Quaker Theology #6 -Spring 2002

                                                                       Friends' Theological Heritage:
                                             From Seventeenth-Century Quietists to A Guide to True Peace

These are the same practices found in Fénelon’s and Guyon’s texts, which found themselves in A Guide to True Peace, as we will see later in this study.

However, Molinos’ most distinct contribution to A Guide to True Peace were passages, directly translated from Guía espiritual, on the subject of temptation and strife as necessary to spiritual growth:

The Lord makes use of the veil of dryness, to the end we may not know what he is working in us, and so may be humble; because, if we felt, and knew, what he was working in our souls, satisfaction and presumption would get in; we should imagine we were doing some good thing; and this self-complacency would prevent our spiritual advancement. (A Guide to True Peace, 38)

Most of the direct quotes from Molinos’ work are found, not surprisingly, in the eighth chapter "On Temptation and Tribulations." According to Molinos, temptation and strife cleanse and purify the soul, and act like a fire to take away any element in the soul that is not God-like:

The Lord polishes the soul which he draws to himself, with the rough file of temptation; freeing it thereby from the rust of many evil passions and propensities. – By means of temptation and tribulation he humbles, subjects, and exercises it; showing it its own weakness and misery. It is thus that he purifies and strips the heart, in order that all its operations may be pure, and of inestimable value. Oh, how happy would you be, if you could quietly believe that all the trials and temptations, wherewith you are assaulted, are permitted for your gain and spiritual profit ! (A Guide to True Peace, 52-53)

Those passages come uniquely from the first book of the Guía espiritual, in particular chapters nine through eleven. By contrast, there is virtually no part of the second book of the Guía espiritual, which focuses more on the need and role of spiritual directors, to be found in A Guide to True Peace.

Our second author, François de Salignac de la Mothe-Fénelon (1651-1715) was born in southwestern France to a noble although relatively poor family. He became a priest in his mid-twenties, and rose in prominence becoming the Preceptor of Louis XIV’s grandsons, a member of the French Academy and the Archbishop of Cambrai. But, more importantly for this study, he was the spiritual son of Madame Guyon from their first encounter in 1688. This relationship grew in part because of intense correspondence over nearly a two-year period (1688-89), with Guyon’s aim being Fénelon’s spiritual development. She was inwardly led to seek him out and guide him to grow in faith and knowledge of God.

His Maximes des saints (1697), which was incorporated into A Guide to True Peace, was written as a defense of Guyon as she was being attacked and defamed by the Roman Catholic Church in France, and especially by the French Archbishop Bossuet. As the preface of the English version of Maximes des saints states, this work was "an exposition of [Guyon’s] views as Fénelon understood them, and as she had explained them to him in private." (7) The fact that this work was a defense of Guyon, and her Moyen court et très facile de faire oraison in particular, was obvious to Bossuet, who in turn actively persecuted Fénelon. Both Bossuet and Louis XIV urged Pope Innocent XII to condemn the text, which the Pope eventually did do. The result was Fénelon’s permanent banishment from the Royal Court to his archdiocese of Cambrai, where he remained until his death in 1715.

What does it mean for the Maximes des saints to be a defense of Guyon? For Fénelon, it meant to be a defense of what was known at the time as "pure love." He states, "All interior ways tend toward pure or disinterested love." (Davis, 83) Pure love is basically the kind of love that can exist within a seeker who holds God in the center of his or her soul, and whose actions are carried out while fixed on the will of God. In the following quote from Maximes, Fénelon explains:

All interior ways tend toward pure or disinterested love; because they must always tend toward the highest perfection and because this pure love is the highest degree of Christian perfection. It is the terminus of all the ways which the saints have known. . . . This disinterested love, always inviolably attached to all of God’s wills . . . performs the same acts and exercises all the same distinct virtues as interested love, with the sole difference that it usually carries them out in a simple, peaceful manner, separate from any motive of self-interest. (Davis, 83)

By using the device of maxims, Fénelon was able to state what was true and false in religious doctrine and matters of spirituality, as relating to this concept of pure love. These maxims build on the method of spiritual development posited by Guyon, and for which she was persecuted and imprisoned.

Jeanne-Marie Bouvier de la Motte Guyon (1648-1717) was born at Montargis, in central France. Married at sixteen, she bore five children during a very unhappy marriage. She was known at the court of Louis XIV and invited by the Queen of France, Madame de Maintenon, to educate young noblewomen at her school of Saint-Cyr. However, when the school began to be a bastion of Quietist theology and practice, she was released from her duties and lost the favor of the French royal family. As a result of teachings, she suffered calumny, disgrace and persecution, which included three different periods of imprisonment, one of which was at the Bastille.

Although it might seem unlikely that a laywoman in the French court would cultivate mysticism, we only need to point out that the early and mid-seventeenth century in France was a time of great mystical faith, most notably Francis de Sales (1567-1622) who was later canonized. But, in the later part of the century, as we have already seen, political fear and spiritual entrenchment reigned especially in the wake of Molinos’ condemnation.

Ironically it was her identity as a woman and as a layperson that allowed Guyon the freedom to perform a most subversive act that neither Molinos nor Fénelon as priests could undertake: She was able to cultivate followers, sometimes known as disciples, educating them in her spiritual path. This happened after her final release from prison, during the last years of her life. Her followers came primarily from outside of France and included such notable Protestants as John Wesley. As Patricia Ward states, Guyon "quickly became both a martyr figure and an authority on spirituality among Pietists, Quakers, Methodists, and other such movements of the time." (484)

However, her influence among Friends seems to have been her most important. It was Friends who first translated her works into English, and Friends who followed her method. In a Founders Lecture delivered at Bryn Mawr College in 1900, the prominent British Friend J. Rendel Harris states:

[T]here is no Society that has been so influenced by Guyon as the Quakers have been. If we ever had as a Society a mother-in-grace it is she; and even down to the present time there are not a few who are very great admirers of her doctrine of the spiritual life. We may go further and say that when we estimate the influence of outside teachers upon us, the Society has been profoundly affected by the teaching and life of Guyon, and no one else. (5-6) (emphasis his)

For Harris, Guyon was the teacher from whom I "received more help and guidance in the things of God than from any other person." (3)

There are other historical documents to support Harris’ claim that Guyon was central to Quakerism, even during her life, such as an English translation of Bossuet’s attack against Guyon, Fénelon and Quietism, with the intriguing title Quakerism A-la Mode: or a History of Quietism, Particularly That of the Lord Arch-Bishop of Cambray and Madam Guyone. (1698). The title page states that the book contains "An Account of [Guyon’s] Life, her Prophecies and Visions, her way of Communicating Grace by effusion to those about her at Silent Meetings, etc." The preface states, "It will also appear but too too evidently from this Treatise, that Quakerism owes its Origine to that Anti-christian [Quietist] Church. . . ." (A3)

Perhaps one reason that this tradition has not been remembered by Friends is because, as some readers might already suspect, it was Guyon’s version of Quietism, based on her teaching that led to the nineteenth-century Quietist movement among Friends, a difficult era in Quaker history. Harris says as much in the following passage: