Jeanne-Marie Bouvier de la Motte-Guyon
A celebrated French mystic of the seventeenth century; born at
Montargis, in the Orleanais, 13 April, 1648; died at Blois, 9
June, 1717. Her father was Claude Bouvier, a procurator of the
tribunal of Montargis. Of a sensitive and delicate constitution,
she was sickly in her childhood and her education was much
neglected. Incessantly going and coming between her home and the
convent, and passing from one school to another, she changed her
place of abode nine times in ten years. Her parents, who were very
religious people, gave her an especially pious training; while she
received and retained profound impressions from her reading of the
works of St. Francis de Sales, and her intercourse with certain
nuns, her teachers. At one period she desired to become a nun, as
one of her elder sisters had, but this desire did not last long.
When scarcely sixteen years of age, she accepted the hand of a
wealthy gentleman of Montargis, Jacques Guyon, twenty-two years
older than herself. After twelve years of a union in which she
gave more devotion than it yielded her happiness, Madame Guyon
lost in succession two of her children and her husband. Thus, at
twenty-eight she was left a widow with three young children.
Her Experiences and Theories
In the meantime Madame Guyon had been initiated into the secrets
of the mystical life by P�re Lacombe, a Barnabite who very soon
acquired a great influence over her. Under his direction she
passed through a series of interior experiences which are
described in the "Vie de Madame Guyon" written by herself. First
she attained a lively sentiment of the presence of God, perceived
as a tangible reality. Prayer becomes easy to her; in it she is
vouchsafed a savour of God which detaches her from creatures. This
is what she calls "the union of the powers". She remains in this
state for eight years; it is succeeded by another state in which
she loses the sense of God's graces and favours, she has no taste
for anything spiritual, is powerless to act, and afraid of her own
baseness. This was the state of "mystical death" in which she
remained for seven years; from this crisis she passes, as it were
re-awakened and transformed, into the state of resurrection and
new life. Whereas in the first of the three states she possessed
God, in this last state she is possessed by Him; then God was
united to the powers of her soul, but now He is united to its
substance; it is He who acts in her; she becomes like an automaton
in His hands; she writes remarkable things without preparation and
without reflection. Her own activity disappears, to be replaced by
the action of God which moves her, and she now enters into the
"apostolic state". This apostolate she is to exercise not in
preaching the Gospel, but in spreading the mystical life, the
theory of which she presents in the "Moyen court et facile de
faire oraison" (Short and Easy Method of Prayer), a work inspired
mostly by her own experiences. In this work she distinguishes
three kinds of prayer. The first is meditation properly so-called,
the second is "the prayer of simplicity", which consists in
keeping oneself in a state of recollection and silence in the
presence of God; in the third, which is active contemplation, the
soul, conscious that God is taking possession of it, leaves Him to
act and remains in repose, abandoning itself to the Divine
effluence which fills it -- powerless to ask anything for itself,
since it has renounced all its own interests. This last state is
pure love. In the "Torrents spirituels", and the commentaries on
Holy Scripture, the same theory is presented under very slightly
different images and forms.
Proselytism and Trials
Having attained what she called the "apostolic state", Madame
Guyon felt herself drawn to Geneva. She left her children and
repaired to Annecy, to Thonon, where she was to find P�re Lacombe
(July, 1681) and again place herself under his direction. She
began to disseminate her mystical ideas, but, in consequence of
the effects they produced, the Bishop of Geneva, M. D'Aranthon
d'Alex, who had at first viewed her coming with satisfaction,
asked her to leave his diocese, and at the same time expelled P�re
Lacombe, who betook himself to the Bishop of Vercelli. Madame
Guyon followed her director to Turin, then returned to France and
stayed at Grenoble, where she published the "Moyen court"
(January, 1685) and spread her doctrine. But here, too, the Bishop
of Grenoble, Cardinal Le Camus, was perturbed by the opposition
which she aroused. At his request she left the city; she rejoined
P�re Lacombe at Vercelli and a year later they went back to Paris
(July, 1686). Forthwith Madame Guyon set about to gain adherents
for her mystical theories. But the moment was ill-chosen. Louis
XIV, who had recently been exerting himself to have the Quietism
of Molinos condemned at Rome, was by no means pleased to see
gaining ground, even in his own capital, a form of mysticism,
which, to him, resembled that of Molinos in many of its aspects.
By his order P�re Lacombe was shut up in the Bastille, and
afterwards in the castles of Oloron and of Lourdes. The arrest of
Madame Guyon, delayed by illness, followed shortly (9 January,
1688); brought about, she alleged, by her own brother, P�re de La
Motte, a Barnabite.
She was not set at liberty until seven months later, after she had
placed in the hands of the theologians, who had examined her book,
a retraction of the propositions which it contained. Some days
later (October, 1688) she met, at Beyne, in the Duchess de
Bethune-Charrost's country house, the Abbe de Fenelon, who was to
be the most famous of her disciples. She won him by her piety and
her understanding of the paths of spirituality. Between them there
was established a union of piety and of friendship into which no
element ever insinuated itself that could possibly be taken to
resemble carnal love, even unconscious. Through Fenelon the
influence of Madame Guyon penetrated, or was increased in,
religious circles powerful at court--among the Beauvilliers, the
Cheveruses, the Montemarts--who were under his spiritual
direction. Madame de Maintenon, and through her, the young ladies
of Saint-Cyr, were soon gained over to the new mysticism. This was
the apogee of Madame Guyon's fortune, most of all when Fenelon was
appointed (18 August, 1688) tutor to the Duke of Burgundy, the
king's grandson. Before long, however, the Bishop of Chartres, in
whose diocese Saint-Cyr happened to be, took alarm at the
spiritual ideas which were spreading there. Warned by him, Madame
de Maintenon sought the advice of persons whose piety and prudence
recommended them to her, and these advisers were unanimous in
their reprobation of Madame Guyon's ideas. Madame Guyon then asked
for an examination of her conduct and her writings by civil and
ecclesiastical judges. The king consented that her writings should
be submitted to the judgment of Bossuet, of the Bishop of Chblons
(afterwards Archbishop of Paris and Cardinal de Noailles), and of
M. Tronson, superior of the Society of Saint-Sulpice.
After a certain number of secret conferences held at Issy, where
Tronson was detained by a sickness, the commissioners presented in
thirty-four articles the principles of Catholic teaching as to
spirituality and the interior life (four of these articles were
suggested by Fenelon, who in February had been nominated to the
Archbishopric of Cambrai). But the Archbishop of Paris, who had
been excluded from the conferences at Issy, anticipated their
results by condemning the published works of Madame Guyon (10
October, 1694). She, fearing another arrest, took refuge for some
months at Meaux, with the permission of Bossuet, then bishop of
that see. After placing in his hands her signed submission to the
thrity-four articles of Issy, she returned secretly to Paris,
where the police, however, arrested her (24 December, 1695) and
imprisoned her, first at Vincennes, then in a convent at
Vaugirard, and then in the Bastille, where she again signed (23
August, 1696) a retraction of her theories and an undertaking to
refrain from further spreading them. From that time she took no
part, personally, in public discussions, but the controversy about
her ideas only grew all the more heated between Bossuet and
Fenelon. The course of that controversy we have traced elsewhere
(see FENELON). Madame Guyon remained imprisoned in the Bastille
until 21 March, 1703, when she went, after more than seven years
of captivity, to live with her son in a village in the Diocese of
Blois. There she passed some fifteen years in silence and
isolation, spending her time in the composition of religious
verses, which she wrote with much facility. She was still
venerated by the Beauvilliers, the Chevreuses, and Fenelon, who
never failed to communicate with her whenever safe and dscreet
intermediaries were to be found.
Posthumous Success
Her writings began to be published in Holland in 1704, and brought
her new admirers. Englishmen and Germans--among them Wettstein and
Lord Forbes--visited her at Blois. Through them Madame Guyon's
doctrines became known among Protestants and in that soil took
vigorous root. But she did not live to see this unlooked-for
diffusion of her writings. She passed away at Blois, at the age of
sixty-eight, protesting in her will that she died submissive to
the Catholic Church, from which she had never had any intention of
separating herself. Her doctrines, like her life, have
nevertheless given rise to the widest divergences of opinion. Her
published works (the "Moyen court" and the "R�gles des assocees a
l'Enfance de Jesus") having been placed on the Index in 1688, and
Fenelon's "Maximes des saints" branded with the condemnation of
both the pope and the bishops of France, the Church has thus
plainly reprobated Madame Guyon's doctrines, a reprobation which
the extravagance of her language would in itself sufficiently
justify. Her strange conduct brought upon her severe censures , in
which she could see only manifestations of spite. Evidently, she
too often fell short of due reserve and prudence; but after all
that can be said in this sense, it must be acknowledged that her
morality appears to have given no grounds for serious reproach.
Bossuet, who was never indulgent in her regard, could say before
the full assembly of the French clergy: "As to the abominations
which have been held to be the result of her principles, there was
never any question of the horror she testified for them." It is
remarkable, too, that her disciples at the Court of Louis XIV were
always persons of great piety and of exemplary life.
On the other hand, Madame Guyon's warmest partisans after her
death were to be found among the Protestants. It was a Dutch
Protestant, the pastor Poiret, who began the publication of her
works; a Vaudois pietist pastor, Duthoit-Mambrini, continued it.
Her "Life" was translated into English and German, and her ideas,
long since forgotten in France, have for generations been in
favour in Germany, Switzerland, England, and among Methodists in
America.
NOTES
&OEliguvres complhtes de Madame Guyon (Paris, 1790), this work was
really published at Lausanne; COOPER, Poems translated from French
of Madame de la Motte Guyon (Newport, 1801); FINELON, &OEliguvres
(Versailles, 1820), IV, iv; IDEM, Correspondance (Paris, 1828),
VII-XI; BOSSUET, &OEliguvres (Paris, 1885); PHILIPPEAUX, Relation
de l'origine, du progrhs, et de la condamnation du Quiitisme (s.
l., 1732); IRONSON, Correspondance (Paris, 1904), III; Vie de
Madame Guyon, written by herself (Cologne, 1720); Ger. tr.,
Frankfort, 1727; tr. BROOKE, London, 1806; UPHAM, Life and
religious opinions and experience of Madame de la Motte-Guyone
(New York, 1848); GUILLON, Histoire ginirale de l'Eglise pendant
le XVIIIe sihcle (Besancon, 1823); GUERRIER, Madame Guyon, sa vie,
sa doctrine, et son influence (Orleans, 1881); CROUSLE, Fenelon et
Madame Guyon (Paris, 1895); MASSON, Fenelon et Madame Guyon
(Paris, 1907); DELACROIX, Etudes d'histoire et de psychologic du
mysticisme (Paris, 1908).
ANTOINE DEGERT
Transcribed by Paul T. Crowley
Dedicated to the Sacred Heart
From the Catholic Encyclopedia, copyright � 1913 by the
Encyclopedia Press, Inc. Electronic version copyright � 1996 by
New Advent, Inc.
Taken from the New Advent Web Page (www.knight.org/advent).
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