Marguerite Porete
vers 1250-1310 13th century
Silence before those who judge, and a stripping-away carried to the point of asking for nothing.
Who was Marguerite Porete?
A beguine of Hainaut, a laywoman with no convent and no protector, she wrote in the vernacular a book about the soul that lets itself be stripped of everything until it wants nothing for itself. The book circulated, she was forbidden to spread it, she went on spreading it. Tried in Paris, she refused to speak before her judges for a year and a half, and was burned at the Place de Grève. Her book survived, anonymous, and fed centuries of readers who did not know her name.
In their own words
I am God, says Love, for Love is God and God is Love, and this Soul is God by the condition of love.
You who will read in this book, if you would rightly hear it, think on what you will say, for it is hard to comprehend.