Guyon, Jeanne Marie Bouvier de La Motte, 1648-1717

Jeanne-Marie Bouvier de La Motte Guyon (commonly Madame Guyon; 13 April 1648 – 9 June 1717) was a French mystic, spiritual writer, and lay teacher of prayer whose writings on inward prayer, abandonment to God, and pure love became one of the central subjects of the late seventeenth-century Quietist controversy in France. Her works, especially Moyen court et très facile de faire oraison and her biblical commentaries, circulated widely in manuscript and print. They influenced François Fénelon, archbishop of Cambrai, but drew the opposition of Jacques-Bénigne Bossuet, Louis Antoine de Noailles, and other French ecclesiastical authorities. Guyon was never formally condemned as a heretic by name, but her writings and teachings stood behind the Articles of Issy in 1695, and her Moyen court was placed on the Index Librorum Prohibitorum in 1689. She was imprisoned several times, including in the Bastille, and spent her later years at Blois. Although her teaching remained suspect in Catholic France, her writings were widely read in Protestant circles, especially among Pietists, Quakers, Methodists, Holiness writers, and other traditions of inward religion. Guyon’s spirituality also belonged to a wider transnational literature of interior prayer that included earlier Spanish and New Spanish contemplatives. Among the figures read by Guyon’s circle was Gregorio López, the Spanish hermit of New Spain, whose radically simplified prayer and reputation as a modern Desert Father helped shape later Catholic and Protestant traditions of inward devotion.