SOME days afterwards the Bishop of Meaux returned. He brought me a paper written by himself, which was only a profession of faith, that I had always been Catholic, Apostolic, and Roman, and a submission of my books to the Church, —a thing I would have done of myself, had it not been asked of me. And then he read me another, which he said he must give me. It was a certificate such as he gave me long afterwards, and even more favourable. As I was too ill to transcribe that submission in his writing, he told me to have it transcribed by a nun, and to sign it. He took away his certificate to have it copied clean, as he said; and he assured me that, when I gave him the one, he would give me the other; that he wished to treat me as his sister; and that he would be a knave if he did not do so. This straightforward procedure charmed me. I told him I had placed myself in his hands, not only as in the hands of the Bishop, but as in those of a man of honour. Who would not have thought he would have carried it all out?
I was so ill after his departure, from having spoken a little when I was extremely weak, that I had to be brought back with cordial waters. The Prioress, fearing that if he returned the next day it would kill me, begged him by writing to leave me that day quiet; but he would not. On the contrary, he came that very day, and asked me if I had signed the writing he had left me; and, opening a blue portfolio which had a lock, he said to me, “Here is my certificate; where is your submission?” While saying this, he held in his hand a paper. I showed him my submission, which was on my bed, and that I had not the strength to give it to him. He took it. I did not doubt he was about to give me his writing; but nothing of the kind. He shut up the whole in his portfolio, and said he would give me nothing; that I was not at the end; that he was about to torment me more, and that he wanted other signatures—among others this, that I did not believe in the Incarnate Word. I remained without strength and without speech. He ran away. The nuns were shocked at such a trick; for nothing obliged him to promise me a certificate. I had not asked him. It was then I made the protestations, which are initialled by a notary of Meaux; I asked for him, under pretext of making my will.
Some time after, the Prelate again came to see me. He required me to sign his pastoral letter, and to acknowledge I had held the errors therein condemned. I endeavoured to make him see, that what I had given him comprehended every kind of submission, and although in that letter he had placed me in the rank of evil-doers, I was endeavouring to honour that state of Jesus Christ without complaining. He said to me, “But you have promised to submit yourself to my condemnation.” “I do it with all my heart, Monseigneur,” 1 answered him; “and I take no more interest in those little books than if I had not written them. I will never depart, if it pleases God, from the submission and respect I owe you, however things turn. But Monseigneur, you have promised me a discharge.” “I will give it to you when you do what I wish,” he said to me. “Monseigneur, you did me the honour to tell me that when I gave you signed that act of submission you had dictated to me, you would give me my discharge.” “Those are,” said he, “words which escaped before having maturely considered what one can and ought to do.” “It is not to make complaint that I say this to you, Monseigneur, but to bring to your memory that you promised it to me; and, to show you my submission, I am willing to write at the foot of your pastoral whatever I can put there.” After I had done this, and he had read it, he said that he liked it well enough. Then, after having put it in his pocket, he said to me, “That is not the question. You do not say you are formally a heretic, and I wish you to declare it, and also that the letter is very just, and that you acknowledge to have been in all the errors it condemns.” I answered him, “I believe, Monseigneur, it is to try me you say this; for I shall never persuade myself that a Prelate so full of piety and honour would use the good faith with which I have come and placed myself in his diocese, to make me do things I cannot do in conscience. I have thought to find in you a Father. I conjure you that I may not be deceived in my expectation.” “I am Father of the Church,” he said to me, “but, in short, it is not a question of words. If you do not sign what I wish, I will come with witnesses, and, after having admonished you before them, I will accuse you to the Church, and we will cut you off, as it is said in the gospel.” “Mouseigneur,” I answered, “I have only my God for a witness. I am prepared to suffer everything, and I hope God will give me the grace to do nothing contrary to my conscience, without departing ever from the respect I owe you.” He further wished, in the same conversation, to oblige me to declare that I recognized there are errors in the Latin book of Father La Combe, and to declare, at the same time, I had not read it.
The worthy nuns who saw part of the violence and outburst of the Bishop of Meaux could not get over it, and Mother Picard said to me that my too great gentleness emboldened him to ill treat me; because his character was such, that he ordinarily behaved thus to quiet people, and bent to haughty persons. However, I never changed my conduct, and I preferred to accept the role of suffering, than to deviate in anything from the respect I owed his character. I am confident that all the persons who have known that I had been to Meaux have believed two things equally false: the one, that I was there by the King’s order, while it was of my own accord; the other, that during the six months I was there the Bishop of Meaux had interrogated me at different times, to learn my thought upon the inner life, what was my manner of prayer, or on the love of God. Nothing of the kind. He has never spoken to me on these things. When he came, it was, he said, my enemies who told him to torment me; that he was satisfied with me. At other times he came full of fury, to demand that signature he well knew I would not give him. He threatened me with all that has since been done. He did not intend, he said, to lose his fortune for me; and a thousand other things. After these explosions he returned to Paris, and was some time without again coming.
At last, having been about six months at Meaux, he gave me of himself a certificate, and no longer demanded from me any other signature. What is astonishing is, that, at the time he was most excited against me, he said that if I wished to come and live in his diocese he would be pleased; that he wished to write upon the inner life, and that God had given me upon this very certain lights. He had seen that life of which he has so much spoken. He never told me he found anything to object to therein. All this has happened only since I ceased to see him; or he has seen in that life which he no longer had, what he had not seen when he was reading it. Shortly before I left Meaux, he told the Bishop of Paris and the Archbishop of Sens how satisfied he was, and edified by me. He preached to us on the day of the Visitation of the Virgin, which is one of the principal festivals of this convent. He there said the Mass, and wished me to communicate from his hand. In the middle of the Mass he gave an astonishing sermon on the inner life. He advanced things much stronger than those I have advanced. He said he was not master of himself in the midst of these awful mysteries; he was obliged to speak the truth, and not to dissimulate; that it must be that this avowal of the truth was necessary, since God compelled him to make it in spite of himself. The Prioress went to salute him after his sermon, and asked him how he could torment me, thinking as he did. He answered her it was not he, it was my enemies. A little after, I left Meaux; but my departure has been related with so much malignity, that I must explain all the circumstances.
As I had been six months at Meaux, where I had promised to remain only three, and, besides, my health was very bad, I asked the Bishop of Meaux if he was satisfied, and if he desired anything more of me. He answered, “No.” I told him I would go away then, because I had need of visiting Bourbon. I asked him if he would be pleased that I should come to end my days among those good nuns; for they loved me much, and I loved them, although the air was very bad for me. He was very well pleased at it, and told me he would always receive me gladly; that the nuns were very satisfied and edified by me; that he was returning to Paris. I told him my daughter, or some ladies of my friends, would come to fetch me. He turned to the Prioress, and said to her, “My Mother, I pray you to receive those who come to fetch madame, whether it be her daughter or her friends; to let them sleep and lodge in your house, and keep them there as long as they wish.” It is well known how submissive are those nuns of St. Mary to their Bishop, and their exactitude to follow to the letter whatever he orders them, without the least variation. Two ladies then came to fetch me. They arrived for dinner. They dined, supped, and slept, and dined again the next day at the Convent; then, about three o’clock, we set out.
Hardly had I arrived when the Bishop of Meaux repented having let me go out of his diocese. What made him change, as we have since known, is that, when he gave an account to Madame de Maintenon of the terms in which this affair was concluded, she let him know she was dissatisfied with the attestation he had given me: that it concluded nothing, and would even have a contrary effect to what was proposed, which was to undeceive the persons who were favourably disposed to me. He believed then, in losing me, he was losing all the hopes with which he had flattered himself. He wrote to me to return to his diocese, and I received at the same time a letter from the Prioress, that he was more resolved than ever to torment me; that, whatever desire she had to have me again, she was obliged to let me know the sentiments of the Bishop of Meaux conformable to what I knew. What I knew is, that he was building a lofty fortune upon persecuting me, and, as he aimed at a person far above me, he thought that, in my escaping him, everything escaped him. Mother Picard, in sending me the letter of which I have just spoken, sent me a new attestation of the Bishop of Meaux, so different from the former which he wished me to return, that I judged henceforth I had no justice to expect from the Prelate. He had written to her to take back the first attestation, and to give me the latter; and, if I had set out from Meaux, she should at once send it to me, in order he might have back the former which he had given me. The Mother, who clearly saw by past treatment what I should be exposed to, if I again fell into the hands of the Bishop of Meaux, let me sufficiently understand it by her letter, to decide me to avoid for the future all discussion with him. However, to observe with him all the rules of politeness from which I have never departed (without complaining of a procedure so peculiar and so full of injustice), I answered the Mother Superior, that I had made over to my family what the Bishop of Meaux asked back; that, after all that had passed, they had such an interest in a document of that nature, which constituted my justification, it was unlikely they would part with it; the more so, as that which she sent me from the Prelate not only served nothing for my justification, but seemed to countenance all that had been said against me, while saying nothing to the contrary.
Here is the copy of the said first attestation: —
“We, Bishop of Meaux, certify to all whom it may concern, that, by means of the declarations and submission of Madame Guyon which we have before us subscribed with her hand, and the prohibition accepted by her with submission, of writing, teaching, dogmatizing in the church, or of spreading her books printed or manuscript, or of conducting souls in the ways of prayer, or otherwise: together with the good testimony that has been furnished us during six months that she is our diocese and in the convent of St. Mary, we are satisfied with her conduct, and have continued to her the participation of the Holy Sacraments in which we have found her: we declare, besides, we have not found her implicated in any way in the abominations of Molinos or others elsewhere condemned, and we have not intended to comprehend her in the mention which has been made by us of them in our Ordinance of April 6, 1695: given at Meaux, July 1, 1695.
“F. BENIGNE, Bishop of Meaux”
Here is the copy of the second”—
“We, Bishop of Meaux, have received the present submissions and declarations of the said Dame Guyon, as well that of the 16th of April, 1695, as that the 1st of July of the same year, and we have delivered her a certificate of it to avail her what is proper, declaring we have always received her and received her without objection in the participation of the Holy Sacraments in which’ we have found her, as the submission and sincere obedience, both before and since the time she is in our diocese and in the Convent of St. Mary, together with the authentic declaration of her faith and the testimony which has been furnished us and is furnished us of her good conduct for the six months she has been at, the said convent, required it. We have enjoined her to make at suitable times the requests and other acts we have marked in the said articles by her subscribed as essential to piety and expressly commanded by God, without any believer being able to dispense with them under pretext of other acts pretended more perfect or eminent, or other pretexts whatever they be, and we have given her repeated prohibitions, both as Diocesan Bishop and in virtue of the obedience she has promised us voluntarily as above, of writing, teaching, or dogmatizing in the Church, or of spreading abroad her books printed or manuscript, or conducting souls in the ways of prayer, or otherwise, to which she has submitted anew, declaring she executed the said deeds. Given at Meaux, at the said convent, the day and year as above.
“F. BENIGNE, Bishop of Meaux.”
One can judge, from the vivacity of the Bishop of Meaux and the hopes he had conceived, of the effect which such a refusal produced on him. He gave out, I had climbed over the walls of the convent to fly. Besides that I climb very badly, all the nuns were witnesses of the contrary: yet this has had such a currency many people still believe it. A procedure of that kind no longer allowed me to abandon myself to the discretion of the Bishop of Meaux, and, as I was informed they were about to push things to the utmost violence, I believed I should leave to God all that might happen and yet take all prudent steps to avoid the effect of the menaces that reached me from all sides. I had many places of retreat; but I would not accept any, in order not to embarrass anyone and not to involve my friends and my family, to whom my escape might be ascribed. I took the resolution of not leaving Paris, of remaining there in some retired place with my women, and withdrawing myself from the sight of all the world. I remained in this way about five or six months. I passed the days alone, in reading, praying God, and working: but, towards the end of the year 1695, I was arrested, ill as I was, and conducted to Vincennes. I was three days in seclusion in the house of M. des Grez, who had arrested me, because the King, full of justice and kindness, would not consent to put me in prison, saying many times, a convent was sufficient. They deceived his justice by the most violent calumnies, and painted me to his eyes with colours so black as even to make him ashamed of his goodness and of his equity. He consented then I should be taken to Vincennes.
AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF MADAME GUYON 