Somewhat later in the century a different movement was started by a woman, which involved many of the highest in rank at court. This took the form of a kind of mystical enthusiasm, running into a theory of pure love, and was instigated by Mme. Guyon, a widow, still young, and gifted with a lofty and subtile mind. After losing her husband, whom she had converted to her religious views, she went, in 1680, to Paris to educate her children. Becoming interested in religion, she went to Geneva, where she became very intimate with a priest who was her spiritual director, and whom she soon wholly subjected to her influence. On account of their views on sanctification, they were ordered to leave.
After travelling over Europe for a number of years, and writing several works, including Spiritual Torrents and Short and Easy Method of Making Orison with the Heart, the widow returned to Paris, with the intention of living in retirement; but so many persons of all ranks sought her out, that she organized, for ladies of rank, meetings for purposes of prayer and religious conversation. The Duchess of Beauvilliers, the Duchess of Béthune, the Countess of Guiche, the Countess of Chevreuse, and many others, with their husbands, became her devoted adherents.
According to Mme. Guyon, prayer should lose the character of supplication, and become simply the silence of a soul absorbed in God. "Why are not simple folks so taught? Shepherds, keeping their flocks, would have the spirit of the old anchorites; and laborers, whilst driving the plow, would talk happily with God. In a little while, vice would be banished and the kingdom of God would be realized on earth." Thus, her doctrine was directly opposite to the theories of the Jansenists.
At that time, 1687 to 1688, all religious movements, however quiet, were condemned at Rome; and the teachings of Mme. Guyon were found to differ very little from those of the Spanish priest Molinas. The first arrest, that of her friend Lacombe, was soon followed by that of Mme. Guyon herself, by royal order; she was released through the intercession of Mme. de Maintenon, who was fascinated by her to the extent of permitting her to teach her doctrines at Saint-Cyr, Upon the appearance of her Method of Prayer, an examination was instituted by Bossuet and Fénelon, who marked out a few passages as erroneous--a procedure to which she submitted. However, Bossuet himself wrote a treatise against her Method of Prayer, in which he cast reflections upon her character and conduct; to that work Fénelon refused to subscribe, which antagonistic proceeding brought on the great quarrel between those two absolute ecclesiasts. In fact, Fénelon became imbued with the doctrines of Mme. Guyon.
She was imprisoned at various times; and when a letter was received from Lacombe, who had been imprisoned at Vincennes for a long time, exhorting her to repent of their criminal intimacy, Mme. Guyon's cause was hopeless. She was sent to the Bastille, her son was dismissed from the army, and many of her friends were banished. In 1702 she was released from prison and banished to Diziers; she passed the remainder of her life in complete retirement at Blois.
Fénelon had written a treatise, Maxims of the Saints, which was said to favor Mme. Guyon's doctrines, and which was sent to Rome for examination. He defined her doctrine of divine love in the following maxim, which was condemned at Rome:
"There is an habitual state of love of God, which is pure charity without any taint of the motive of self-interest. Neither fear of punishment nor desire of reward has, any longer, part in this love; God is loved, not for the merit, but for the happiness to be found in loving Him."
Such a doctrine made repentance unnecessary, destroyed all effort to withstand evil, and did not acknowledge the need of a Redeemer. This the great Bossuet foresaw; consequently, he, as the supreme religious potentate of his inferior in rank, Fénelon, demanded the condemnation by the latter of the works of Mme. Guyon. The refusal cost Fénelon exile for life. To Mme. de Maintenon he wrote a letter which shows the sincerity of his devotion to a friend in disgrace, even though his own reputation was thereby endangered:
"So it is to secure my own reputation that I am wanted to subscribe that a lady--my friend--would plainly deserve to be burned, with all her writings, for an execrable form of spirituality which is the only bond of our friendship. I tell you, madame, I would burn my friend with my own hands, and I would burn myself joyfully, rather than let the Church be imperilled; but here is a poor, captive woman, overwhelmed with sorrows; there is none to defend her, none to excuse her; all are afraid to do so. I maintain that this stroke of the pen, given from a cowardly policy and against my conscience, would render me forever infamous and unworthy of my ministry and my position."
Thus, in the seventeenth century, religious agitations and religious reform were the work preëminently of women; but that reform and those agitations were productive of good results to a far greater degree than was any similar movement in any other century, with the possible exception of the nineteenth. The seventeenth century was, as mentioned before, a century of stability, one that toned down and crushed all violations and abuses of the standard established by authority. Woman, in her constant striving for the complete emancipation and gradual purification of her sex, rebelled against the power of established authority; she did not consciously or intentionally violate law and order, but in her intense desire to act for good as she saw it, and in her noble efforts to ameliorate all undesirable conditions, she created commotion and confusion. The seventeenth-century woman is conspicuous as a champion of religion, moral purity, and social reform; therefore, her influence was mainly social, religious, moral, and literary, while that of the woman of the sixteenth century was mainly political. This difference was the result of the greater advantages of education and training enjoyed by the females of the later period.