|
A celebrated French mystic of the seventeenth century; born at
Montargis, in the Orléanais, 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 Père 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 Père 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 Père 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 Père 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 Père
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, Père 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 Béthune-Charrost's
country house, the Abbé de Fénelon, 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 Fénelon the influence of Madame Guyon penetrated, or was
increased in, religious circles powerful at court--among the
Beauvilliers, the Chevreuses, 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 Fénelon
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 Fénelon, 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 Fénelon. The
course of that controversy we have traced elsewhere (see FÉNELON).
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 Fénelon,
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 "Règles
des assocées à l'Enfance de Jésus") having
been placed on the Index in 1688, and Fénelon'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
Œuvres 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, Œuvres
(Versailles, 1820), IV, iv; IDEM, Correspondance (Paris, 1828),
VII-XI; BOSSUET, Œuvres (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 (Orléans, 1881); CROUSLÉ, Fénelon
et Madame Guyon (Paris, 1895); MASSON, Fénelon 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
The Catholic Encyclopedia, Volume
VII
Copyright © 1910 by Robert Appleton Company
Online Edition Copyright © 1999 by Kevin Knight
Nihil Obstat, June 1, 1910. Remy Lafort, S.T.D., Censor
Imprimatur. +John Cardinal Farley, Archbishop of New York
|
