Guy. See Guido.
Guyon, Jeanne-Marie Bouvier de la Mothk, an eminent French mystic, was born at Jlontargis April 13, 1G48. She was educated in a convent, and in early youth showed signs of great quickness of mind. At seventeen she wished to take the veil, but her parents would not consent. In 1GG4 she was marv ried to ]M. Jacques Guyon, a rich, parvenu, for whom she had no affection. Her marriage was not a happy one, in consequence of the tyranny of her husliand and mother-in-law, who, acting under the advice of her confes.sors, endeavored to withdraw her from the in- ward praj'er and retirement to which, at the age of twenty, slie began to addict herself. Vanity and co- quetry were her besetting sins, and, to conquer them, she thought it necessar_y to purify herself by "good works" and bodily mortifications. She read largely in mystical writers, especially Kempis, Francis of Sales, and the life of Madame Chantal, whose self-inflictions she imitated. A Franciscan monk taught licr to "loolj within instead of without" for peace, and to " seek God in her heart." Her doubts and fears fled: "I was on a sudden so altered that I was hardly to be known either by myself or \\y others." ISladamc Guy- on dated this conversion from July 22, 1GG8. Her do- mestic troubles cdntinucd, luit slie could now bear them patiently. In 1G7G her husband died, leaving her with three young children. Her religious feelings now increased in intensity. She believed that she had certain interior communications of the divine will.
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but was often deeply distressed about the state of her soul. In 1672, on tlie anniversary of her conversion, slie made "a marriage contract'' with Christ, and sign- ed it in her own blood ! She formed an intimate ac- quaintance witli Lacombc, a Barnabite mystic, wlio, from being her teacher, became her follower. In 1081, 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 Ge- neva to "convert" Protestants there, but, finding no success or sjanpathy, she went to Gex in 1681, to 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, D'Aranthon, bishop of Geneva, wished her to bestow this pittance upon an establish- ment, of which she was to be made prioress. She de- clined, and left Gex for the Ursuline convent at Tho- non, where Lacombe became her "father confessor." Here she had a short period of unmingled enjoyment in dreams and reveries of bliss. Both Lacombe and ]\Iadame Guyon soon, however, began to gain purer ideas of the Christian life, and of the true nature of faith ; but the errors of Romanism and mysticism were too closely incorporated with her mental habits to be got rid of. She preached to the Ursulines at Thonon not only "salvation by faith," but "indifference to life, to heaven, to hell, in the entire union of the soul with God." She returned to Gex, and there, in praj'er at night, it was revealed to her that she was " the spiritual mother of Lacombe;" her relations to him became more intimate than ever, and gave occasion afterwards to great but groundless scandal. Lacombe seems to have been a weak man : he finally died in a madhouse. The bishop of Geneva became alarmed, and sought to be rid of his dangcvous proter/es. Madame Guyon now wandered for some years (1683-1686), vis- iting Turin, Grenoble, and other places. At about this time also she began to write. Her first work (begun at Gex) was Les Torrents Sinrituels (published in her Opuscules, Cologne, 1704, 12mo). The "torrents" are souls tending to lose themselves in tlie ocean of God. The work exhibits the writer as a " devout enthusiast, but principally demonstrates her unfitness as a pattern or teacher of experimental godliness." At Grenoble she found herself "suddenly invested," as she ex- presses herself, "with the apostolic state,'" and able to discern the condition of those that spake with her, so that, one sending another, she was occupied from six in the morning till eight at night speaking of divine things. "There came," she sa3's, "great numbers from all parts, far and near, friars, priests, men of all sorts, young women, married women, and widows; they all came one after tlie other, and God gave me that which satisfied them in a wonderful manner, without my thinking or caring at all about it. Noth- ing was hidden from me of their inward state and con- dition. ... I perceived and felt that what I spake came from the fountain-head, and that I was only the instrument of him who made me speak." Her expo- sition of Solovion's Song and of the Apocahjjise appeared in 1684 at Grenoble. Her notes were written under a quatii inspiration : she had dreams, visions, and mar- vellous manifestations. " Before I wrote I knew noth- ing of what I was going to write, and after I had writ- ten I remembered nothing of what I had penned," she says, in the singular autobiography which she has left of herself. Anotlier of her works of this period was Moyen court et tres ficile pour rorahon, which was published, and rapidly' ran through five or six editions. The "Quietism" taught in these writings made her many enemies among the priests. In July, 1686, ac- companied by Lacombe, she returned to Paris, where persecution and tribulation awaited the wanderers.