Medieval Writings on Female Spirituality by Various

Author:Various
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
Published: 2010-02-28T16:00:00+00:00

Here ends the life of St Elizabeth of Spaalbeek, who passed to Christ in the year of our Lord 1266.

Marguerite Porete

EXTRACTS FROM THE MIRROR OF SIMPLE SOULS

CHAPTER I

... Now listen humbly at the beginning to a brief exemplum of worldly love and understand its application to divine love. Long ago there was a lady, a king’s daughter, who was of great distinction and of noble nature, and who lived in a foreign land. It so happened that word came to this lady of the great courtesy and great generosity of King Alexander, and she fell in love with him for his noble graciousness and his great renown. But this lady was so far from the great lord on whom she had set her love that she could neither possess him nor see him; and so she was very often miserable, because no love but this would satisfy her. And when she saw that this distant love, so near to her, was so far from her,1 she thought to comfort herself by imagining some figure that would bear the likeness of the one she loved and for whom she felt her heart so often wounded. And then she had an image painted, that represented as closely as possible the appearance of the king whom she loved so much. And by looking at this image, along with other observances, she was relieved; and thus she comforted herself with the representation of her love, so that she was raised from misery.

Truly, says the Soul who had this book written, I am saying this about myself: this is how it is with me. Word comes to me of a king of great power, who for courtesy and great generosity is a noble Alexander. But he is so far from me and I from him, says this Soul, that I can find no comfort in myself. And to summon me he gave me this book, which represents some of his observances of love. But, though I have his image, that does not mean that I live in the freedom of peace; but I am in a foreign land, far from the peace in which the noble lovers of this lord live, perfect and pure and made free by the gift of the lord with whom they live.2 ...

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