The Mirror of Simple Souls
Language: English
Published by University of Notre Dame Press, 1999
- Softcover
- Used
Seller: World of Books Inc, Montgomery, IL, U.S.A.World of Books Inc
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Condition: Used - Good
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This edition of The Mirror of the Simple Soul was originally published in 1927. At that time the author of the manuscript was unknown. It has since been attributed to Marguerite Porete, a French mystic. She was burnt at the stake for heresy in Paris in 1310 after a lengthy trial, after refusing to remove her book from circulation or recant her views. The book is cited as one the primary texts of the medieval Heresy of the Free Spirit. Porete's life is recorded only in accounts of her trial for heresy, at which she was condemned to be burnt at the stake. She is associated with the Beguine movement, and was therefore able to travel fairly freely. Until 1946, it was not even known that she was the writer of the Mirror, which had been published anonymously since her death. The title of Porete's book refers to the simple soul which is united with God and has no will other than His. Porete's vision of the Soul is of ecstatic union with God, moving in a state of perpetual joy and peace. Porete argues that the Soul in such a sublime state is above the demands of ordinary virtue, not because virtue is not needed but because in its state of union with God virtue becomes automatic. As God can do no evil and cannot sin, the exalted/Annihilated soul, in perfect union with Him, no longer is capable of evil or sin. …
Seller Inventory # CIN0268014353G
- Title
- The Mirror of Simple Souls
- Author
- Margaret Porette
- Publisher
- University of Notre Dame Press
- Publication year
- 1999
- Condition
- Good
- Binding
- Paperback
- Language
- English
- ISBN 10
- 0268014353
- ISBN 13
- 9780268014353
When Dr. Romana Guarnieri, in a letter to Osservatore Romano (16 June 1946), announced her discovery that Margaret Porette (d. 1 June 1310) was the author of The Mirror of Simple Souls, certainly a major French document of pre-Reformation spirituality, a sensation was created in the academic world. Although The Mirror is one of the few heretical documents to have survived the Middle Ages in its entirety, both its title and its authorship were among the most persistent and troublesome problems of scholarly research in the field of medieval vernacular languages. The Mirror, in its original French, survives only in the fifteenth-century manuscript which the great Condé (Louis II de Bourbon) had acquired for his palace at Chantilly. And, so far as can be known, all that remains with which to compare the readings of this manuscript text are those translations of The Mirror which, also in manuscript, are to be found in Latin, Italian, and Middle English.
This edition of The Mirror of Simple Souls is a translation from the French original with interpretive essays by Edmund Colledge, O.S.A., Judith Grant, and J.C. Marler, and a foreword by Kent Emery, Jr. The translators of this Modern English version rely primarily on the French, yet take other medieval translations into account. As a result, this edition offers a reading of The Mirror which solves a number of difficulties found in the French, and the introductions contributed by the translators narrate the archival history of the book, for which Margaret Porette was burned alive in Paris in 1310.
"Synopsis" may belong to another edition of this title.
About the Author
Margaret Porette (circa 1248/1250–1310) was a French-speaking mystic and the author of The Mirror of Simple Souls, a work of spirituality dealing with Divine Love. She was burned at the stake for heresy in Paris in 1310 after refusing to recant her views.
Edmund Colledge, O.S.A. (1910–1999), was a priest of the Augustinian Friars in England and professor emeritus, the Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies in Toronto.
J. C. Marler is associate professor in the department of philosophy and the Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies and assistant Vatican film librarian at Saint Louis University.
Judith Grant is a senior research fellow at the University of Auckland and the author of La Passiun de seint Edmund.
Kent Emery, Jr., is Associate Professor in the Program of Liberal Studies and the Medieval Institute at the University of Notre Dame. He is author of Dionysii Cartusiensis Opera selecta. Bibliotheca manuscripta IA-IB: Studia bibliographica (1991) and Monastic, Scholastic and Mystical Theologies from the Later Middle Ages (1996).
"About the title" may belong to another edition of this title.
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