BOURIGNON, ANTOINETTE Flemish Quietist, b. at Lille, began life a Catholic, but took to self-imposed retirement, penance and mortification. Later she tried convent life and the management of an orphanage ; both were failures on account of her distrust of human nature and her harsh, auto cratic disposition. She soon became convinced that she was directly illuminated by God for the reforming of things temporal and spiritual, and accordingly began to attack Jesuits, Jansen ists, Lutherans, Anabaptists and Quakers—in fact, every form of religious organization. Her works exhibit a curious medley of opinions, such as the denial of the Divine foreknowledge, of the eternity of the second Person of the Trinity and of the Atone ment, and the theories of the corruptibility of Christ's human nature, of a good and evil spirit in man, of the necessity for detecting and exposing the faults of others, and of the dispensa bility of the Scriptures for the elect. She had many followers in Holland and France, and especially in Scotland, where her doctrines were denounced by the Presbyterian general assem blies of 1701, 1709 and 171o.
Her works were collected by her disciple, Pierre Poiret (1679), who also published her life (1679) . Three have been translated into English: The Light of the World (1696) ; A Treatise of Solid Virtue (Amsterdam, 1699) ; The Restoration of the Gospel Spirit (1707). See An Apology for M. A. Bourignon (by G. Garden) (1699) ; Etude sur Antoinette Bourignon, by M.E.S. (1876) ; A. v. der Linde, A. Bourignon das Licht der Welt (Leyden, 1895) ; Hauck, Realencyklo piidie (Leipzig, 1897) ; A. R. Macewen, Antoinette Bourignon, Quietist (01o).