Ramsay ’ s Spiritual Entourage in France
and I am unable to desire or think .” 17
This is the dual image of pure love , which leads to an ecstatic communion with the Word of the Creator yet is also achieved through pure self-annihilation .
However , Madame Guyon was almost a saint . By means of frequent mortifications , she completely extinguished her own will . Towards the end of her life she suffered from illness . When she was younger , she had tried to mortify her flesh by abstaining from pleasures , and even succeeded in overcoming them : showing a distaste for food , she secretly forced herself to eat the sputum of the sick , and while caring for the poor , she took the opportunity to lick the pus from their bandages and so to subjugate her will . While she did not therefore offer her own life as an example to follow , she wrote a little manual for mystics , Moyen court et très facile de faire oraison que tous peuvent pratiquer très aisément . 18 The title calls to mind the guide to prayer written by the mystic François Malaval : Pratique facile pour élever l ’ âme à la contemplation ( en forme de dialogue ) où l ’ on explique les divers degrés par lesquels on peut commencer à s ’ avancer dans ce saint exercice ( translated into English as A Simple Method of Raising the Soul to Contemplation ). Both works were condemned as being inspired by Quietism . In fact Madame Guyon met Malaval in Marseilles in 1685 , and he expressed enthusiastic admiration for her book .
There is very little theory in these works , nor are there really any specific exercises , but they do contain some practical recommendations . First of all , we learn that there are stages in prayer , 19 that is to say in the love of God , leading to pure love . The road is hard , being somewhat ascetic , but may nevertheless be pronounced easy in that it demands no reflection , but simply diligence and renunciation . Ramsay would echo its principal thrust in his own writings , using the terms prayer and meditation , inward mortification , and finally perfect abnegation and self-denial . A direct line of descent from Saint Francis de Sales via François Malaval to Madame Guyon is therefore clear , but the perspective changes . Ramsay built theories around something that for Madame Guyon had absolutely no connection with the intellect .
However , Ramsay was no doubt also practicing while at her residence in
17 Jeanne-Marie Guyon , La vie par elle-même , part 3 , ch . 21 , p . 872 . ( Our own translation ). The 1791 re-edition in two vols . ( Paris : Les Libraires associés ) can be consulted on the Gallica website ( Bibliothèque Nationale de France ). Her autobiography covers little of the Blois period , when Ramsay and a few Scottish colleagues were present . It contains a brief anonymous eighteenth century Supplement describing these final years , pp . 981 ff .
18 Jeanne-Marie Guyon , Moyen court et très facile de faire oraison que tous peuvent pratiquer très aisément ( Lyon : A . Briasson , 1686 ). An edition is available on the Gallica website . Translated into English as A Short and Easy Method of Prayer , trans . Thomas D . Brook ( New York : Cosimo , 2007 ).
19 On this subject , see also Louis Cognet , Crépuscule des Mystiques ( Paris : Desclée , 1958 ), page 73 ff . as well as Ramsay ’ s preface to the first edition of his Œuvres Spirituelles de Fénelon ( Antwerp : 1718 ), pp . I-XI .
5