The theme of the nothing and the all in Marguerite De Navarre and Marguerite Porete

119 Pages·2009·0.35 MB·English

by  Holly Grant Robinson

THE THEME OF THE NOTHING AND THE ALL
IN MARGUERITE DE NAVARRE AND MARGUERITE PORETE

by

Holly Grant Robinson

Bachelor of Arts
University of South Carolina, 1997

_________________________________

Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements

For the Degree of Master of Arts in

French

College of Arts and Letters

University of South Carolina

2009

Accepted by:

Jeff Persels, Director of Thesis

Renée M. Severin, Reader

James Buggy, Interim Dean of the Graduate School
UMI Number: 1467360

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ABSTRACT

This paper tests the connection, first proposed in 1963 by Jean Dagens,
between Marguerite de Navarre and Marguerite Porete. Dagens argues that
Navarre’s description in her poem Les Prisons of an anonymous woman, whose
book was filled with the Holy Spirit, is a description of Marguerite Porete.
Dagens bases his claim on one of the few details that Navarre gives about the
woman, that she called Christ her FarNear. Porete, in her book Le Miroir des âmes
simples et anéanties, is the first known French writer to use this term, and almost
the only one to do so before Navarre. The suggested connection, however, is a
puzzling one and deserves further study, since Navarre gives other details that
either do not fit Porete or else are of so general a nature that they could apply to
any number of female mystics. The absence of further details identifying Porete
is especially noteworthy since Porete’s work abounds with radical and unusual
doctrines, and Navarre’s own theology is in many ways so different from that of
Porete as to make a connection between the two seem unlikely at first glance.
In order to test the possible connection between the two writers I consider
a theme common to both, the theme of the nothing and the all, to see whether
Navarre’s treatment of it in Le Miroir de l’âme pecheresse and Les Prisons, confirms
the connection. Her presentation of the nothing and the all in her early poem, Le
Miroir, bears little resemblance to Porete’s more nuanced understanding of the
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soul’s nothingness. However, in Navarre’s later poem, Les Prisons, a mystical
experience causes the main character to redefine the soul’s nothingness in
relation to God’s allness—because God is all that truly is, the soul is nothing.
Navarre’s more complex portrayal of the soul’s nothingness in Les Prisons
supports Dagens’ claim. I argue that it is either the case that Porete’s influence on
Navarre is indirect or that Navarre did not read Porete’s book in its entirety.
Guillaume Briçonnet, Navarre’s spiritual mentor, uses the antithesis FarNear in
some of his letters to Navarre, making him the likeliest transmitter of Porete’s
doctrines to Navarre. His letters to Navarre contain striking similarities to
Porete’s teaching, so exploration of the connection between Porete and Briçonnet
is a promising avenue for further research.
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
ABSTRACT............................................................................................................................ii
INTRODUCTION....................................................................................................................1
I. INTRODUCTION TO NAVARRE........................................................................................6
II. THE CONNECTION BETWEEN PORETE AND NAVARRE...............................................20
III. INTRODUCTION TO PORETE........................................................................................41
IV. NAVARRE’S AND PORETE’S TREATMENTS OF THE NOTHING-ALL THEME.............72
CONCLUSION...................................................................................................................106
REFERENCES.....................................................................................................................111
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INTRODUCTION

This is a two-fold study of Marguerite de Navarre (1492–1549) and
Marguerite Porete (?–1310), the latter of whom, some scholars have argued,
influenced the former. Navarre’s contemporaries judged her poetry to be of
“poor quality” (Gary Ferguson, ix). Pierre Jourda, her early twentieth-century
biographer, shared this opinion and severely criticized her first published poem,
Le Miroir de l’âme pecheresse, saying: “C’est moins un poème qu’une longue
effusion, une confession où de beaux traits épars ne suffisent pas à compenser
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des longueurs et un bavardage parfois pénible à suivre” (380). The opinion of
more recent scholars varies. Some, such as Hannah Leckman, maintain a
negative view and study Navarre more for her personality than for her poetry.
But several other scholars, Paula Sommers, Gary Ferguson, and Robert Cottrell,
2
have taken Navarre’s poetry more seriously. Ferguson, for example, praised the
same poem that Jourda condemned, calling it “a remarkable opening to a literary
career” (55). Despite this recent attention, her poetry remains a terra incognita,
deserving of further study (Cottrell ix).
In this paper, I study two of Navarre’s poetic works, Le Miroir de l’âme
pecheresse, and Les Prisons. These two works are bookends as it were of her poetic

1 In 1930, Jourda published the definitive tomes on Navarre’s life and work (Leckman iv).
2Paula Sommers’ Celestial Ladders, Ferguson’s Mirroring Belief, and Robert Cottrell’s The Grammar
of Silence.
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career. The early Miroir (ca.1530), which, as already stated, was her first
published poem, was her favorite (Sommers 49) and was placed at the beginning
of her 1531 and 1547 collections. The late Prisons (ca.1547), according to its
modern translator, Hilda Dale, the first allegory written by a woman (xvii), is her
longest poem, and is considered to be her poetic masterpiece. It contains within
it “the themes, topoi, and strategies” of all of her other poems (Cottrell 243).
Given their importance in her poetic corpus and their autobiographical content,
both poems are worthy of study in their own right. I have chosen to study these
poems, however, because of their alleged debt of influence to Marguerite Porete,
whose only known work was Le Miroir des âmes simples et anéanties (ca. 1290).
Scholars argue that Navarre is alluding to Porete’s Miroir when, in Bk III
of Les Prisons, she refers to an anonymous work, written, she says, by a woman,
“Depuys cent ans escript, remply de flamme/ De charité si tresardentement,/
Que rien qu’amour n’estoit son argument” (ll. 1316-18), and “Bien congnoissoit
.../ Le vray Amy qu’elle nommoit Gentil/ Et son Loing Pres” (ll. 1327-1329). In
1963, Jean Dagens first proposed Navarre’s connection with Porete, based on the
latter’s use of the term “Loingprés” to designate God. Porete was the last known
author to have used this phrase until Navarre used it two centuries later in Les
Prisons (Dagens 285).
On the assumption of this connection, Navarre may have read Porete’s
Miroir in the conventual library of Madeleine-lès-Orléans, which contained a
manuscript of the Miroir that was copied between 1450 and 1530 by an unnamed
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3 4
scribe. It is the only surviving French manuscript of Porete’s Miroir. Navarre
frequented this convent, and twice, upon her request, her brother granted
monetary favors to the convent. First, in April of 1529, he remitted the taxes
owed by the convent, asking in return that the nuns pray ‘for us, the health and
wellbeing of our children, the peace of our realm, and also for the benefit of our
very dear and beloved only sister, the Queen of Navarre, who urgently requested
and prayed us to do this” (Colledge, lxv, citing Guarnieri, 490-491). A year later,
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he sent money to the convent at the request of his sister. We know from an
inscription at the bottom of the first page of the manuscript that it belonged to a
Mme. Jehanne Bontemps, who wished that upon her death it would go to her
daughter Claudine, who was a nun at the Madeleine (Sanders 20, Dagens 287).
We do not know exactly when the convent acquired it, nor do we know when or
how it passed into the possession of the great Condé (Louis II of Bourbon), where
it now resides in the musée Condé.
Although Navarre’s Miroir does not contain such an (ostensibly) strong
allusion to Porete as does Les Prisons, some scholars find evidence in the poem of

3 “The modern catalogue [of the Condé collection] dates it ‘late 15th century;’ Dr. Guarnieri would
specify its earliest date as about 1450, with which we agree, though in our opinion the hand
makes her latest date of production, about 1530, improbable” (Colledge lxxxii).
4 In 1946, Romana Guarnieri attributed Le Miroir des âmes simples to Marguerite Porete. Guarnieri
matched excerpts from Porete’s trial documents to passages in a Latin version of Le Miroir, and
published these findings in an article in Osservatore Romano in June 1946. She also edited the first
critical edition of the Condé manuscript (Old French), published in Archivo Italiano per la Storia
della Pietà in 1965, and, with Paul Verdeyen, edited a full critical edition of the Condé and Latin
manuscripts, the latter of which contains Middle English notes and supplements, published in
Corpus Christianorum: Continuatio Mediaevalis in 1986.
5 Glasson, 49, n. 90: “R. Guarnieri (op. cit., p. 490) cite à ce propos un document tiré du Catalogue
des Actes de François Ier. En avril 1530, le roi fait un don aux religieuses de la Madeleine, à la
requête de sa soeur.”
3
Porete’s influence on this earlier work. Margaret Ferguson says that Navarre’s
Mirror “is clearly indebted to a reading of Porete’s Mirror,” though she does not
specify how (223).6 Marc Shell also sees a connection between the two Miroirs,
but also fails to explain. He simply says that Porete’s work “stands as an
important document in the history of Christian thought, with links to the
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‘libertine’ Marguerite of Navarre’s Miroir de l’âme pécheresse” (46).
Although scholars have based their claim of a connection between
Navarre and Porete on the use by both authors of the term LoingPrès, in this
study, I will explore another prominent theme shared by both authors, the theme
of the Nothing and the All, in order to investigate the relationship between the
two authors and to ascertain the possible extent of Porete’s influence on
Navarre’s poetry. To describe the soul as nothing and God as all is a common
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topos of mystics, and so the terms themselves do not necessarily indicate any
particular influence by Porete on Navarre. But evidence that Navarre’s
understanding of the soul’s nothingness evolves from a simple equation, in her
earlier works, of the soul with its sin, to a more complex understanding, in her
later works, that introduces the possibility of earthly union with God, may
strengthen the as-yet tenuous connection between the two authors. Assuming

6 Ferguson repeats this claim two other times in her book without identifying its source: 1) “Marguerite de
Navarre clearly had access to a French copy of Porete’s book when she wrote her Miroir de l’âme
pécheresse” (216); 2) “the Miroir de l’âme pécheresse, modeled on Porete’s Mirouer” (226).
7 Shell sees a connection between Navarre’s sympathies for so-called spiritual libertines and
Porete’s so-called leadership in The Brethren of the Free Spirit. This questionable claim will be
addressed in Chapter 1, pp. 15-16, and Chapter III, p. 44.
8 See for example, Jacopone da Todi (Laud 91, 92), who explores the soul’s annihilation into the
divine nothingness (McGinn 128-29), and Guillaume Briçonnet, who frequently used this theme
in his mystical letters to Navarre (Heller 289).
4
Porete did influence Navarre, it would be reasonable to expect convergence in
their treatments of this theme, and assuming the influence is limited to Navarre’s
later works, we could offer a more precise estimate of when Navarre was likely
to have read Porete. Finally, a comparison of the two authors may deepen our
understanding of Porete.
This study comprises four chapters. Chapter one is an introduction to
Navarre. Chapter two is a close examination of the passages in Les Prisons that,
scholars think, refer to Porete. Chapter three is an introduction to Porete and her
treatment of the Nothing/All theme. Chapter four is a comparison of Porete’s
and Navarre’s treatment of this theme. The conclusion reconsiders Porete’s
influence upon Navarre.
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