The school of love: Marguerite Porete's Mirror of Simple Souls

Abstract

This paper examines Marguerite Porete's Mirror of Simple Souls in light of sources that reveal the educational culture and intellectual activities of informally organised women's religious communities in northern France, Flanders and other regions associated with the beguine movement. What emerges from this new approach is the Mirror and its author's unambiguous didactic intent – a fact long overlooked in the scholarly literature. Rather than an elitist work with no practical purpose beyond personal, prophetic vision, this paper argues that Marguerite's book engages in debate with contemporaries to show them the imperative for moving beyond epistemological conventions in common currency, while providing them with a set of teachings to do so. As such, both the book and its history provide crucial evidence of beguine religious training, the acquisition of knowledge and the transmission of knowledge amongst networks of women religious, and indeed, much further afield.