Description
Book SynopsisIn A Diabolical Voice, Justine L. Trombley traces the afterlife of the Mirror of Simple Souls, which circulated anonymously for two centuries in four languages, though not without controversy or condemnation. Widely recognized as one of the most unusual and important mystical treatises of the late Middle Ages, the Mirror was condemned in Paris in 1310 as a heretical work, and its author, Marguerite Porete, was burned at the stake. Trombley identifies alongside the work''s increasing positive reception a parallel trend of opposition and condemnation centered specifically around its Latin translation. She''s discovered fourteenth- and fifteenth-century theologians, canon lawyers, inquisitors, and other churchmen who were entirely ignorant of the Mirror''s author and its condemnation and saw in the work dangerous heresies that demanded refutation and condemnation of their own.
Using new evidence from the Mirror
