page_title: Jeanne Guyon
section_title: Life after marriage
hierarchical_section_title: Jeanne Guyon / Life after marriage
context_page_description: Jeanne-Marie Bouvier de la Motte-Guyon was a French mystic and was accused of advocating Quietism, although she never called herself a Quietist. Quietism was considered heretical by the Roman Catholic Church, and she was imprisoned from 1695 to 1703 after publishing the book A Short and Very Easy Method of Prayer.
context_section_description: After her husband's death, Madame Guyon initially lived quietly as a wealthy widow in Montargis. In 1679, she re-established contact with François La Combe, the superior of the Barnabite house in Thonon in Savoy.
  After a third mystical experience in 1680, Madame Guyon felt herself drawn to Geneva. The Bishop of Geneva, Jean d’Arenthon d’Alex, persuaded her to use her money to set up a house for “new Catholics” in Gex, in Savoy, as part of broader plans to convert Protestants in the region. In July 1680, Madame Guyon left Montargis with her young daughter and travelled to Gex.
  The project was problematic, however, and Madame Guyon clashed with the sisters who were in charge of the house. The Bishop of Geneva sent Father La Combe to intervene. At this point, Guyon introduced La Combe to a mysticism of interiority. While her daughter was in an Ursuline convent in Thonon as a pensioner, Madame Guyon continued in Gex, experiencing illness and great difficulties, including opposition from her family. She gave over guardianship of her two sons to her mother-in-law and took leave of her personal possessions, although keeping a sizeable annuity for herself.
  Because of her ideas on mysticism, the Bishop of Geneva, who had at first viewed her coming with pleasure, asked her to leave his diocese, and at the same time he expelled Father Lacombe, who was then went to Vercelli.
  Madame Guyon followed her director to Turin, then returned to France and stayed at Grenoble, where she spread her religious convictions more widely with the publication of "Moyen court et facile de faire oraison" in January 1685.  The Bishop of Grenoble, Cardinal Le Camus, was perturbed by the appeal her ideas aroused and she left the city at his request, rejoining Lacombe at Vercelli. In July the following year the pair returned to Paris, where Madame Guyon set about to gain adherents for her mystical vision. The timing was ill-chosen; Louis XIV, who had recently been exerting himself to have the Quietism of Molinos condemned at Rome, was by no means pleased to see gaining ground, even in his own capital, a form of mysticism which, to him, resembled that of Molinos in many of its aspects. By his order Lacombe was shut up in the Bastille, and afterwards in the castles of Oloron and of Lourdes. The arrest of Madame Guyon, delayed by illness, followed on 29 January 1688, brought about, she claimed, by Father de La Motte, her brother and a Barnabite.
  She was not released until seven months later, after she had placed in the hands of the theologians, who had examined her book, a retraction of the propositions which it contained. Some days later she met, at Beyne, in the Duchess de Béthune-Charrost's country house, her cousin, François Fénelon, who was to be the most famous of her supporters. Fénelon was deeply impressed by her piety.
  Through Fenelon, the influence of Madame Guyon reached and influenced religious circles powerful at court—the Beauvilliers, the Chevreuses, the Montemarts—who followed his spiritual guidance. Madame de Maintenon and, through her, the young ladies of Saint-Cyr, were soon won over to the new mysticism. This was at the height of Madame Guyon's influence, most of all when Fénelon was appointed on 18 August 1688 to be the tutor to the Duke of Burgundy, the king's grandson. Before long, however, the Bishop of Chartres, in whose diocese Saint-Cyr was located, took alarm at the spiritual ideas which were spreading there. Warned by him, Madame de Maintenon sought the advice of persons whose piety and wisdom she valued, and these advisers were unanimous in their rejection of Madame Guyon's ideas. Madame Guyon then asked for an examination of her conduct and her writings by civil and ecclesiastical judges. The king consented that her writings should be submitted to the judgment of Bossuet, Louis-Antoine, Cardinal de Noailles, and of Tronson, superior of the Society of Saint-Sulpice.
  After a certain number of secret conferences held at Issy, where Tronson was detained by a sickness, the commissioners presented in thirty-four articles the principles
caption: Mme Guyon
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