DID I PICK MARGARET FOR A STORY?
OR DID SHE PICK ME?
Note that this is just a PS to a larger series of articles and photo pages on Margaret Porete that is linked to below.
I ended my tome called "A Women's Movement in the High Middle Ages,"
(click on the name to go there) with the fire and smoke that consumed Margaret (Marguerite in French), called the
"Porete." She was the first woman to be burnt by the new institution called the Inquisition in Paris.
She was a Beguine, meaning she was part of the lay order of religious women that is the subject of that tome about
a 'women's movement.' At the end of that tome I suggested that the smoke from the fire that consumed her was an
ominous portent of the horrors to come. Heresy hunting would have its gruesome days, to be gradually replaced by
the even more deadly mass hysteria of the witch-hunting craze.
Margaret's was the first fire of a general conflagration that would devour
many, many dissidents, mostly women. The witch craze passed like a wildfire from its Catholic source into the new
Protestant religions. To me, Margaret's story is the beginning of this strangely violent and deadly era in history
to which my mind automatically returns when someone claims that the separation between church and state is being
overdone.
The witch craze was such an unbelievable and overwhelming thing to read
about that it forced me to write a very short story to put a light into that black-as-pitch tunnel that my readings
had placed me into. Sometimes I take historical things too personally, I know. That story is not for the faint
of heart and can be visited with the usual 'click' here. Is this a diversion from the Margaret Porete story? Sure.
Maybe.
At the time I wrote that "Women's Movement" tome in the mid-1980's
I was haunted by Margaret's story, but except for reading her book in English and deciding it was not to be my
favorite mystical essay, I did nothing more. Frankly, I was trying to grasp her book intellectually, and she clearly
says in her book that it doesn't work that way. I knew that. Intuitively.
Now it is 2003, not quite two decades later. Several historical obsessions
have waxed and waned in me, leading to writing stories and taking pictures. The two primary obsessions were Joan
of Arc, saint, and my decidedly non-saintly but ever loving Beatrice de Planissoles. (Click on the names to go
there, of course.)
Each of these two took me years to work out to my own satisfaction. I
was just barely done with my last obsession in late 2002. So, I thought, "how nice, a Paris trip without a
historical obsession to make me do things I would otherwise not do and go places I would otherwise not go. I'll
do something I want to do this time. Just go places, see things, take pictures, tell about it.
Then it hit me, like a brick out of the sky. After almost 20 years of
not giving her any thought, suddenly I had a real need to tell more of Margeret/Marguerite's story even though
there is little, factually, more to tell. Why? What could possibly have fueled that need? I'll tell you a few paragraphs
later, but as I physically traveled north and steeped myself back into Margaret's life I realized it has to do
with my much larger reading and writing project for this year. Hers is one answer to the question I am trying to
tackle about the competition between intellect and intuition as guides to knowing!
Originally, before heading north, I thought I would simply tell her story
and take some pictures and be done with it. So two weeks before the trip I got out some of my favorite old references,
looked up a couple of new ones, and posted the historical story before coming on this trip. Then, my plan was,
I would go to places she has been, take some pictures, post them into and after the story, and that will be the
end of it. A whole obsession taken care of in one trip. Phenomenal!
But then came the weak knees, the recognition that Margaret had already
answered the question I had already spent six months reading and thinking and writing on, and the fascination of
it all. I was hooked, and here, days after returning I am still stealing moments from my family to add words and
feelings to this Margaret thing. I am happily obsessed until I get all of this properly posted. Just like with
Joan and Beatrice. Maybe this is what I want to do after all!
Now I was wondering. Was this all my own thinking, selecting, and doing?
Intellectually the answer is "Of course!" Intuitively the answer is: "Why even ask? Just enjoy
it, let it take you away."
So I let it take me away and really got into visiting the sites named
in her trial, and felt in each place for remnant vibrations from her presence. Nothing, really, in Paris at the
place she was burned. Maybe too diluted by other victims of the pyres of the Field of Greves (in front of the present
Hotel de Ville, city hall). Nothing either in Chalons-sur-Marne/Chalons-en-Champagne. But, there I ran into my
old/young friend Joan of Arc again, so took pictures of monuments related to her one, single overnight stay here
with the royal army, the dauphine, and his royal entourage. They were on their way to Reims and the coronation.
Joan made an impression that got carved into stone. Margaret did not.
Then after my business was done, I drove to Cambrai, which I loved, but
which gave me little positive feedback in the way of Margaret-vibrations. Then on to Valenciennes, where, to my
chagrin and surprise, my knees got very weak and I felt a real presence invading me in one particular part of town,
the part where the Notre Dame de St. Cordon cathedral was, and the Beguinage! After picturing it. I hurried out
of there and into a splendid Chinese restaurant for a big lunch. I was hoping the weakness was nutrition-related.
I also feared I was coming down with something. I was fighting the idea that it was Margaret tapping my soul on
'its' ('her' in Medieval parlance) virtual shoulder.
After lunch I moved on to Tournai, a splendid place, delightful. My first
stop was the belfry, 256 steps up (not bad, down was not so comfortable though) a narrow winding staircase, and
my eyes were immediately drawn to an older church to the left as I arrived outside at the top observation point.
Not until I had almost walked there did it occur to me to pull out my map. Then I saw why I was headed there. It
was the church next to the Beguinage. But, did I get all of those knee-weakening "Margaret has been here"
feelings I did in Valenciennes? Weakly is all, the knees were fine. Valenciennes is where I think she spent most
of her short (perhaps 30 years long) life. Proof? My gut feelings are always right when there is no scintilla of contrary
evidence.
So, Margaret, did you select yourself as my topic this trip, or did I
select you? My intellect says it is definitely the latter, my intuitive side says "maybe not, smart-dude."
Maybe since Margaret saw that this year I was struggling again with this intellect/intuition split inside me, and
are already through about a dozen books related to the subject (on the nature of consciousness actually) this year
alone, she simply wanted to remind me that this is what she was trying to tell me twenty years ago. But I was too
dense, too intellectually dominated in my mode of being, to understand her message. I was like her Parisian judges, reading her intuitive tome with their intellects focussed on finding facts. In my case I was not looking for facts that contradicted official belief-prescriptions as those judges were, but like them I missed her real message and point, 20 years ago.
"OK, Margaret. I get it, finally. Thank you! Au revoir!" Of course I did not hear an answer from her, not really, but I could swear something laughed somewhere deep in my gut and said: "Au revoir, smart-ass? Yes indeed, and sooner than you might think." There was a chuckle following that. Was there really? Or was it my Coke-Light bubbles rising?
No doubt. That is all that it was. A nascent burp. {Thus saith sir intellect.}
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