About
Madame Guyon

Madame Guyon was a French, Catholic mystic who lived from 1648 to 1717. Her devout parents arranged her marriage while she was fifteen. She was deeply religious, and practiced a wordless form of prayer that she sometimes refers to as "mental prayer" or "prayer of the heart." Her husband and mother-in-law despised her prayer life, and did everything they could to prevent her from praying. They denied her solitude and even encouraged her eldest son to spy on her in case she should have recourse to prayer while they were not in the house to personally stop her. Nonetheless she continued her prayer life, often waking in the middle of the night to pray when no one else was awake.

She had a number of children, some of whom she lost to smallpox. Her husband died when she was twenty-eight. Rather than remarry, she decided to devote the rest of her life to God. At the height of her popularity, people would line up to see her from dawn to dusk for spiritual guidance. She published several books on prayer and other topics. However she was despised by many people even when she was at the zenith of her popularity.

According to an online biography published at http://www.knight.org/advent/cathen/07092b.htm by the New Advent Catholic Supersite, her doctrine was repudiated by the pope and the bishops of France, and the Catholic church imprisoned her for a number of years. However posthumously her teachings have been embraced by Protestants in Germany, Switzerland, England, and among Methodists in America.

Christain Mysticism | Quotations drawn from Madame Guyon | Bibliographic references | ©1999 by D. Platt