A Mutual Nuptial

Marguerite Porete, 14th-century heretic and author of The Mirror of Simple Souls, lived a rather enigmatic life. Little is known about her except that she wrote a work that is dizzying in its refusal to abide by dualistic ways of knowing and that she was burned at the stake for it. She refused to speak at her trials, neither defending nor recanting a work that in many ways prefigured the then considered orthodox work of St. John of the Cross two centuries later. So what has a medieval heretic to say to modern day women fighting for equality in the Church? I think quite a lot. 

When it comes to their theology of priesthood Pope Paul VI, Pope John Paul II, and theologian Hans Urs von Balthasar all have something in common: they connect it to the nuptial metaphor. They all say that in acting in persona Christi, the priest makes the bridegroom eternally present to the bride of Christ, the Church. This is then used to exclude women from the priesthood because they cannot and should not take on the “masculine” qualities of a bridegroom even though all of humanity takes on the “feminine” quality of being Christ’s bride.

According to Balthasar as outlined in his Theo-Drama’s II and III, “masculine bridegroom-ness” can be equated with activity and the ability to transmit life while “femininine bride-ness” is related to passivity and receptivity to life. This use of the nuptial metaphor is heartbreaking. Given that in Western societies today the pinnacle of marriage is a partnership of respect, support, and love, it is shameful that these theologians have taken such a metaphor and broken it down into its crudest, most binary terms. According to their interpretation, the nuptial metaphor separates men and women into two distinct categories based on gender roles rooted in antiquated understandings of sexual reproduction. It leaves no place for equality and absolutely erases the existence of the LGBTQ community. 

Marguerite Porete, though she wrote around 700 years ago, has a completely different way of looking at the nuptial metaphor. In The Mirror of Simple Souls she draws a picture of a love relationship between the Soul and God that is completely mutual in both self-giving and satisfaction. In this work Porete creates a dialogue between the soul and a host of characters such as Lady Love, Reason, The Supreme Lady of Peace, and The Spouse of the Soul. In the middle of this dialogue, the Soul comes to Lady Love in utter despondency. She has thought that the love between herself and the Divine was without “Lordship” but has found that she has nothing and the Divine has all. This creates an imbalance in the relationship and the Soul is heartbroken to think that she has nothing to offer to the one she loves.

Lady Love immediately reassures her that she herself is enough and that her lover is wholly satisfied with exactly what she has to give. In fact, the Divine is happy to give all of Godself in return for the soul’s gift of self. This is a totally different relationship from that which we see in the theology of recent popes and other theologians. In this relationship there are no set roles of “giver” or “receiver,” rather both have their turn in giving and receiving. This is a relationship that allows Marguerite to write of the soul,

“She swims and flows in joy, without feeling any joy, for she dwells in Joy and Joy dwells in her. She is Joy itself…”

This is a relationship of unity and joy and love. It knows no gender. It knows no bounds. It asks everything and gives everything. If this is the nuptial metaphor then it is one worth saving, one worth embodying. Anything else is, by this point, tired and stale.