Madame Guyon: Woman of Prayer at the French Court
Madame Guyon: Woman of Prayer at the French Court
“Surrender yourselves then to be led
and disposed of just as God pleases,
with respect both to your outward
and inward state.”*
and disposed of just as God pleases,
with respect both to your outward
and inward state.”*
Most historians date the close of the Reformation to the year 1648. Luther in Germany, Zwingli and Calvin in Switzerland, Latimer and Ridley in England, and the Anabaptists in many parts of Europe, all had addressed errors they found in the Catholic tradition. Protests also came from within the Catholic Church. One individual who questioned both the hierarchy of the institution of the French Church, and its use of sacraments, was Madame Guyon, born in the year the Reformation ended.
Jeanne Marie Bouvieres de la Mothe was born on 18 April 1648 to wealthy, aristocratic parents, who trained her from infancy to take her place in French society. As a girl, she had wanted to become a nun, so that she could devote herself to prayer, but was only fifteen when her parents forced her to marry a man twenty-two years her senior, Jacques Guyon, Lord du Chesnoy. A man of ill health and a morally weak character, he joined his mother in keeping Jeanne under constant watch so that she could not pray or attend church services. Jeanne would arise in the middle of the night to be with God, and in those dozen, unhappy years, living under the tyranny of her mother-in-law, she learned how to draw close to God in new and delightful ways.
Jeanne's husband died in 1676, leaving her free to pursue her spiritual calling. She was discipled by Friar Francois Lacombe and ministered to people in villages around Geneva, Turin, and Grenoble between 1681-1686. She began to write what God had taught her about turning inward to meet God in prayer, and the ways to drive away individual desires and selfishness. Soon people began coming to learn from her. In 1685 she published her first book, Short and Very Easy Method of Prayer, and began to write her autobiography. Two years later, she moved to Paris and soon experienced the Pope’s disapproval, for what she had written and taught about a private relationship with God undermined both the authority and sacramental system of the Catholic Church at the time.
After an arrest, several months of confinement in a convent, and then a release at the request of King Louis XIV's second wife, Madame de Maintenon, Jeanne began teaching at a school for young noble-women at Sr. Cyr. She guided the girls in what came to be called “silent contemplative prayer,” a way to pray that accepts God’s initiative in one’s moral transformation. This was in opposition to the emphasis the Church was teaching - that of active cultivation of good works and moral character.
Madame Guyon spent time at court, where she was much respected. Many persons among the nobility followed her teachings. She taught four “truths for prayer”: 1) True Christians should strive for pure, wholly selfless love; 2) We should pray, not in order to gain anything from God (even salvation), but as an act of submission, without any will of our own; 3) Perfect prayer is a resting in God, without wrestling with distractions, words, or our will; and 4) Our relationship with God is not connected to the “institution” of Church, or the “use of its sacraments”; rather, it is a kind of “internal religion,” a deep, steadfast, and devout emptying into God.
About this time, two things happened. First, an influential theologian and later archbishop, François Fénelon, became a student of Madame Guyon. He was her supporter for the rest of his life, even under some trying circumstances. The second event was that the French Church, through a prominent bishop and spokesman Bossuet, began to attack Guyon, her views, and her followers.
Guyon was arrested, as was Fénelon, and imprisoned in several fortresses, including the Bastille. It was said of her that “her only crime was loving God.” Released in 1703, Jeanne went to live quietly with her daughter and family in Blois, a city located halfway between Tours and Orleans, France.
In Blois, Jeanne continued to write and teach others, from Germany, the Netherlands, England, and Scotland, encouraging them to pray without personal agendas or wills or desires. She believed that true prayer never seeks to impose the human will upon the Almighty God.
She died on 9 June 1717 and is buried in Blois, leaving behind more than forty volumes of her writings on prayer. Through the years, she has influenced thousands of Protestants, Catholics, and Quakers to hunger for more of Christ. She is remembered today as a founder of Quietism, the longing of the soul to be quiet in God’s presence, and to experience the fullness of His peace.
-Karen O'Dell Bullock
Jeanne Marie Bouvieres de la Mothe was born on 18 April 1648 to wealthy, aristocratic parents, who trained her from infancy to take her place in French society. As a girl, she had wanted to become a nun, so that she could devote herself to prayer, but was only fifteen when her parents forced her to marry a man twenty-two years her senior, Jacques Guyon, Lord du Chesnoy. A man of ill health and a morally weak character, he joined his mother in keeping Jeanne under constant watch so that she could not pray or attend church services. Jeanne would arise in the middle of the night to be with God, and in those dozen, unhappy years, living under the tyranny of her mother-in-law, she learned how to draw close to God in new and delightful ways.
Jeanne's husband died in 1676, leaving her free to pursue her spiritual calling. She was discipled by Friar Francois Lacombe and ministered to people in villages around Geneva, Turin, and Grenoble between 1681-1686. She began to write what God had taught her about turning inward to meet God in prayer, and the ways to drive away individual desires and selfishness. Soon people began coming to learn from her. In 1685 she published her first book, Short and Very Easy Method of Prayer, and began to write her autobiography. Two years later, she moved to Paris and soon experienced the Pope’s disapproval, for what she had written and taught about a private relationship with God undermined both the authority and sacramental system of the Catholic Church at the time.
After an arrest, several months of confinement in a convent, and then a release at the request of King Louis XIV's second wife, Madame de Maintenon, Jeanne began teaching at a school for young noble-women at Sr. Cyr. She guided the girls in what came to be called “silent contemplative prayer,” a way to pray that accepts God’s initiative in one’s moral transformation. This was in opposition to the emphasis the Church was teaching - that of active cultivation of good works and moral character.
Madame Guyon spent time at court, where she was much respected. Many persons among the nobility followed her teachings. She taught four “truths for prayer”: 1) True Christians should strive for pure, wholly selfless love; 2) We should pray, not in order to gain anything from God (even salvation), but as an act of submission, without any will of our own; 3) Perfect prayer is a resting in God, without wrestling with distractions, words, or our will; and 4) Our relationship with God is not connected to the “institution” of Church, or the “use of its sacraments”; rather, it is a kind of “internal religion,” a deep, steadfast, and devout emptying into God.
About this time, two things happened. First, an influential theologian and later archbishop, François Fénelon, became a student of Madame Guyon. He was her supporter for the rest of his life, even under some trying circumstances. The second event was that the French Church, through a prominent bishop and spokesman Bossuet, began to attack Guyon, her views, and her followers.
Guyon was arrested, as was Fénelon, and imprisoned in several fortresses, including the Bastille. It was said of her that “her only crime was loving God.” Released in 1703, Jeanne went to live quietly with her daughter and family in Blois, a city located halfway between Tours and Orleans, France.
In Blois, Jeanne continued to write and teach others, from Germany, the Netherlands, England, and Scotland, encouraging them to pray without personal agendas or wills or desires. She believed that true prayer never seeks to impose the human will upon the Almighty God.
She died on 9 June 1717 and is buried in Blois, leaving behind more than forty volumes of her writings on prayer. Through the years, she has influenced thousands of Protestants, Catholics, and Quakers to hunger for more of Christ. She is remembered today as a founder of Quietism, the longing of the soul to be quiet in God’s presence, and to experience the fullness of His peace.
-Karen O'Dell Bullock
*Jeanne Marie Bouvier de La Motte Guyon, The Exemplary Life of the Pious Lady Guion (1804), Thomas Digby Brooke, ed., (New York: Nabu Press, 2010), p. 458.
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