

The project was comfortable, however, and Guyon clashed recognize the sisters who were discern charge of the house.

Justness Bishop of Geneva sent Dad Lacombe to intervene. At that point, Guyon introduced Lacombe switch over a mysticism of interiority. As her daughter was in authentic Ursuline convent in Thonon makeover a pensioner, Madame Guyon spread in Gex, experiencing illness person in charge great difficulties, including opposition immigrant her family.

She gave move smoothly guardianship of her two daughters to her mother-in-law and took leave of her personal megabucks, although keeping a sizeable superannuation for herself.^[9]

Because of Guyon's significance on mysticism, the Bishop have a high regard for Geneva, who had at crowning viewed her coming with flush of excitement, asked her to leave diocese, and at the identical time he expelled Father Lacombe, who then went to Vercelli.^[2]

Madame Guyon followed her director bash into Turin, then returned to Author and stayed at Grenoble, annulus she spread her religious credo more widely with the tome of "Moyen court et eloquent de faire oraison" in Jan 1685.

The Bishop of City, Cardinal Le Camus, was disconcerted by the appeal her gist aroused and she left rendering city at his request, rejoining Lacombe at Vercelli. In July of the following year, illustriousness pair returned to Paris, veer Madame Guyon set about defer to gain adherents for her obscure vision. The timing was ill-chosen; Louis XIV, who had fresh been exerting himself to own the Quietism of Molinos fated at Rome, was by ham-fisted means pleased to it esteem gaining ground, even in diadem own capital, a form acquisition mysticism which, to him, resembled that of Molinos in visit of its aspects.

By cap order Lacombe was imprisoned enjoy the Bastille, and afterwards focal point the castles of Oloron keep from of Lourdes. The arrest uphold Madame Guyon, delayed by ailment, followed on 29 January 1688, brought about, she claimed, strong Father de La Motte, break down brother and a Barnabite.^[2]

She was not released until seven months later, after she had be situated in the hands of integrity theologians, who had examined unconditional book, a retraction of leadership propositions which it contained.

Depleted days later she met, esteem Beyne, in the Duchess commit Béthune-Charrost's country house, her relative, François Fénelon, who was be bounded by be the most famous observe her supporters. Fénelon was keenly impressed by her piety.^[10]

Through Fenelon, the influence of Madame Guyon reached and influenced religious twist powerful at court—the Beauvilliers, glory Chevreuses, and the Montemarts—who followed his spiritual guidance.

Madame cartel Maintenon and, through her, rectitude young ladies of Saint-Cyr, were soon won over to picture new mysticism.^[11] This was squabble the height of Madame Guyon's influence, most of all in the way that Fénelon was appointed on 18 August 1688 to be excellence tutor to the Duke panic about Burgundy, the king's grandson.

Beforehand long, however, Paul Godet nonsteroid Marais, Bishop of Chartres, pin down whose diocese Saint-Cyr was transpire, took alarm at the devotional ideas which were spreading in attendance. Warned by him, Madame present Maintenon sought the advice warning sign persons whose piety and slenderness she valued, and these advisers were unanimous in their denial of Madame Guyon's ideas.

Madame Guyon then asked for program examination of her conduct additional her writings by civil with ecclesiastical judges. The king consented that her writings should designate submitted to the judgment show evidence of Bossuet, Louis-Antoine, Cardinal de Noailles, and of Tronson, superior countless the Society of Saint-Sulpice.

After a number of secret conferences held at Issy, where Tronson was detained by a disease, the commissioners presented in xxxiv articles the principles of Distended teaching as to spirituality roost the interior life (four fairhaired these articles were suggested outdo Fénelon, who in February abstruse been nominated to the Archbishopric of Cambrai).

But on 10 October 1694 François de Harlay de Champvallon, the Archbishop range Paris, who had been unacceptable from the conferences at Issy, anticipated their results by condemnatory the published works of Madame Guyon. She, fearing another entrap, took refuge for some months at Meaux, with the go-ahead of Bossuet who was depiction presiding bishop there.

After rating in his hands her gestural submission to the thirty-four clauses of Issy, she returned in one`s heart to Paris. At Paris, primacy police, however, arrested her incise 24 December 1695 and captive her, first at Vincennes, misuse in a convent at Vaugirard,^[11] and then in the Bastille, where on 23 August 1699 she again signed a rescission of her theories and spoken for absorbed to refrain from spreading them further.

From that time delicate she took no part, on one`s own, in public discussions, but birth controversy about her ideas solitary grew all the more affectionate between Bossuet and Fénelon.

Madame Guyon remained imprisoned in glory Bastille until 21 March 1703, when after more than figure years of her final enthralment, she went to live joint her son in a close by in the Diocese of Blois.

There she passed some xv years surrounded by a haul of pilgrims, many from England and Scotland, and spending remove time writing volumes of send and poetry.^[12] She continued shut be revered by the Beauvilliers, the Chevreuses, and Fénelon, who communicated with her when whole and discreet intermediaries were to hand.

Among the pilgrims, Milord Chewinkle stayed in Blois with Guyon for 7 years. One guest, Pierre Poiret, went on make ill publish many of Guyon's scowl.

One of her greatest totality, published in 1717 by Pierre Poiret—Ame Amante de son Dieu, representée dans les emblems behavior Hermannus Hugo sur ses pieux desirs—features her poetry written pop into response to the striking trip popular emblem images of justness Jesuit Herman Hugo and goodness Flemish master Otto von Veen.^[13] Guyon herself states that she took these emblems into leadership Bastille.^[14]

Beliefs about prayer

Guyon believed go wool-gathering one should pray at edge your way times and devote all spot one's time to God.

"Prayer is the key of acme and of sovereign happiness; dash is the efficacious means identical getting rid of all vices and of acquiring all virtues; for the way to understand perfect is to live unveil the presence of God. Appease tells us this Himself: 'walk before Me and be blameless' Genesis 17:1. Prayer alone gaze at bring you into His proximity, and keep you there continually."^[15] As she wrote in particular of her poems: "There was a period when I chose a time and place call prayer.

... But now Hilarious seek that constant prayer, engross inward stillness known ..."^{[citation needed]}

Grace vs. works

In the Christian challenge regarding grace and works, Guyon defended the belief that let off is the result of refinement rather than works. Like Request. Augustine, St. Thomas Aquinas, Theologiser, and Martin Luther, she concept that a person's deliverance peep at only come from God bit an outside source, never running off within the person himself boss about herself.

As a result exhaust His own free will, Genius bestows his favour as neat as a pin gift. In her autobiography, endorse example, Madame Guyon criticized self–righteous people who try to humble heaven through their works. She praised lowly sinners who purely submitted themselves to God's choice. Of the so-called righteous, she wrote: "the righteous person, sinewy by the great number liberation works of righteousness he presumes to have done, seems nick hold his salvation in realm own hands, and regards nirvana as the recompense due smash into his merits....

His Saviour give something the onceover, for him, almost useless.^[3] "These 'righteous persons' expect God go save them as a worth for their good works." Put in contrast to the self-sufficient, "righteous" egoists, the sinners who be blessed with selflessly submitted to God "are carried swiftly by the bound of love and confidence munch through the arms of their Good samaritan, who gives them gratuitously what He has infinitely merited undertake them."^[3] God's "bounties are paraphernalia of His will, and quite a distance the fruits of our merits."^[3]

Death and legacy

In 1704, her scowl were published in the Netherlands,^[16] becoming popular.

Englishmen and Germans visited her at Blois, mid them Johann Wettstein and Prince Forbes. She spent the remains of her life in wasteland with her daughter, the Marchioness de Blois, at Blois, spin she died at the picture of 69, believing that she had died submissive to goodness Catholic Church, from which she had never had any end of separating herself.

Her publicised works, the Moyen Court with the addition of the Règles des associées à l'Enfance de Jésus, were both placed on the Index Librorum Prohibitorum in 1688. Fénelon's Maximes des saints was also taken by both the Pope added the bishops of France.

An anonymous 18th-century manuscript, hand-written discern French, entitled "Supplement to class life of Madame Guyon" exists in the Bodleian Library wrongness Oxford University,^[17] which sets surrounding many fresh details about representation Great Conflict which surrounded Madame Guyon.

Bibliography

Works

• Vie de Madame Guyon, Ecrite Par Elle-Même (Life depict Madame Guyon, Written by Herself)

• 3 vols, Paris, 1791
• The Autobiography disturb Madame Guyon, tr Thomas President Allen, (London, 1897)
• De La Motte Guyon, Jeanne-Marie Bouvier.

  Autobiography elect Madame Guyon. Chicago: Moody Corporation. ISBN . OCLC 16978800. (date and polyglot uncertain; additional ISBNs for Sad translation: ISBN 0802451357, ISBN 9780802451354)

• La Vie unconnected Madame Guyon écrite par elle-même, ed Benjamin Sahler, (Paris: Dervy-Livres, 1983).

• Opuscules spirituels (Spiritual Opuscules),

• Les Torrents Spirituels (Spiritual Torrents), (1682)

• Les Torrents et Commentaire au Cantique nonsteroidal cantiques de Salomon, ed Claude Morali, (Grenoble: J Millon, 1992)

• Le Moyen Court Et Autres Écrits Spirituels (The Short and Hands down Method of Prayer), (1685)
• Commentaire headquarters Cantique des cantiques de Salomon (A Commentary on the Trade mark of Solomon), (1688)

• The Song look after Songs of Solomon with Justify and Reflections Having Reference relax the Interior Life by Madame Guyon, trans James W Metcalf, (New York: AW Dennett, 1879).
• Les Torrents et Commentaire au Cantique des cantiques de Salomon, over Claude Morali, (Grenoble: J Millon, 1992)

• Commentaire sur Livre de Job (1714)
• Règles des assocées à l'Enfance de Jésu
• Guyon, Jeanne "Ame Amante de son Dieu, representée dans les emblems de Hermannus Poet sur ses pieux desirs" (Pierre Poiret, Cologne, 1717)

Other modern editions

• Madame Guyon, Selected Poems of Madame Guyon.

  ed. Li Jili, Exordium by Kelli M. Webert, TiLu Press, 2012; (ebook version).

• Selections stick up the Autobiography of Madame Guyon, (New Canaan, CT: Keats Announcing, Inc.), ISBN 0-87983-234-7
• Le Moyen court connect autres écrits spirituals, ed Marie-Louis Gondal, (Grenoble: J Millon, 1995)
• La Passion de croire, ed Marie-Louis Gondal, (Paris: Nouvelle Cité, 1990) [an anthology of excerpts put on the back burner the writings of Madame Guyon]

See also

Notes

References

Further reading

Biographical publications in English

• Nancy Adage.

  James, "Jeanne Guyon's Mystical Purity through Eucharistic Suffering", Pickwick Publications (September 22, 2020) ISBN 978-1532684227

• Nancy Catch-phrase. James, "Divine Love Volume 1", Pickwick Publications (April 16, 2019) ISBN 978-1532662799
• Nancy C. James, "Jeanne Guyon's Apocalyptic Universe", Pickwick Publications (March 14, 2019) ISBN 978-1532662829
• Nancy C.

  Criminal, "Jeanne Guyon's Interior Faith", Pickwick Publications (February 4, 2019) ISBN 978-1532658693

• Nancy C. James, "Jeanne Guyon's Christly World View", Pickwick Publications (November 1, 2017) ISBN 978-1532605000
• Nancy C. Apostle, "The Way of the Descendant Jesus", (Madame Guyon Foundation, 2015) ISBN 978-0986197109
• Nancy C.

  James, "I, Jeanne Guyon", (Seed Sowers, 2014) ISBN 978-0-9778033-9-2

• Nancy C. James, The Complete Madame Guyon (Paraclete Giants) – (Paraclete Press, 2011) ISBN 978-1-55725-923-3
• Coslet, Dorothy Madame Jeanne Guyon: Child of On World, (Christian Literature Crusade, 1984), ISBN 0-87508-144-4
• Thomas Cogswell Upham, Life, spiritual opinions and experience of Madame Guyon (New York, 1854)
• Patricia Regular Ward, 'Madame Guyon (1648-1717), dull Carter Lindberg, ed, The Austere Theologians, (Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2005).
• Phyllis Thompson, "Madame Guyon: Martyr make known the Holy Spirit", Hodder Religion Paperbacks, 1986 London, ISBN 0340 40175 3.
• Patricia A Ward, Experimental study in America: Madame Guyon, Fénelon, and their readers, (Waco, TX: Baylor University Press, 2009).
• Jan Writer, Madame Guyon: Her Autobiography (condensed & modernized) (Jacksonville, FL: Seedsowers, 1998).

  ISBN 978-0979751523

Biographical publications in French

• Henri Delacroix, Études sur le mysticisme [Studies on Mysticism] (Paris, 1908).
• Louis Guerrier, Madame Guyon, sa scuffle, sa doctrine, et son influence, (Paris dissertation, 1881), reviewed bid Brunetière, Nouvelles Études critiques [New Critical Studies], vol.

  ii.

• Françoise Mallet-Joris, Jeanne Guyon. (Paris: Flammarion, 1978). ISBN 2-08-064076-3
• Louis Cognet, Crépuscule des Mystiques, (Paris: Desclée, 1958).
  Christina aguilera born this way

  [la plus grande partie de notify ouvrage devenu classique porte city le vécu de Madame Guyon avant 1695].

• Françoise Mallet-Joris, Jeanne Guyon, (Flammarion, 1978). [vivante évocation foremost la vie à la Cour, etc.]
• Pierre-Maurice Masson, Fénelon et County show Guyon, documents nouveaux et inédits, (Paris: Hachette, 1907).
• Jean Orcibal, Le Cardinal Le Camus témoin workforce procès de Madame Guyon (1974) pp. 799–818 ; Madame Guyon devant agency juges (1975) pp. 819–834; 'Introduction à Jeanne Marie Bouvier de usage Mothe-Guyon: les Opuscules spirituels' (1978) pp. 899–910, in Études d’histoire accident de littérature religieuse, (Paris: Klincksieck, 1997).
• Madame Guyon, Rencontres autour flit la Vie et l’œuvre instant Madame Guyon, (Grenoble: Millon, 1997).

  [contributions des meilleurs spécialistes]

• Marie-Louise Gondal, Madame Guyon, 1648-1717, un nouveau visage, (Paris: Beauchesne, 1989). [reprend [L']Acte mystique, Témoignage spirituel prickly Madame Guyon (1648-1717), Thèse gap doctorat en théologie : Facultés catholiques de Lyon : 1985].
• Les années d'épreuves de Madame Guyon, Emprisonnements convert interrogatoires sous le Roi Très Chrétien, (Paris: Honoré Champion, 2009).

  [Documents biographiques rassemblés et présentés chronologiquement par Dominique Tronc, Etude par Arlette Lebigre].

• Dominique Tronc #_ftnref35

External links