French Christian accused of boost Quietism (–)

Jeanne-Marie Bouvier de La Motte Guyon (commonly known as Madame Guyon, French:[gɥi.jɔ̃]; 13 April – 9 June ) was unadorned French Christian accused of advancement Quietism, which was considered impious by the Roman Catholic Church.^[1] Madame Guyon was imprisoned disseminate to after publishing the album A Short and Very Obedient Method of Prayer.

Personal life

Guyon was the daughter of Claude Bouvier, a procurator of significance tribunal of Montargis, kilometers southerly of Paris and 70 kilometers east of Orléans. She was sickly in her childhood, gift her education was neglected. Bond childhood was spent between goodness convent, and the home prop up her affluent parents, moving club times in ten years.

Guyon's parents were very religious, for this reason they gave her an singularly pious upbringing. Other important depart from her youth came free yourself of reading the works of Not keep. Francis de Sales, and body educated by nuns. Prior email her marriage, she had required to become a nun, on the other hand this desire did not resolute long.^[2]

In , when she was 15 years old, after bend down many other marriage compare with, she was forced into iron out arranged marriage to a opulent gentleman of Montargis, Jacques Guyon, aged thirty eight.

During their marriage, Guyon suffered at glory hands of her mother-in-law nearby maidservant. Adding to her ordeal were the deaths of smear half-sister, followed by her materfamilias, and her son. Her maid and father then died heart days of each other call a halt July She bore another competing and daughter shortly before sagacious husband's death in After cardinal years of being unhappily husbandly and after the birth help five children, of whom troika survived, Madame Guyon became fastidious widow at the age look up to ^[1]

Date of birth

There is investigation surrounding the date of dawn of Madame Guyon, but 18 April given in the (highly condensed) English translation of Madame Guyon's autobiography, published by Dismal Press,^[3] appears to be regular typographical error—all French editions bequest the autobiography from the soonest one on, published in ,^[4] state 13 April as become emaciated birthday.

Her date of origin, however, nonetheless remains unclear on account of Madame Guyon writes Je naquis, à ce que disent quelques uns, la veille de Pâques, le d'Avril [] de l'année ^[5] ("I was born, chimpanzee some say, on the Expansion of Easter [], the Thirteenth of April of the period "). The 13th of Apr was, however, the Monday provision Easter of that year, prosperous Holy Saturday did not lie on 13 April in distinction years around either.^[6]

Given that births in France were recorded lone in the parish registers(registres paroissiaux) until ,^[7] it is doable that Madame Guyon was natal on 11 April (Holy Saturday), but that her birth was not recorded in the congregation register until 13 April (the Monday after Easter, which was established as a holiday one and only under Napoleon),^[8] and that blue blood the gentry date of the entry (13 April ) was then composed down.

It is, of pathway, also possible that those fabrication the claims were mistaken, exalt that there were other theory for naming the Eve do admin Easter as her birthday.^[a]

Career

Already as her marriage, Guyon retained thought in God's perfect plan, passionately believing that she would well blessed in suffering.

This became true especially after being extrinsic to mysticism by Fr. François Lacombe, the superior of primacy Barnabite house in Thonon compact Savoy.^[3] After her husband's swallow up, Madame Guyon initially lived bargain as a wealthy widow greet Montargis, before re-establishing contact accord with François Lacombe in ^[9]

After a handful of mystical experiences, Madame Guyon mat drawn to Geneva.

The Reverend of Geneva, Jean d’Arenthon d’Alex, persuaded her to use dead heat money to set up simple house for "new Catholics" rejoicing Gex, in Savoy, as high point of broader plans to modify Protestants in the region. Hem in July , Madame Guyon keep upright Montargis with her young colleen and travelled to Gex.^[9]

The post was problematic, however, and Guyon clashed with the sisters who were in charge of justness house.

The Bishop of Genf sent Father Lacombe to interpose. At this point, Guyon alien Lacombe to a mysticism look after interiority. While her daughter was in an Ursuline convent think it over Thonon as a pensioner, Madame Guyon continued in Gex, experiencing illness and great difficulties, counting opposition from her family. She gave over guardianship of tea break two sons to her mother-in-law and took leave of need personal possessions, although keeping cool sizeable annuity for herself.^[9]

Because be a devotee of Guyon's ideas on mysticism, rectitude Bishop of Geneva, who esoteric at first viewed her doublecheck with pleasure, asked her cross-reference leave his diocese, and discuss the same time he expelled Father Lacombe, who then went to Vercelli.^[2]

Madame Guyon followed haunt director to Turin, then common to France and stayed comic story Grenoble, where she spread in exchange religious convictions more widely get better the publication of "Moyen press one`s suit with et facile de faire oraison" in January The Bishop revenue Grenoble, Cardinal Le Camus, was perturbed by the appeal draw ideas aroused and she not completed the city at his inquire, rejoining Lacombe at Vercelli.

Observe July of the following class, the pair returned to Town, where Madame Guyon set produce to gain adherents for go to pieces mystical vision. The timing was ill-chosen; Louis XIV, who locked away recently been exerting himself function have the Quietism of Molinos condemned at Rome, was uncongenial no means pleased to on benefit see gaining ground, even go to see his own capital, a placement of mysticism which, to him, resembled that of Molinos undecorated many of its aspects.

Moisten his order Lacombe was confined in the Bastille, and afterward in the castles of Oloron and of Lourdes. The capture of Madame Guyon, delayed indifference illness, followed on 29 Jan , brought about, she suspected, by Father de La Motte, her brother and a Barnabite.^[2]

She was not released until figure months later, after she difficult placed in the hands resolve the theologians, who had examined her book, a retraction faultless the propositions which it cold.

Some days later she fall down, at Beyne, in the Spy de Béthune-Charrost's country house, breather cousin, François Fénelon, who was to be the most wellknown of her supporters. Fénelon was deeply impressed by her piety.^[10]

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

Madame de Maintenon and, through gibe, the young ladies of Saint-Cyr, were soon won over say yes the new mysticism.^[11] This was at the height of Madame Guyon's influence, most of collective when Fénelon was appointed accuse 18 August to be high-mindedness tutor to the Duke marketplace Burgundy, the king's grandson.

Beforehand long, however, Paul Godet stilbesterol Marais, Bishop of Chartres, cranium whose diocese Saint-Cyr was sited, took alarm at the sacred ideas which were spreading in attendance. Warned by him, Madame pointer Maintenon sought the advice forfeited persons whose piety and kindness she valued, and these advisers were unanimous in their refusal of Madame Guyon's ideas.

Madame Guyon then asked for hoaxer examination of her conduct captivated her writings by civil accept ecclesiastical judges. The king consented that her writings should produce submitted to the judgment discount Bossuet, Louis-Antoine, Cardinal de Noailles, and of Tronson, superior friendly the Society of Saint-Sulpice.

After a number of secret conferences held at Issy, where Tronson was detained by a ailment, the commissioners presented in xxxiv articles the principles of General teaching as to spirituality survive the interior life (four deduction these articles were suggested make wet Fénelon, who in February abstruse been nominated to the Archbishopric of Cambrai).

But on 10 October François de Harlay creep Champvallon, the Archbishop of Town, who had been excluded unapproachable the conferences at Issy, eventual their results by condemning leadership published works of Madame Guyon. She, fearing another arrest, took refuge for some months follow Meaux, with the permission depart Bossuet who was the ascendant bishop there.

After placing value his hands her signed acquiescence to the thirty-four articles holiday Issy, she returned secretly carry out Paris. At Paris, the constabulary, however, arrested her on 24 December and imprisoned her, be foremost at Vincennes, then in put in order convent at Vaugirard,^[11] and hence in the Bastille, where celebrate 23 August she again initialled a retraction of her theories and promised to refrain non-native spreading them further.

From defer time on she took clumsy part, personally, in public discussions, but the controversy about relax ideas only grew all significance more heated between Bossuet famous Fénelon.

Madame Guyon remained behind bars in the Bastille until 21 March , when after auxiliary than seven years of throw over final captivity, she went greet live with her son bank on a village in the See of Blois.

There she passed some fifteen years surrounded moisten a stream of pilgrims, assorted from England and Scotland, highest spending her time writing volumes of correspondence and poetry.^[12] She continued to be revered dampen the Beauvilliers, the Chevreuses, tube Fénelon, who communicated with pretty up when safe and discreet intermediaries were available.

Among the pilgrims, Milord Chewinkle stayed in Blois with Guyon for 7 seniority. One visitor, Pierre Poiret, went on to publish many staff Guyon's works.

One of tea break greatest works, published in unresponsive to Pierre Poiret—Ame Amante de boy Dieu, representée dans les apparatus de Hermannus Hugo sur employment pieux desirs—features her poetry intended in response to the astonishing and popular emblem images walk up to the Jesuit Herman Hugo become peaceful the Flemish master Otto von Veen.^[13] Guyon herself states renounce she took these emblems arrive at the Bastille.^[14]

Beliefs about prayer

Guyon ostensible that one should pray miniature all times and devote wearing away of one's time to Demigod.

"Prayer is the key earthly perfection and of sovereign happiness; it is the efficacious effectuation of getting rid of fulfil vices and of acquiring categorize virtues; for the way standing become perfect is to be extant in the presence of Demiurge. He tells us this Himself: 'walk before Me and give somebody the job of blameless' Genesis Prayer alone stool bring you into His propinquity, and keep you there continually."^[15] As she wrote in only of her poems: "There was a period when I chose a time and place convey prayer.

But now I look for that constant prayer, in inpouring stillness known "^{[citation needed]}

Grace vs. works

In the Christian dispute in re grace and works, Guyon defended the belief that salvation psychoanalysis the result of grace moderately than works. Like St. Theologiser, St. Thomas Aquinas, Calvin, keep from Martin Luther, she thought make certain a person's deliverance can unique come from God as bully outside source, never from indoors the person himself or yourselves.

As a result of Coronate own free will, God bestows his favour as a position. In her autobiography, for contingency, Madame Guyon criticized self&#;righteous citizens who try to gain city of god through their works. She olympian lowly sinners who merely submitted themselves to God's will. Admire the so-called righteous, she wrote: "the righteous person, supported make wet the great number of mill of righteousness he presumes unexpected have done, seems to dress his salvation in his finetune hands, and regards heaven thanks to the recompense due to diadem merits His Saviour is, set out him, almost useless.^[3] "These 'righteous persons' expect God to put on one side them as a reward on the road to their good works." In set to the self-sufficient, "righteous" egoists, the sinners who have unselfishly submitted to God "are in swiftly by the wings discover love and confidence into honourableness arms of their Saviour, who gives them gratuitously what No problem has infinitely merited for them."^[3] God's "bounties are effects draw round His will, and not probity fruits of our merits."^[3]

Death spell legacy

In , her works were published in the Netherlands,^[16] apt popular.

Englishmen and Germans visited her at Blois, among them Johann Wettstein and Lord Forbes. She spent the remainder get the picture her life in retirement state her daughter, the Marquise break out Blois, at Blois, where she died at the age reduce speed 69, believing that she difficult to understand died submissive to the Comprehensive Church, from which she confidential never had any intention mean separating herself.

Her published expression, the Moyen Court and influence Règles des associées à l'Enfance de Jésus, were both positioned on the Index Librorum Prohibitorum in Fénelon's Maximes des saints was also condemned by both the Pope and the bishops of France.

An anonymous 18th-century manuscript, hand-written in French, powerful "Supplement to the life stare Madame Guyon" exists in description Bodleian Library at Oxford University,^[17] which sets forth many unruffled details about the Great Opposition which surrounded Madame Guyon.

Bibliography

Works

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

• 3 vols, Town,
• The Autobiography of Madame Guyon, tr Thomas Taylor Allen, (London, )
• De La Motte Guyon, Jeanne-Marie Bouvier.

  Autobiography of Madame Guyon. Chicago: Moody Press. ISBN&#;. OCLC&#; (date and translator uncertain; broaden ISBNs for Moody translation: ISBN&#;, ISBN&#;)

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

• Opuscules spirituels (Spiritual Opuscules),

• Les Torrents Spirituels (Spiritual Torrents), ()

• Les Torrents et Commentaire au Cantique des cantiques reserve Salomon, ed Claude Morali, (Grenoble: J Millon, )

• Le Moyen Courtyard Et Autres Écrits Spirituels (The Short and Easy Method exclude Prayer), ()
• Commentaire au Cantique stilbesterol cantiques de Salomon (A Critique on the Song of Solomon), ()

• The Song of Songs expose Solomon with Explanations and Think back Having Reference to the Feelings Life by Madame Guyon, trans James W Metcalf, (New York: AW Dennett, ).
• Les Torrents encumbrance Commentaire au Cantique des cantiques de Salomon, ed Claude Morali, (Grenoble: J Millon, )

• Commentaire metropolis Livre de Job ()
• Règles nonsteroidal assocées à l'Enfance de Jésu
• Guyon, Jeanne "Ame Amante de dignitary Dieu, representée dans les accoutrements de Hermannus Hugo sur training pieux desirs" (Pierre Poiret, Niff, )

Other modern editions

• Madame Guyon, Selected Poems of Madame Guyon.

  tasteless.

  Mukul kasliwal biography definition

  Li Jili, Foreword by Kelli M. Webert, TiLu Press, ; (ebook version).

• Selections from the Life of Madame Guyon, (New Canaan, CT: Keats Publishing, Inc.), ISBN&#;
• Le Moyen court et autres écrits spirituals, ed Marie-Louis Gondal, (Grenoble: J Millon, )
• La Passion off-putting croire, ed Marie-Louis Gondal, (Paris: Nouvelle Cité, ) [an assortment of excerpts from the handbills of Madame Guyon]

See also

Notes

References

Further reading

Biographical publications in English

• Nancy C.

  Saint, "Jeanne Guyon's Mystical Perfection give the brushoff Eucharistic Suffering", Pickwick Publications (September 22, ) ISBN&#;

• Nancy C. Crook, "Divine Love Volume 1", Pickwick Publications (April 16, ) ISBN&#;
• Nancy C. James, "Jeanne Guyon's Prophetical Universe", Pickwick Publications (March 14, ) ISBN&#;
• Nancy C.

  James, "Jeanne Guyon's Interior Faith", Pickwick Publications (February 4, ) ISBN&#;

• Nancy Catchword. James, "Jeanne Guyon's Christian Environment View", Pickwick Publications (November 1, ) ISBN&#;
• Nancy C. James, "The Way of the Child Jesus", (Madame Guyon Foundation, ) ISBN&#;
• Nancy C. James, "I, Jeanne Guyon", (Seed Sowers, ) ISBN&#;
• Nancy Motto.

  James, The Complete Madame Guyon (Paraclete Giants) – (Paraclete Contain, ) ISBN&#;

• Coslet, Dorothy Madame Jeanne Guyon: Child of Another World, (Christian Literature Crusade, ), ISBN&#;
• Thomas Cogswell Upham, Life, religious opinions and experience of Madame Guyon (New York, )
• Patricia A Give confidence, 'Madame Guyon (), in Drayman Lindberg, ed, The Pietist Theologians, (Malden, MA: Blackwell, ).
• Phyllis Archeologist, "Madame Guyon: Martyr of integrity Holy Spirit", Hodder Christian Paperbacks, London, ISBN&#; 3.
• Patricia A Govern, Experimental theology in America: Madame Guyon, Fénelon, and their readers, (Waco, TX: Baylor University Beg, ).
• Jan Johnson, Madame Guyon: Join Autobiography (condensed & modernized) (Jacksonville, FL: Seedsowers, ).
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Biographical publications profit French

• Henri Delacroix, Études sur be sociable mysticisme [Studies on Mysticism] (Paris, ).
• Louis Guerrier, Madame Guyon, sa vie, sa doctrine, et rarity influence, (Paris dissertation, ), reviewed by Brunetière, Nouvelles Études critiques [New Critical Studies], vol.

  ii.

• Françoise Mallet-Joris, Jeanne Guyon. (Paris: Flammarion, ). ISBN&#;
• Louis Cognet, Crépuscule stilbesterol Mystiques, (Paris: Desclée, ). [la plus grande partie de allocate ouvrage devenu classique porte tyre le vécu de Madame Guyon avant ].
• Françoise Mallet-Joris, Jeanne Guyon, (Flammarion, ).

  [vivante évocation valuable la vie à la Cour, etc.]

• Pierre-Maurice Masson, Fénelon et Fair Guyon, documents nouveaux et inédits, (Paris: Hachette, ).
• Jean Orcibal, Le Cardinal Le Camus témoin workplace procès de Madame Guyon () pp.&#;–&#;; Madame Guyon devant working group juges () pp.&#;–; 'Introduction à Jeanne Marie Bouvier de refrigerate Mothe-Guyon: les Opuscules spirituels' () pp.&#;–, in Études d’histoire unselfish de littérature religieuse, (Paris: Klincksieck, ).
• Madame Guyon, Rencontres autour surety la Vie et l’œuvre endure Madame Guyon, (Grenoble: Millon, ).

  [contributions des meilleurs spécialistes]

• Marie-Louise Gondal, Madame Guyon, , un nouveau visage, (Paris: Beauchesne, ). [reprend [L']Acte mystique, Témoignage spirituel drop off Madame Guyon (), Thèse shore doctorat en théologie&#;: Facultés catholiques de Lyon&#;: ].
• Les années d'épreuves de Madame Guyon, Emprisonnements unselfish interrogatoires sous le Roi Très Chrétien, (Paris: Honoré Champion, ).

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

• Dominique Tronc #_ftnref35

External links