husband, Louis. Although she does not seem to have
testifi ed for her husband’s canonization, Marguerite was
active in the propagation of his memory: her confessor,
Guillaume de Saint-Pathus, for example, wrote an im-
portant and reverential biography of the king. Marguerite
died on December 30, 1295, nearly two years before the
process of canonization was completed.
See also Blanche of Castile
Further Reading
Le mariage de saint Louis à Sens en 1234. Sens: Musées de
Sens, 1984.
Sivéry, Gérard. Marguerite de Provence: une reine au temps des
cathédrales. Paris: Fayard, 1987.
William Chester Jordan
MARGUERITE PORETE
(d. 1310)
Biographical information about Marguerite Porete
comes from inquisitorial documents, which tell us that
she was a béguine from Hainaut. Quite possibly, she
was a solitary itinerant who expounded her teachings to
interested listeners. She wrote the Mirouer des simples
ames anienties in Old French sometime between 1296
and 1306. Since there is no indication that someone else
wrote the text of the Mirouer from the author’s dictation,
we can surmise that the author wrote the treatise herself
and that she was well educated.
The text received approvals from three Orthodox
Church leaders, one of whom was Godfrey of Fontaines,
a scholastic at Paris between 1285 and 1306, who also
counseled the author to use caution in her expressions.
Approval was not universal, however, and the text was
condemned and burned in the author’s presence with
the orders not to spread her views under threat of being
turned over to the secular authorities. Marguerite was
arrested at the end of 1308 and remained in prison for a
year and a half before being condemned to the fl ames as
a relapsed heretic. Despite the condemnation, the Mir-
ouer apparently enjoyed widespread popularity, for in
addition to copies made of the text in Old French it was
translated into Middle English, Italian, and Latin.
The Mirouer is a dialogue among allegorical fi gures
who represent the nature of the relation between the soul
and God. The fundamental structure of the discourse is
grounded in traditional Neoplatonic philosophy, and
courtly language is used to express theological abstrac-
tions. The Mirouer is a theological treatise that analyzes
how love in human beings is related to divine love and
how the human soul by means of this relation may ex-
perience a lasting union of indistinction with God in this
life. The Mirouer is also a handbook, or “mirror,” that
aims to teach the “hearers of the book” about themselves
and how to attain union with God.
Further Reading
Marguerite Porete. Le mirouer des simple ames anienties, ed.
Romana Guamieri and Paul Verdeyen. CCCM 69. Turnhout:
Brepols, 1986.
——. The Mirror of Simple Souls, trans. Ellen L. Babinsky. New
York: Paulist, 1993.
Lerner, Robert E. The Heresy of the Free Spirit in the Later Middle
Ages. Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1972.
Verdeyen, Paul. “Le procès d’inquisition contre Marguerite Porete
et Guiard de Cressonessart (1309–1310).” Revue d’histoire
ecclésiastique 81 (1986): 47–94.
Ellen L. BabinskyMARIE DE FRANCE
(fl. 1160–1210)
Recognized today among the major poets of the renais-
sance of the 12th century, Marie de France was equally
admired by her contemporaries at court, according to
the testimony of Denis Piramus in his Vie seint Edmunt
le rei. Three works of the period are signed “Marie”
and are usually attributed to the same author: the Lais,
the Fables, and the Espurgatoire saint Patrice. In the
epilogue to the Fables, the author adds to her name si
sui de France (l. 4). This is probably an indication of
continental birth, a fact to be remarked if, as seems
likely, she was living in England. A number of identi-
ties have been proposed for Marie, none of which can
be established with certainty: the natural daughter
of Geoffroi Plantagenêt (and half-sister of Henry II),
abbess of Shaftsbury (1181–1216); Marie de Meulan
or Beaumont, widow of Hugues Talbot and daughter
of Waleron de Beaumont; and the abbess of Reading
(the abbey where the Harley 978 manuscript may have
been copied). Identifying her literary patrons is equally
problematic. The Lais are dedicated to vus, nobles reis
(l. 43), who may be either Henry II (1133–1189), the
most likely candidate, or his son, Henry the Young King
(crowned 1170, d. 1183). The Count William named in
the Fables has been linked to a number of prominent
fi gures, including William Marshal, William Longsword
(the natural son of Henry II), William of Mandeville,
William of Warren, William of Gloucester, and Guil-
laume de Dampierre.
Marie’s works can be dated only approximately with
reference to possible patrons and literary infl uences. The
works themselves suggest that Marie knew Wace’s Brut
(1155) and the Roman d’Énéas (1160), an undetermined
Tristan romance, classical (notably Ovid) and Celtic
sources, but not the romances of Chrétien de Troyes.
The Lais are therefore dated between 1160 and 1170,
the Fables between 1167 and 1189, and the Espurga-
toire after 1189 and probably between 1209 and 1215,
since its Latin source, the Tractatus de purgatorio sancti
Patricii (in the version of Hugh or Henry of Saltrey),
has been placed no earlier than 1208.MARIE DE FRANCE