Jeanne Guyon

Jeanne-Marie Bouvier de La Motte Guyon
Jeanne-Marie Bouvier de La Motte Guyon
Born	13 April 1648 Montargis, Orléanais
Died	9 June 1717 (aged 69) Blois, France

Jeanne-Marie Bouvier de La Motte Guyon (Commonly known as Madame Guyon, French:

In 1664, when she was 15 years old, after turning down many other marriage proposals, she was forced into an arranged marriage to a wealthy gentleman of Montargis, Jacques Guyon, aged thirty eight. During their marriage, Guyon suffered at the hands of her mother-in-law and maidservant. Adding to her misery were the deaths of her half-sister, followed by her mother, and her son. Her daughter and father then died within days of each other in July 1672. She bore another son and daughter shortly before her husband's death in 1676. After twelve years of being unhappily married and after the birth of five children, of whom three survived, Madame Guyon became a widow at the age of 28.^[1]

Date of birth

There is controversy surrounding the date of birth of Madame Guyon, but 18 April 1648 given in the (highly condensed) English translation of Madame Guyon's autobiography, published by Moody Press,

Given that births in France were recorded only in the parish registers (registres paroissiaux) until 1792,^[7] it is possible that Madame Guyon was born on 11 April 1648 (Holy Saturday), but that her birth was not recorded in the parish register until 13 April (the Monday after Easter, which was established as a holiday only under Napoleon),^[8] and that the date of the entry (13 April 1648) was then handed down. It is, of course, also possible that those making the claims were mistaken, or that there were other reasons for naming the Eve of Easter as her birthday.^[a]

Career

Already during her marriage, Guyon retained belief in God's perfect plan, fiercely believing that she would be blessed in suffering. This became true especially after being introduced to

After three mystical experiences, Madame Guyon felt drawn to Geneva. The Bishop of Geneva, Jean d’Arenthon d’Alex, persuaded her to use her money to set up a house for “new Catholics” in Gex, in Savoy, as part of broader plans to convert Protestants in the region. In July 1680, Madame Guyon left Montargis with her young daughter and travelled to Gex.^[9]

The project was problematic, however, and Guyon clashed with the sisters who were in charge of the house. The Bishop of Geneva sent Father Lacombe to intervene. At this point, Guyon introduced Lacombe to a mysticism of interiority. While her daughter was in an Ursuline convent in Thonon as a pensioner, Madame Guyon continued in Gex, experiencing illness and great difficulties, including opposition from her family. She gave over guardianship of her two sons to her mother-in-law and took leave of her personal possessions, although keeping a sizeable annuity for herself.^[9]

Because of Guyon's ideas on mysticism, the Bishop of Geneva, who had at first viewed her coming with pleasure, asked her to leave his diocese, and at the same time he expelled Father Lacombe, who then went to Vercelli.^[2]

Madame Guyon followed her director to

She was not released 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 she met, at Beyne, in the Duchess de Béthune-Charrost's country house, her cousin, François Fénelon, who was to be the most famous of her supporters. Fénelon was deeply impressed by her piety.^[10]

Through Fenelon, the influence of Madame Guyon reached and influenced religious circles powerful at court—the Beauvilliers, the Chevreuses, and the Montemarts—who followed his spiritual guidance.

After a number of secret conferences held at

Madame Guyon remained imprisoned in the Bastille until 21 March 1703, when after more than seven years of her final captivity, she went to live with her son in a village in the

One of her greatest works, published in 1717 by Pierre Poiret—Ame Amante de son Dieu, representée dans les emblems de Hermannus Hugo sur ses pieux desirs—features her poetry written in response to the striking and popular emblem images of the Jesuit Herman Hugo and the Flemish master Otto von Veen.[13] Guyon herself states that she took these emblems into the Bastille.^[14]

Beliefs about prayer

Guyon believed that one should pray at all times and devote all of one's time to God. "Prayer is the key of perfection and of sovereign happiness; it is the efficacious means of getting rid of all vices and of acquiring all virtues; for the way to become perfect is to live in the presence of God. He tells us this Himself: 'walk before Me and be blameless' Genesis 17:1. Prayer alone can bring you into His presence, and keep you there continually."^[15] As she wrote in one of her poems: "There was a period when I chose a time and place for prayer. ... But now I seek that constant prayer, in inward stillness known ..."^{[citation needed]}

Grace vs. works

In the Christian dispute regarding grace and works, Guyon defended the belief that salvation is the result of grace rather than works. Like St. Augustine, St. Thomas Aquinas, Calvin, and Martin Luther, she thought that a person's deliverance can only come from God as an outside source, never from within the person himself or herself. As a result of His own free will, God bestows his favour as a gift. In her autobiography, for example, Madame Guyon criticized self–righteous people who try to gain heaven through their works. She praised lowly sinners who merely submitted themselves to God's will. Of the so-called righteous, she wrote: "the righteous person, supported by the great number of works of righteousness he presumes to have done, seems to hold his salvation in his own hands, and regards heaven as the recompense due to his merits.... His Saviour is, for him, almost useless.^[3] "These 'righteous persons' expect God to save them as a reward for their good works." In contrast to the self-sufficient, "righteous" egoists, the sinners who have selflessly submitted to God "are carried swiftly by the wings of love and confidence into the arms of their Saviour, who gives them gratuitously what He has infinitely merited for them."^[3] God's "bounties are effects of His will, and not the fruits of our merits."^[3]

Death and legacy

In 1704, her works were published in the

Her published works, the Moyen Court and the Règles des associées à l'Enfance de Jésus, were both placed on the Index Librorum Prohibitorum in 1688. Fénelon's Maximes des saints was also condemned by both the Pope and the bishops of France.

An anonymous 18th-century manuscript, hand-written in French, entitled "Supplement to the life of Madame Guyon" exists in the Bodleian Library at Oxford University,^[17] which sets forth many fresh details about the Great Conflict which surrounded Madame Guyon.

Bibliography

Works

• Vie de Madame Guyon, Ecrite Par Elle-Même (Life of Madame Guyon, Written by Herself)

• 3 vols, Paris, 1791
• The Autobiography of Madame Guyon, tr Thomas Taylor Allen, (London, 1897)
• De La Motte Guyon, Jeanne-Marie Bouvier. Autobiography of Madame Guyon. Chicago: Moody Press.
  ISBN 9780802451354
  )
• La Vie de Madame Guyon écrite par elle-même, ed Benjamin Sahler, (Paris: Dervy-Livres, 1983).

• Madame Guyon, Selected Poems of Madame Guyon. ed. Li Jili, Foreword by Kelli M. Webert, TiLu Press, 2012; (ebook version).
• Selections from the Autobiography of Madame Guyon, (New Canaan, CT: Keats Publishing, Inc.),
  ISBN 0-87983-234-7
• Le Moyen court et autres écrits spirituals, ed Marie-Louis Gondal, (Grenoble: J Millon, 1995)
• La Passion de croire, ed Marie-Louis Gondal, (Paris: Nouvelle Cité, 1990) [an anthology of excerpts from the writings of Madame Guyon]