GUYON, JOHANNA-MARIE BOUVIERS DE LA MOTHS, was born on the 18th of April 1648, at Montargia, in the department of Loiret. At seven years of age her father sent her to the Ursuline Convent, where she soon distinguished herself by her talents, and by her remarkable attention to her religious studies. She wished to take the veil before she was seventeen, but her parents opposed this, as they had promised her in marriage. While residing in the convent, in order to have the name of Jesus on her heart, "with ribbauda and a big needle she fastened the name in large characters to her akin in four places." At a little past fifteen she was married to M. Guyon, whom she had not seen till two or three days before her marriage. The union was not a happy one; the husband was passionate, and twenty two years older, and the motherdu-law insulted her. She says she prayed continually, and when her husband was suffering from the gout nursed him carefully, and ultimately succeeded in converting him to her religious views. At the age of twenty-eight she lost him, and was left a widow with three small children in 1576. Though now attentive to the temporal interest, and the education of her children, her religious feelings increased in Intensity. She believed that she had occasionally interior communications of the divine will, but was deeply distressed about the state of her soul. In 3680, on St. Magdalene's Day, on occasion of a mass, she says " my soul was perfectly delivered from all its pains." She soon after went to Paris, was exhorted in what she considered a miraculous manner to devote herself to the service of the Church, and went to Geneva to succour the Catholics there, but ultimately settled at Gex in 1681, in an establishment founded for the reception of converted Protestants. Her family then urged her to resign the guardianship of her children, which she did, giving up all her fortune to them, retaining only sufficient for her subsistence. Soon after the Bishop of Geneva wished her to bestow this pittance open the establishment, of which she was to be made prioress. She declined, and left Gox for the Ursuline convent at Thonon. Here the bishop continued to annoy her ; and she went first to Turin, then to Grenoble, Marseille, Alessandria, afterwards to Verceil, and at length, after an absence of five years, returned to Paris in a very ill state of health. During all this time she bad had dreams, visions, and marvellous manifestations. She had read the scriptures diligently, and wrote explications of them ; "before I wrote I knew nothing of what I was going to write, and after I bad written I remembered nothing of what I had penned," she says, in the singular autobiography which she has loft of herself. Two other of her works of this period were, Moyen court at tres facile de faire °raison,' which was published, and rapidly ran through five or six editions, and ' Le Cautique des Cantiques do Salomon, interpretd eolou he sans mystique.' Though the works were highly popular, they gave great offence to the priesthood. They inculcated what was then called Quietism, a mystic state of repose of the mind in tho goodness and mercy of God. It was the persecution of the priests that had caused her frequent changes of residence, and on her return to Paris she was confined, on their representations, by a lettre de cachet, in the convent of the Visitation of St. Mary, in the suburb of St. Antoine. Here
she was visited and examined by M. do Medal, archbishop of Paris, who, convinced of her innocence, obtained her release after an imprison ment of nearly' eight months. Soon after her release she became acquainted with Feeelonovho continued her firm friend for life. The outcry of the priests however continued; she felt uneasy as to the character of her writings, and placed them in the hands of Bossuet, bishop of Meaux. lie was Beatified as to her sincerity; but the priests succeeded in procuring a commission to examine leer doctrines anew, of which Boesuct was at the head. At the end of six months thirty articles were drawn up by him, sufficient, as he deemed, to prevent the mischief likely to arise from Quietism, which were signed by Madame Guyon, who submitted at the same time to the censure which Boseuet had passed on her writings in the preceding April. Notwithstanding this submission, she was subsequently involved in the persecutions of Fenelon, the archbishop of Cambrai, and in 1695 was imprisoned in the castle of Vincennes, and thence removed to the Beadle, enduring the harshest treatment, and subjected to repeated examinations. In 3700 she was released, when she retired to Blois, to the bowie of her daughter, where she wrote so continuously that her works form 39 volumes in 8vo. She had written her autobiography previously, which Cowper translated, and of which he has said, " she will be found to have conversed familiarly with God." Of another of her works,' Cantiquee Spirituals, ou d'Embletnes cur l'Amour Divin,' he has also said, that though she was accused of being a Quietist and a fanatic, yet he admired them, for "her verse is the only French verse I ever read that I found agreeable, and there is a neatness in it equal to that which we applaud with so much reason in the compositions of Prior." lie translated many of them, which are still highly esteemed by the holders of cortain religious opinions. She died on the 9th of June 1797.
Madame de Guyon's was a singular character. Her enthusiasm was excessive, but siocere. Her life was passed in the exemplary dis charge of every duty, and she even submitted her opinions to the authority of her Church; but her reason was too clear, her faculties too keen, to allow her to see through other eyes than her own, and thence the opposition she met with. With a vivid imagination often approaching hallucination, she possessed a strong common sense that preserved her from the last excesses of extravagance; and while she rejoiced in being a martyr for religion's sake she had aufficieut sagacity to secure the enjoyment of the sober elegancies of life. Her auto biography is a remarkable work, and affords an Interesting history of a mind ; it is full of earnest and thoughtful prayers, which are often rhapsodical and sometimes poetical ; of a mind that converted coin cidences into marvels and spiritual manifestations, and accepted deep impressions as divine inspirations with the most undoubting faith. It is no wonder that it became a favourite with Cowper. ilia trans latlon was never published, but a mutilated one has since appeared by J. 1). Brooke, printed in 1806. bier doctrines had many followers, and are oven now not extinct; and her prayers and experiences are still admired by many who are in no sense her followers.