Talk:Marguerite Porete

Picture
Beautiful though the picture is is it really Marguerite Porete? Even according to the details on the page when you enlarge it isn't anything to do with her. Nor is it likely that a woman of whom no-one knows anything about and whose work was viewed as being heretical would have her portrait painted by an Italian Renaissance painter. Can someone verify this, please? ThePeg 18:18, 27 January 2007 (UTC)


 * It's simply a painting of a literate medeival woman. I did see it being used on several European websites as a representative image of Porete. -- Kendrick7talk 14:08, 12 February 2007 (UTC)


 * Simply? It's a painting of the Virgin Annunciate by Antonella da Messina. She's always wearing blue, and frequently shown with a religious book to show her piety. here's a link It really has nothing to do with Porete (who btw was a heretic and NOT the Virgin Mary, just so we're clear) so I'm going to remove it. Cantara 06:22, 17 February 2007 (UTC)


 * Well, it is clearly not a painting of the virgin mary either, but suit yourself. -- Kendrick7talk 06:23, 17 February 2007 (UTC)

Having asked whether it should go I miss it! Perhaps there's an image of a Beguine someone could find to use? Here's two possibles. I don't know how to put them on the page: http://www.dodedans.com/Images/kbhbegin.gif http://www.hotels-holland.com/amsterdam-info/images/adamfoto-begijn2.jpg Cantara, I find your comment about Porete being a heretic a little inflammatory. The Catholic Church thought she was a heretic, that's all. No-one else did and if you read her book you might find that her Christianity is one of the most beautiful you could find. The only thing the Church didn't like was her comment that souls truly united with God didn't need it. There's very little else there which is heretical. Have you read it? ThePeg 22:56, 17 February 2007 (UTC)


 * You have to go to Special:Upload. The first one you link is copyright free, so I took care of it. -- Kendrick7talk 18:36, 18 February 2007 (UTC)

I think it looks quite good now that its up there. Your thoughts? It looked very bare once the old pic was taken out. ThePeg 17:09, 19 February 2007 (UTC)


 * The infobox bio template is kinda useless when so much history is gone about a person, and if they were unmarried and unemployed too there's not much left for fields to fill.... -- Kendrick7talk 19:22, 19 February 2007 (UTC)

Tinkerage
Ah. Do I detect a little tinkerage of the article by yourself, Kendrick? Looks like we're the leading proponents of the 'Rehabilitate Marguerite Porete' Society. :-) ThePeg 15:23, 12 February 2007 (UTC)


 * I seem to keep getting pulled off onto other things, but adding some research here is still on my to-do list. -- Kendrick7talk 18:04, 12 February 2007 (UTC)

In the Paulist Press edition of the Porete book there's quite an interesting bit about Grundmann's theory that the disaster for the Beguines was the Church's hostility not to the fixed communities but the wandering Beguines who seemed to be Free Spirits. When the church condemned them they made no distinction of the two strands of Beguine-hood and so consigned both to persecution. Working out how to work this in to the article. ThePeg 01:02, 13 February 2007 (UTC)


 * It's interesting how much more controlling feudalism was versus capitalism today. By that definition, even I was a Beghard once; in fact, the best soup kitchen in the states is in Colorado Springs &mdash; business men had their lunch there at St. Mary's the food was that good. Just work it best you can. I'm at some point going to hit up google books and JSTOR and try to ref this the best I can. -- Kendrick7talk 02:25, 13 February 2007 (UTC)

The big difference between feudalism and capitalism is that capitalism, on paper at least, encourages individualism where feudalism didn't. Having said that religion and private spiritual belief doesn't threaten capitalism. Having said that again there is plenty of control in capitalism, its just subtler and harder to define. Also there's a strong case linking capitalism with control in or over other countries eg freedom at home but not for people overseas. Any form of social structuring involves a degree of control and suppression of whatever threatens it. We don't burn people at the stake any more but we do supress evidence, send riot police in and invade or threaten other countries either militarily or economically. I'm not saying capitalism is worse than anyone else and it does provide for a freer society in some instances but its not without control. ThePeg 12:06, 13 February 2007 (UTC)

More Detail
I've added a little extra detail to the description of her book and ideas. Before the article gave no sense of the central thrust of The Mirror Of Simple Souls which is that Love in all its forms, once transfigured by the Divine, unites the Soul to God. The Soul is not literally 'annihilated' as in 'destroyed'. Its individual existence/ separateness is 'annihilated' and thus able to reunite with the Godhead. Thus Man and God become one, as with all the greatest mystics of any religion. The Church didn't like the idea because they preached that union with God could only happen after death. Porete, like Eckhardt, Langland and all the other Christian Mystics in the West, believed it could happen during life. I'm probably going to go into more detail on this subject in the article at some point so watch this space. ThePeg 18:48, 27 January 2007 (UTC)

Bypassing the clergy
I've reedited the reference to female Christian mystics 'bypassing' the Clergy. Some of the ones listed actually were clergy - Hildegard, Julian of Norwich etc - and so it would be eronneous to site the whole list as being like Porete. Porete, even if she was a beguine, was a lay mystic ie not part of a Holy Order, and thus not like these others. ThePeg 22:50, 17 February 2007 (UTC)
 * Even Porete had a confessor, if I'm recalling my sources correctly. It's an anachronist viewpoint, IMHO, which confuses the free spirit heresy with the protestant heresy. -- Kendrick7talk 12:18, 18 February 2007 (UTC)

And she took pains to try and clear her work with Church authorities by taking it to the three Church scholars she mentions at the end. So there's little evidence she was much like those Free Spirit nuts who ran around advocating group sex. ThePeg 17:10, 19 February 2007 (UTC)

Will & Nick
I've repositioned the William of Nargis and Nicholas of Lyra sentences so that they flow with the paragraphs a bit better. Hope everyone's ok with that? ThePeg 17:08, 19 February 2007 (UTC)

Book Image
Hi all. I've noticed that on some articles images of the author's books have been used. Here's an image of the Paulist Press edition of the Mirror. Its very beautiful I think: http://www.paulistpress.com/ppos/images/items/0-8091-3427-6.jpg. Does anyone know how we might include it on this page? ThePeg 16:02, 28 February 2007 (UTC)


 * It wouldn't fall under WP:Fair use, because the book is not the main topic of the article. You could use it to illustrate an article about the book, however. -- Kendrick7talk 20:16, 28 February 2007 (UTC)

I might do that. :-) ThePeg 14:09, 2 March 2007 (UTC)

External links modified
Hello fellow Wikipedians,

I have just modified 2 external links on Marguerite Porete. Please take a moment to review my edit. If you have any questions, or need the bot to ignore the links, or the page altogether, please visit this simple FaQ for additional information. I made the following changes:
 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20060830200607/http://www.sunypress.edu/details.asp?id=60342 to http://www.sunypress.edu/details.asp?id=60342
 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20110820154749/http://margueriteporete.net/ to http://margueriteporete.net/

When you have finished reviewing my changes, you may follow the instructions on the template below to fix any issues with the URLs.

Cheers.— InternetArchiveBot  (Report bug) 08:48, 2 June 2017 (UTC)