SOURCE: Cottrell, Robert D. “Marguerite Porete's Heretical Discourse; or, Deviating from the Model.” Modern Language Studies 21, no. 1 (winter 1991): 16-21.

In the following essay, Cottrell acknowledges that Porete's mystical treatise, The Mirror of Simple Souls, can be reconciled with church doctrine if interpreted figuratively, but argues that the work, in questioning the position of the female self within the patriarchal order, attempts to subvert traditional Christian social hierarchy.

Around the year 1300, ecclesiastical authorities in the northern French city of Valenciennes condemned as heretical a work entitled Le Mirouer des simples ames anienties et qui seulement demourent en vouloir et desir d'amour and ordered that it be burned publicly in the presence of the author, the Beguine Marguerite Porete.¹ For the next several years, the Church sought to compel Porete to renounce her convictions and to disassociate herself from the views she had expressed in Le Mirouer des simples ames...