Page:Catholic Encyclopedia, volume 7.djvu/123

 GUTON

93

GUTON

His hands; she writes remarkable things without preparation and without reflection. Her own activity disappears, to be replaced by the action of God which moves her, and she now enters into the "apostolic state". This apostolate she is to exercise not in preaching the Gospel, but in spreading the mystical life, the theory of which she presents in the " Moyen court et facile de faire oraison" (Short and Easy Method of Prayer), a work inspired mostly by her own experiences. In this work she distinguishes three kinds of prayer. The first is meditation properly so- called, the second is "the praj'er of simplicity", which consists in keeping oneself in a state of recollection and silence in the presence of God ; in the third, which is active contemplation, the soul, conscious that God is taking possession of it, leaves Him to act and re- mains in repose, abandoning itself to the Divine efflu- ence which fills it — powerless to ask anything for itself, since it has renounced all its own interests. This last state is pure love. In the "Torrents spiri- tuels", and the commentaries on Holy Scripture, the same theory is presented under very slightly diiTerent images and forms.

Proselytism and Trials. — Having attained what she called the "apostoUc state", Madame Guyon felt her- self drawn to Geneva. She left her children and re- paired to Annecy, to Thonon, where she was to find Pere Lacombe (July, 1681) and again place herself under his direction. She began to disseminate her mystical ideas, but, in consequence of the effects they produced, the Bishop of Geneva, M. d'Aranthon d'Alex, who had at first viewed her coming ^vith satis- faction, asked her to leave his diocese, and at the same time expelled Pere Lacombe, who betook himself to the Bishop of VercelU. Madame Guyon followed her director to Turin, then returned to France and stayed at Grenoble, where she published the "Moyen court" (January, 168.5) and spread her doctrine. But here, too, the Bishop of Grenoble, Cardinal Le Camus, was perturbed by the opposition which she aroused. At his request she left the city; she rejoineil Pere La- combe at VercelU and a year lat«r they went back to Paris (July, 1686). Forthwith Madame Guyon set about to gain adherents for her mystical theories. But the moment was ill-chosen. Louis XIV, who had recently been exerting himself to have the Quietism of Molinos condemned at Rome, was by no means pleased to see gaining groimd, even in his own capital, a form of mysticism, which, to him. resembled that of Molinos in many of its aspects. By his order Pdre Lacombe was shut up in the Bastille, and afterwards in the castles of Oloron and of Lourdes. The arrest of Madame Guyon, delayed by illness, followed shortly (9 January, 1688) ; brought about, she alleged, by her own brother, Pere de La Motte, a Barnabite.

She was not set at liberty imtil seven months later, after she had placed in the hands of the theologians, who had examined her book, a retractation of the propositions which it contained. Some days later (October, 1688) she met, at Beyne, in the Duchess de iSethune-Charrost's country house, the Abbe de F6ne- lon, who was to be the most famous of her disciples. She won him by her piety and her understanding of the paths of spirituaUty. Between them there was established a union of piety and of friendship into which no element ever insinuated itself that could pos- sibly be taken to resemble carnal love, even uncon- scious. Through Fenelon the influence of Madame Guyon penetrated, or was increased in, religious cir- cles powerful at court — among the Beauvilliers, the Chevreuses, the Mortemarts — who were under his spiritual direction. Madame de Maintenon, and through her, the young ladies of Saint-Cyr, were soon gained over to the new mysticism. This was the apogee of Madame Guyon's fortune, most of all when Fenelon was appointed (18 August, 1688) tutor to the Duke of Burgundy, the king's grandson. Before long,

however, the Bishop of Chartres, in whose diocese Saint-Cyr happened to be, took alarm at the spiritual ideas which were spreading there. Warned by him, Madame de Maintenon sought the advice of persons whose piety and prudence recommended them to her, and these advisers were unanimous in their reproba- tion of Madame Guyon's ideas. Madame Guyon then asked for an examination of her conduct and her writings by ci\'il and ecclesiastical judges. The king consented that her writings should be submitted to the judgment of Bossuet, of the Bishop of Chalons (afterwards Archbishop of Paris and Cardinal de Noailles), and of M. Tronson, superior of the Society of Saint-Sulpice.

After a certain number of secret conferences held at Issy, where Tronson was detained by a sickness, the commissioners presented in thirty-four articles the principles of Catholic teaching as to spirituality and the interior Ufe (four of these articles were suggested by Fenelon, who in February had been nominated to the Archbishopric of Cambrai). But the Archbishop of Paris, who had been excluded from the conferences at Issy, anticipated their residts by condemning the published works of Madame Guyon (10 October, l(i'.l4). She, fearing another arrest, took refuge for some months at Meaux, with the permission of Bos- suet, then bishop of that see. After placing in his hands her signed submission to the thirty-four articles of Issy, she returned secretly to Paris, where the po- lice, however, arrested her (24 December, 1605) and imprisoned her, first at Vincennes, then in a convent at Vaugirard, and then in the Bastille, where she again signed (23 August, 1696) a retraction of her theories and an undertaking to refrain from further spreading them. From that time she took no part, personally, in public discussions, but the controversy about her ideas only grew all the more heated between Bossuet and Fenelon. The course of that controversy we have traced elsewhere (see Fenelon). Madame Guyon remained imprisoned in the Bastille imtil 21 March, ITO.'i, when she went, after more than seven years of captivity, to live with her son in a village in the Dio- cese of Blois. There she passed some fifteen years in silence and isolation, spending her time in the compo- sition of religious verses, which she wrote with much facility. She was still venerated by the Beauvilliers, the Chevreuses, and Fenelon, who never failed to com- municate with her wlienever safe and discreet inter- mediaries were to be foimd.

Posthumous Sticcess. — Her writings began to be published in Holland in 1704, and brought her new admirers. EngUshmen and Germans — among them Wettstein and Lord Forbes — visited her at Blois. Through them Madame Guyon's doctrines became known among Protestants and in that soil took vigor- ous root. But she did not live to sec this imlooked- for diffusion of her writings. She passed away at Blois, at the age of sixty-eight, protesting in her will that she died submissive to the Catholic Church, from which she had never had any intention of separating herself. Her doctrines, like her hfe, have neverthe- less given rise to the widest divergences of opinion. Her pubhshed works (the "Moyen court" and the "Regies des associces a I'Enfance de Jesus") haNnng been placed on the Index in 1688, and Fenelon's "Maximes des saints" branded with the condemna- tion of both the pope and the bishops of France, the Church has thus plainly reprobated Madame Guyon's doctrines, a reprobation which the extravagance of her language would in itself sufficiently justify. Her strange conduct brought upon her severe censures, in which she could see only manifestations of spite. Evidently, she too often fell short of due reserve and prudence; but after all that can be said in this sense, it must be acknowledged that her morality appears to have given no grounds for serious reproach. Bossuet, who was never indulgent in her regard, could say be-