The Autobiography of Madame Guyon

by Jeanne Marie Bouvier de la Motte Guyon

Jeanne Guyon, a French Catholic mystic of the seventeenth century, wrote the story of her inner life at the command of her spiritual directors, over years in which her teaching on prayer brought her arrest and imprisonment. In this English version, published in two parts, she describes a pious and troubled childhood, an unhappy arranged marriage, the death of children, and the moment she discovered a way of interior prayer, a simple surrender of the self to God. She then recounts her widowhood, her travels and teaching, the opposition of church authorities, and her persecution as a supposed heretic. Her intense, self-searching account was later prized by Protestant readers, among them early Methodists and Quakers. The full text is available to read online in your browser on Vinteuil, and the first chapter is free.