Madame Jeanne Guyon

Madame Guyon was widowed in her late 20s with 2

children and pregnant with a third.1 She had found
solace and revival. She became a servant to the poor, a
prolific writer, and an itinerant minister.2 Her
popularity provoked the religious leaders of her time to
jealousy so that she was persecuted and imprisoned.3
But during her life she presented many challenges to
the patriarchal system of dominance.
Madame Guyon was the first woman ever to enter the
monastery of the Grande Chartreuse, where she
preached faith as the necessary means of communion
with God in prayer.4 The reports were careful to state
that she was not in any way inconsistent with modesty
and propriety as a woman, nevertheless a patriarchal
institution that had historically excluded all women
received her and sat under her teaching.5
After the death of her husband, Madame Guyon chose to remain single having dedicated her life
to Jesus.6 Powerful men attempted to take control of her wealth, but she was able to protect it,
investing most of her money into trusts for her children.7 She challenged the power of patriarchal

1
Guyon, Jeanne Marie Bouvier de La Motte and Nancy C. James, The complete Madame Guyon (Brewster, MA:
Paraclete Press, 2011), 9.
2
Ruth Tucker and Walter L. Liefeld, Daughters of the church women and ministry from new testament times to
the present (Grand Rapids, MI: Academie Books, 1987), 214-15.
3
Ibid., 216; Guyon, Jeanne Marie Bouvier de La Motte and Nancy C. James, The complete Madame Guyon
(Brewster, MA: Paraclete Press, 2011), 13, 17-19.
4
Ruth Tucker and Walter L. Liefeld, Daughters of the church women and ministry from new testament times to
the present (Grand Rapids, MI: Academie Books, 1987), 215.
5
Ibid.
6
Guyon, Jeanne Marie Bouvier de La Motte and Nancy C. James, The complete Madame Guyon (Brewster, MA:
Paraclete Press, 2011), 8-9.
7
Guyon, Jeanne Marie Bouvier de La Motte and Nancy C. James, The complete Madame Guyon (Brewster, MA:
Paraclete Press, 2011), 9-10.
dominance, breaking social norms of the time by independently conducting her own business and
refusing offers of marriage.8 She resisted the authority of the religious establishment to name her
writings heresy.9 She was bold and direct, and she was not afraid of confrontation.10
Madame Guyon became increasingly controversial as she refused to give all of her money to the
church, she addressed sexual harassment of nuns by priests, and she advocated for personal,
internal, contemplative life for all people and not just the priests and nuns.11 She faced
accusations of heresy, immorality, and witchcraft.12 She spent nearly a decade in grueling
confinement.13 Madame Guyon did not break. Although the church saw her as a threat to
patriarchal control, they could not find any evidence with which to convict her.14 She endured
and lived into her old age teaching people who came from all over the world to see her about the
power of contemplative prayer.15
Although theological training was closed to her, Madame Guyon wrote a complete 20 volume
commentary on the Bible as well as many other books.16 She challenged the patriarchal power of
her day as a woman who would not compromise or submit to the rule of men over her wealth,
her life choices, her thought, her worship, or her words. She influenced many young and older
women from all walks of life in her day to think of themselves as beloved by God and imbued
with agency17.Her boldness has inspired women across the centuries to possess their own souls
and to boldly proclaim their faith.18
She subverts the authority of the priesthood to intervene in the souls relationship with God.
Notice the intimate, unmediated connection she describes:
The holy Bridegroom always dwells in the center of the faithful soul, but often
dwells there in a hidden manner. Even though God is continually present, the
soul remains almost always ignorant of the divine happiness except at times
when it pleases God to reveal Himself to the loving soul. She perceives God in a
way both intimate and profound19.

8
Ibid., 10.
9
Gregoire, Vincent. Devoir dobeissance, obligation de resistance: lorquune ursuline soppose a lautorite
masculine au dix-septieme siecle. Seventeenth-Centurey French Studies (2010), Abstract.
10
Ibid., 11.
11
Ibid., 8-11.
12
Ibid., 13, 17-19.
13
Ibid.
14
Ibid., 20.
15
Ibid., 20-21.
16
Ruth Tucker and Walter L. Liefeld, Daughters of the church women and ministry from new testament times to
the present (Grand Rapids, MI: Academie Books, 1987), 216.
17
Ibid., 214-16. Guyon, Jeanne Marie Bouvier de La Motte and Nancy C. James, The complete Madame
Guyon (Brewster, MA: Paraclete Press, 2011), 13-14.
18
Stanley, Susie C. "Holy Boldness: Women Preachers Autobiographies and the Sanctified Self." Nova Religio:
The Journal of Alternative and Emergent Religions 10, no. 2 (2006), 134.
19
Guyon, Jeanne Marie Bouvier de La Motte and Nancy C. James, The complete Madame Guyon (Brewster, MA:
Paraclete Press, 2011), 46.
 Nothing is so easily gained as the possession and enjoyment of God. God is
more in ourselves than we are in ourselves. God desires to give the divine heart
more than we wish to possess it. You can live in God as easily and continuously
as you live in the air you breathe20.
No wonder the establishment felt threatened by her teachings. She disrupted all the
barriers and all the requirements and all the control the patriarchal religious institution
had erected between the people and God. She disrupted the distinctions of class, gender,
and age. She flung wide the gates that the patriarchy had so carefully locked shut, never
to be shut so completely again.
References
Guyon, Jeanne Marie Bouvier de La Motte, and Nancy C. James. The complete Madame Guyon.
Brewster, MA: Paraclete Press, 2011.

Grgoire, Vincent . Devoir d'obissance, obligation de rsistance: lorsqu'une ursuline s'oppose

l'autorit masculine au dix-septime sicle. Seventeenth-Century French Studies 32:1,
2010.

Tucker, Ruth, and Walter L. Liefeld. Daughters of the church women and ministry from new
testament times to the present. Grand Rapids, MI: Academie Books, 1987.

Stanley, Susie C. "Holy Boldness: Women Preachers Autobiographies and the Sanctified
Self." Nova Religio: The Journal of Alternative and Emergent Religions 10, no. 2 (2006):
134-36. doi:10.1525/nr.2006.10.2.134.

20
Ibid., 112.