Dear Christopher,
Sorry to reply a little late to your request. The attribution of the
*Mirror* to Porete was made in 1946 by an Italian scholar, Romana
Guarnieri, based on her study of the papal decretal Ad nostrum (which
includes what appear to be excerpts from the treatise, probably taken
from the list of condemned articuli on the basis of which Porete and her
book were judged to be heretical), contemporary chronicle reports of
Porete's trial and execution (which also include several of the heretical
propositions), the full documentation of the trial (held in the Archives
Nationales in Paris) and the remaining Latin, Old French, Middle English and
Italian MSS of the text.
Examining the list of condemned propositions, which are
declared in the trial material to come from a book by one Marguerite
Porete, who was executed, Guarnieri realised that they clearly had been
taken from the work *The Mirror of Simple Souls*, which circulated
anonymously and without enormous doubt as to its orthodoxy. It's rather
intriguing to follow the history of the text's reception after Porete's
authorship of it was forgotten. No-one working on Porete doubts that
Guarnieri is correct in her ascription of its authorship to her. I
haven't got my index here, but I think that I'm correct in saying that
she published her research fully in the Archivio Italiano per la Storia
della Pieta, after a small article had appeared in the (and forgive my
spelling if it's incorrect) Osservatore Romano. I can provide a
bibliography on Porete if this interests you. My own doctoral study on
her examined the history of the text's reception in quite a lot of
detail, Paul Verdeyen has transcribed and edited the trial documents (in
the journal Ons Geestelijk Erf), Ellen Babinsky has given a good overview
to the events leading up to Porete's execution in the introduction to her
translation, and Michael Sells offers an excellent discussion of the
philosophical elements of Porete's thought in his *Mystical Languages of
Unsaying*. I hope that this is of some assistance to you.
Best wishes,
Rebecca Stephens.
University of Exeter.
On Thu, 28 Oct 1999, Christopher Abbott wrote:
> I know that the 'Mirror for Simple Souls' has in the past been =
> attributed to Marguerite Porete, but I wonder where scholarships stands =
> today ont his issue, if anywhere. Has her authorship been confirmed, or =
> definitively unconfirmed - if either of these, on what grounds.
>
> Many thanks
>
> Christopher Abbott
>
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