Page:A Biographical Dictionary of the Celebrated Women of Every Age and Country (1804).djvu/414

400 of her two books. M. Bossuet was at the head of this examination, to whom, at the request of Madam Guyon, was joined the bishop of Chalons, afterwards Cardinal de Noailles; and to these two were added, first, M. Transon, superior of the society of St. Sulpice; and Fenelon. Madam Guyon, while her cause was under examination, retired to the convent of Meaux, at the desire of that bishop. At the end of six months, thirty-four articles were drawn up, which were signed at Isay, near Paris, by all the examinants, and by Madam Guyon, who declared "she had always intended to write in a true catholic sense, and had not apprehended any other could be put upon her words."

In consequence of these submissions, and the testimony given of her conduct, during six months residence in the convent of St. Mary de Meaux, the bishop continued her in the participation of the sacrament, declaring that he had not found her any wise involved in heresies elsewhere condemned. Thus cleared, she returned to Paris, not dreaming of any further prosecution; but the storm was not yet allayed, for she was involved in the persecution of the archbishop of Cambray, who as well as herself, was accused of Quietism, and she was imprisoned before the expiration of the year 1695, in the castle of Vincennes; from thence she was removed to the convent of Thomas a Girard, and then thrown into the Bastile, where she underwent many rigorous examinations, and continued in prison, as a criminal, till the meeting of the general assembly of French clergy, in 1700, when nothing being made out against her, she was released. After which, she went to the castle belonging to her children, and from thence to Blois, the next town to it.

From