The Autobiography of Madame Guyon

Jeanne Marie Bouvier de la Motte Guyon

Jeanne-Marie Bouvier de La Motte Guyon was a French mystic, spiritual writer, and lay teacher of prayer whose writings on inward prayer, abandonment to God, and pure love became one of the central subjects of the late seventeenth-century Quietist controversy in France. Her works, especially Moyen court et très facile de faire oraison and her biblical commentaries, circulated widely in manuscript and print. They influenced François Fénelon, archbishop of Cambrai, but drew the opposition of Jacques-Bénigne Bossuet, Louis Antoine de Noailles, and other French ecclesiastical authorities.