The Mirror of Simple Souls
The meditations were originally written in the Picard dialect of Old French[2] and explore in poetry and prose the seven stages of "annihilation" that the Soul goes through on its path to Oneness with God through love.It was enormously popular when written but fell foul of church authorities, which detected elements of the Brethren of the Free Spirit, an antinomian movement in its vision; denounced it as "full of errors and heresies", burnt existing copies; banned its circulation; and executed Porete herself.Since then, it has been seen increasingly as one of the seminal works of medieval spiritual literature, and Porete, alongside Mechthild of Magdeburg and Hadewijch, can be seen as an exemple of the love mysticism of the Beguine movement.A. Herbert in a manuscript collection purchased for the British Library in 1911; it was shown to Evelyn Underhill.[3] The translation by "M. N." included a number of glosses by him and divided the text into divisions and chapters: The French book that I shall write after is evil [i.e. badly] written and in some places for default of words and syllables the reason is away.