Ritual , Secrecy , and Civil Society
speculations . All philosophy that stops at the understanding without reaching to the heart , is at best but an ingenious romance .” 14
When Fénelon died in 1715 , it was only logical that Ramsay should join Madame Guyon ’ s cosmopolitan community in Blois . He became her secretary , as she corresponded extensively with several mystics or future Pietists , Protestant as well as Catholic , across Europe . 15 According to Ramsay , in his preface to Fénelon ’ s Spiritual Works :
All the days of this last stage of her life were employed in the consummation of her love for her God ; of which she had not only a plenitude , but was perfectly inebriated therewith . Her tables , the cieling [ sic ] of her chamber , every thing which fell into her hands , served her to write down the happy sallies of a fruitful genius , filled with only its object . The numerous verses which proceeded from the abundance of her heart , formed a collection , which was printed after her death , in five volumes , under the title of “ Cantiques Spirituels , ou d ’ Emblemes sur l ’ amour divin .” 16
The scene described here is no doubt somewhat romanticized : in La Vie de Mme Guyon par elle-même published by Poiret ( incidentally against Ramsay ’ s advice ), she describes these years rather as a period of drought when , having become completely detached from herself , she endured the daily withering away of the divine manifestations she had experienced in the past :
Lately , I have hardly been able to talk about my dispositions , if at all , because my condition has become simple and unchanging . [ ... ] The foundation of this state is a deep annihilation , I can find nothing in myself that I can name . [ ... ] Nothing remains in me , neither good nor evil . Good is in God , my share consists only of nothingness . What can I say about a state that is always the same , with neither sight nor variation ? Because the dryness , if I experience it , is the same to me as the most satisfying state . Everything is lost in immensity ,
14 Chevalier Andrew Michael Ramsay , The Philosophical Principles of Natural and Revealed Religion , 2 vols . ( Glasgow : Robert Foulis , 1748 and 1749 ), Vol 1 , Book 4 , p . 328 .
15 Dominique Tronc set out a chart showing the influence that Madame Guyon exerted over her disciples in Protestant and Catholic circles in the introduction to his critical edition of La Vie de Madame Guyon par elle-même ( Paris : H . Champion , 2014 ), p . 49 . There is another chart illustrating how Madame Guyon ’ s disciples were spread across Europe in Marie-Louise Gondal , “ Connivances européenes ,” Madame Guyon , un nouveau visage ( Paris : Beauchesne , 1989 ) p . 63 . For the Scottish members of the group , see George David Henderson , Mystics of the North East ( Aberdeen : Third Spalding Club , 1934 ) and “ Un mouvement quiétiste en Écosse ,” in Revue de Littérature comparée 27 ( 1953 ), p . 253 and Religious Life in Seventeenth-Century Scotland ( Cambridge : Cambridge University Press , 1937 ), pp . 220-231 .
16 Cited in A New and General Biographical Dictionary , vol . 6 ( London : William Strahan , 1784 ), p . 374 .
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