Talk:Jeanne Marie Bouvier de la Motte Guyon
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The name Bouvier, which is originally from Savoy reminds us of Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy whose family is also from Savoy. So although this lady is not a direct ancestor, she may very well be a distant relative.
In his main work, The World as Will and Representation, Schopenhauer, in several places, refers to Mme. Guyon as an example of saintliness. By this, he means someone who has renounced selfishness and worldliness. For Schopenhauer, the fact that she has acted in this manner within the framework of Christianity is not essential.
I deleted the archaic organization---but the article does need some simple sections. . .if somebody could put them on.--Jdavid2008 19:45, 3 May 2007 (UTC)
[edit] Inaccuracies
I take exception the initial statement that Madam Guyon was linked to the Quietist movement. In her autobiography, she repeatedly denied even knowing Molinos until she read the name in a newspaper (Part 3, Ch. 3 of her autobiography) where she stated: "They then made known to His Majesty that I was a heretic, that I had constant correspondence with Molinos_I, who did not know there was such a person as Molinos in the world until I learned about it from the Gazette." It is true that the ruling church officials attempted to link her to the movement, but it cannot be asserted to be true, as such.
I also take possible exception to the statement that the Quietist Movement was considered heretical when your own article on Miguel Molinos states: [[“The matter was referred to the Inquisition. It pronounced that the Guida spirituale was perfectly orthodox, and censured the intemperate zeal of Segneri.”]]
Lightsearch 16:50, 6 May 2007 (UTC)lightsearch
- This article is basically straight from the Catholic Encyclopedia--and could very well have inaccuracies. Please feel free to rewrite any part that has mistakes--and the whole article if you have time :) Also, it needs to be organized I think with headers--I would do it but I don't know enough about her... It would be really good if you could!--Jdavid2008 18:51, 6 May 2007 (UTC)
Nancy C. James recently published "The Pure Love of Madame Guyon - The Great Controversy in the Court of Louis XIV" (University Press of America - June 2007) which corrects many inaccuracies and misconceptions about the life and works of Madame Guyon. 65.118.222.7 15:59, 3 September 2007 (UTC)Roger Nebel
[edit] Catholic Encyclopedia on Mysticism
First she attained a lively sentiment of the presence of God, perceived as a tangible reality. Prayer becomes easy to her; in it she is vouchsafed a savor of God which detaches her from creatures. This is what she calls "the union of the powers". She remains in this state for eight years; it is succeeded by another state in which she loses the sense of God's graces and favors, she has no taste for anything spiritual, is powerless to act, and afraid of her own baseness. This was the state of "mystical death" in which she remained for seven years; from this crisis she passes, as it were re-awakened and transformed, into the state of resurrection and new life. Whereas in the first of the three states she possessed God, in this last state she is possessed by Him; then God was united to the powers of her soul, but now He is united to its substance; it is He who acts in her; she becomes like an automaton in 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 prayer 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 remains in repose, abandoning itself to the Divine effluence which fills it -- powerless to ask anything for itself, since it has renounced all its own interests. This last state is pure love. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Erkin2008 (talk • contribs) 02:04, 1 November 2007 (UTC)
