New evidence on the origins of the Latin Mirror of Simple Souls from a forgotten Paduan manuscript

ABSTRACT This article examines an overlooked fifteenth-century document which attacks and refutes 35 extracts from a Latin copy of the condemned fourteenth-century work The Mirror of Simple Souls. It gives an overview of the document's origins, provenance and contents, and then discusses how certain omissions in the text's source citations have crucial implications for more firmly establishing the date of origin for the Latin translation of the Mirror.

While numerous readers across Europe were embracing the Mirror and its descriptions of perfect 'annihilation' in God, others continued to show suspicion and hostility towards its doctrines, and dedicated their time to opposing it both verbally and, in one case, physically. 3 Fifteenth-century Italy in particular gave the Mirror a less-than-warm welcome.
Here it was condemned in sermons, caught up in a Venetian inquisition, used to accuse a pope of heresy and was confiscated from a number of people in Padua. 4 These events were first noted by Romana Guarnieri in 1965, in her extensive publication 'Il movimento del Libero Spirito', which documented the history of what she believed to be the heretical 'sect' of the Free Spirit, a sect now widely acknowledged to have existed more in the minds of inquisitors than in actuality. 5 Although these occurrences have been re-iterated by scholars after Guarnieri, there is one other instance of Italian opposition to the Mirror that has remained largely unnoticed for the past 50 years. In discussing the history of the Mirror in the context of the Council of Basel, where it was used to accuse Pope Eugenius IV of heresy, Guarnieri noted an intriguing entry in the fifteenth-century library catalogue of the Benedictine congregation of Santa Giustina in Padua, which had been edited and printed by Luigi Alberto Ferrai in 1887. 6 Amongst several manuscripts which had been bequeathed to Santa Giustina by the Paduan professor of canon law Giacomo de Zocchi (d. 1457), there was one book containing a text bearing the title 'Plures detestationes seu reprobationes super multis contentis in quodam libro qui intitulatur Speculum simplicium animarum', or 'Several renunciations and rejections concerning many things contained in a certain book which is entitled The Mirror of Simple Souls'. 7 Guarnieri noted that this description sounded similar to a text found in a manuscript held in the Vatican Library, MS Vat. lat. 4953. This codex, also copied in the fifteenth century, contained a list of 30 extracts taken from a copy of the Latin Mirror which were then refuted with theological and scriptural citations. 8 At the time of writing, Guarnieri stated that she had not yet discovered the present-day location of the Paduan manuscript, and she does not seem ever to have located it, as it makes no appearance in any of her later work on the Mirror. 9 As recently as 2015, this manuscript was listed in the International Marguerite Porete Bibliography under the heading of 'Lost Manuscripts?' 10 Fortunately, it seems that 'forgotten' or 'overlooked' can now be its descriptor, for this manuscript does survive, and other Italian scholars did know of its modern location. A 1956 publication by Luigi Montobbio mentioned it as one of four legal codices which had been left to the Congregation of Santa Giustina by Giacomo de Zocchi, and he gave its modern callmark: Padua, Biblioteca universitaria, MS 1647. 11 This information never seemed to make the jump from those interested in Santa Giustina to those interested in the Mirror. The purpose of this article is finally to make that jump, and re-introduce MS 1647 into the history of The Mirror of Simple Souls. It is an exciting find, not only because it is a 'new' addition to the corpus of surviving Mirror-related manuscripts, but also because its contents have the potential to change scholarly understanding of both the Mirror's Latin translation and several crucial aspects of the Mirror's broader history. 12 Padua, Biblioteca universitaria, MS 1647 MS 1647 is a fifteenth-century paper codex of 224 folios which still has its original wood and leather binding. It was compiled no later than December 1428, as there is a customs note in the bottom margin of its first folio which reads 'Dominus Jacobus de Ferraria [meaning "de Zocchi", who came from Ferrara] conduxit die 22 Decembris 1428 A.D.' 13 Watermark 8 Guarnieri transcribed and edited the Vatican document, and included her edition of it in the appendix to 'Il movimento' (649-60). Guarnieri believed the Vatican text to be the result of a theological assessment of the Mirror conducted in Padua in 1437, and that it was associated with an incident recorded in John of Segovia's record of the Council of Basel, in which a mysterious 'James', a master in arts and medicine, accused Pope Eugenius IV of favouring the Mirror of Simple Souls. This James declared that he had written up a list of errors taken from the work. referring back to an exemplar, rather than composing on the spot. 16 The document's physical appearance contrasts noticeably with that of the other texts in MS 1647. The Decretals commentary, the Roman Rota decisions, and the Impugnacio begin on rectos, have neat, even columns, coloured initials beginning each section (with the exception of the Impugnacio, which has unexecuted initials), and each is copied in a different hand. In contrast, the anti-Mirror treatise starts on a verso, with varying column widths, lines of text which do not run straight, has unexecuted initials throughout, and was copied by de Zocchi himself in a style of handwriting he usually reserved for writing marginal comments. 17 This gives the impression that the anti-Mirror document was perhaps included in the manuscript as an afterthought. It is possible that de Zocchi had acquired and owned the other works first in unbound, fascicle form, and then came across the exemplar of the Mirror document later, before having the codex bound. Since the Impugnacio ends at the beginning of a quire, there would have remained several blank leaves after it. 18 Taking advantage of this extra space, he then copied out the Mirror document himself before having the entire collection bound. The document takes the form of quotation followed by refutationa direct quotation from a Latin Mirror is written out as a separate block of text, and then followed by a refutation which uses canon-legal, scriptural and theological authorities to show how the excerpted passage is erroneous. In this way, Guarnieri's observation that it is similar in nature to the document found in Vat. lat. 4953 is correct. The similarity, however, ends there. The Vatican text is very much a list, where excerpts are laid out and refuted in a systematic, point-by-point style which contains little or no personal opinion or rhetoric. By contrast, the document in MS 1647 is much more of a treatise, with a narrative flow and an opinionated authorial voice which imbues the text with colourful, invective language. What is more, the Paduan text is complete, whereas the Vatican one begins suddenly with a Mirror quotation and no incipit, and ends abruptly in the middle of another Mirror extract. 19 The author of the Paduan document was undoubtedly working from a Latin version of the Mirror, and not merely translating extracts himself from a vernacular copy, as the quotations he used match up nearly verbatim with the same passages found in Verdeyen's modern edition of the Latin. At certain points the author seems to be paraphrasing a passage, making textual comparison difficult in some areas, but in general, the extracts in MS 1647 more often match the Vatican Mirror codices Rossianus 4 (Verdeyen's manuscript 'B'), Chigianus B IV 41 ('C') and Chigianus C IV 85 ('D') in their readings than Vat. lat. 4355 ('A'). 20 Furthermore, the author appears to have had an entire copy of the Mirror in front of him and not merely a compilation of excerpts, as not only does he reference chapter and page numbers in the extracts, but he occasionally uses additional passages from the Mirror itself in his refutations, as supplements to some of his arguments. 21 A full copy is also indicated in the beginning of the document, where the author notes that errors can be found 'from the beginning of this little work all the way up to the end'. 22 Thus this document provides a glimpsehowever hazyof another once-extant complete Latin Mirror copy. 23 Like many later readers of the Mirror, the author of this document was completely unaware of the Mirror's origins and its clashes with authority, though, as we shall see, he would not have been unhappy to hear of its Valenciennes and Parisian condemnations. That he did not know of the Mirror's background is revealed in the very first sentence of the document, where he uses the term apocryphus to describe the Mirror, and he repeatedly refers to the author of the Mirror as male, calling 'him' a hereticus and not a heretica. 24 Before addressing individual passages in the Mirror, the author provides an introduction, in which he assesses the work as a whole and makes his opinion of it abundantly clear. The Mirror, in addition to being apocryphaland therefore devoid of canonical authoritywas also clearly invented entirely out of its author's own head, without any support from Scripture or the doctors of the Church. 25 This is the main theme of the introductory passage, and it is reinforced with biblical quotations and citations from Gratian's Decretum. Thus, by the time the author turns to attacking specific errors of the Mirror, he has firmly established that the work as a whole is unacceptable and heretical.
Overall, four major areas of concern regarding the Mirror's doctrines can be distilled from the 35 extracts which appear in MS 1647. These are: (1) The Soul's indifference to any kind of feelings attached to moral guidanceparticularly the Virtues (faith, hope, charity), but also shame, honour, fear, hate, love and the Soul's proclaimed ability to do whatever it pleases. (2) The Soul's rejection of normal Christian practices, i.e. sermons, prayer, fasting, the sacraments, as well as the Mirror's belittling of the institutional Church by naming it Ecclesia minor. (3) The Soul's self-acquisition of divine knowledge without guidance from or dependence on Church teachings, and with no justification given for how this knowledge was acquired. 20 See Verdeyen, Introduction to Speculum CCCM, viii-xii. Comparison with codex 'E' (Laud Latin 46) is not possible, as no passages from MS 1647 are taken from the sections which survive in E's fragments. 21 For example on f. 221r, where, after writing out the thirty-fifth error (Speculum CCCM, 313), he copies the passage which precedes it (Speculum CCCM, 311-13, beginning 'ego sum summam … '). The author also mentions column numbers at various points. 22 Padua, Biblioteca universitaria, MS 1647, f. 215v: 'a principio huius opusculi usque in finem'. 23 Worthy of note is the fact that the author does not cite any excerpts past Chapter 117 (in the Chantilly MS reckoning of chapters, which are those used by Verdeyen in the standard edition), and does not make any mention of the appraisals from John of Quérénaing, Franco of Villers and Godfrey of Fontaines, which consistently appear at the end of the Latin version (see Speculum CCCM, 405-9). This perhaps indicates that the version the author of this document had was missing the Mirror's final chapters, a characteristic which merits further investigation. 24 For example, in the concluding paragraph on f. 221v, he writes 'hunc hereticum cum suo opere relinquimus' (author's emphasis.) This use of the masculine case does not cast doubt on the fact that the Mirror was originally written by a woman. Rather, along with the use of the term apocryphus, it merely shows the extent to which the author was unaware of the Mirror's origins and authorship, and thus assumed male authorship as the default. 25 Padua, Biblioteca universitaria, MS 1647, f. 217v: 'Quicquid asserit totum ipse auctor ex proprio capite traxit sine ulla allegatione scripturis aut sanctorum doctorum'.
(4) The equation of the Soul with God; the assertion that the annihilated Soul has essentially achieved a status of divinity on a par with God himself.
On the whole, it is not surprising that these are the areas which most disturbed the author. The first two areas essentially match up in subject with the two errors cited in the theologians' assessment of the Mirror found in Marguerite's trial documents, and another found in a chronicle account of her execution, which were: (1) That the annihilated soul gives licence to the virtues and is no longer in servitude to them, because it does not have use for them, but rather the virtues obey its command. (15)That such a soul does not care about the consolations of God or his gifts, and ought not to care and cannot, because such a soul has been completely focused on God, and thus its focus on God would be impeded. 26 That the Soul annihilated in love of the Creator, without blame of conscience or remorse, can and ought to concede to nature whatever it seeks and desires. 27 These concerns are also expressed in the decree Ad nostrum, the document first generated at the Council of Vienne (1311-12) which famously defined and condemned eight errors attributed to beguines and beghards and which was used throughout the fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries as an interrogatory to identify the 'heresy of the Free Spirit'. 28 It was also used to attack the Mirror itself in the fifteenth century (discussed further later in this article). Six of the eight errors in Ad nostrum closely resemble the concerns expressed above: (1) That a person in this present life can acquire a degree of perfection, which renders him utterly impeccable and unable to make further progress in grade (2) That it is not necessary to fast or pray after gaining this degree of perfection, for then the sensitive appetite has been so perfectly subjected to the spirit and to reason that one may freely grant the body whatever pleases it (3) That those who have reached the said degree of perfection and spirit of liberty are not subject to human obedience, nor obliged to any commandments of the Church (4) That a person can gain in this life final beatitude in every degree of perfection that he will obtain in the life of the blessed (5) That any intellectual nature in itself is naturally blessed, and that the soul does not need the light of glory to elevate it to see God and enjoy him blissfully (6) That the practice of the virtues belongs to the state of imperfection and the perfect soul is free from virtues. Thus the issues to which the author of the anti-Mirror document objected are the areas to which one would expect there to be objections. What is new, however, is the author's explanation of why these Mirror extracts should be considered erroneous. His refutations are detailed and lengthy, with a wealth of scriptural and canon-legal citations to reinforce his assertions. This level of detail is something which has previously been unavailable to Mirror scholars. If the 21 theologians who assessed the Mirror in 1310 ever gave an explanation of their decision, it was not included in the documents pertaining to Marguerite's trial. While the document in Vat. lat. 4953 does provide further reasoning against the Mirror, it cannot match MS 1647 in its detail and its completeness, and it is vastly less passionate in its denouncement of the Mirror. Indeed, what is truly unique about the text in MS 1647 is its rhetoric and style. The author's attacks on the Mirror are filled with a vehemence and sense of outrage which stands in sharp contrast to the dry, academic tone of the Vatican document. In many ways, the work is similar in nature to the anti-heretical writings of the thirteenth century, employing much of the same style, imagery and arguments of which that tradition frequently made use. 30 What charges, then, does this anonymous author lay at the Mirror's door? Two chief allegations recur regularly: sinfulness and arrogance. The first is primarily framed in light of the Soul's famous departure from the Virtues, and its belittling of Church practices. 31 Abandoning the Virtues encourages man to sink into vice, since, as the author writes, 'the departure of the virtues works the entry of evil.' 32 This, along with the rejection of Church practices, is presented as rejecting one's own salvation, since salvation cannot be achieved without either of these. The charge of arrogance is levelled against the Mirror's claim to divine knowledge, as the author states that none of its assertions have any proof to reinforce them and to claim such knowledge without any proof is 'foolish and worthless' (fatua et vacua). 33 Arrogance is also the chief accusation against the Mirror's famous assertion that the Annihilated Soul has become God himself. 34  author, is the height of wickedness and the sin of pride. He directly equates the Annihilated Soul with Satan in this regard, at one point comparing it with both the serpent tempting Eve (Genesis 3:5) and with Lucifer's attempt to rival the power of God (Isaiah 14:14). 35 These are vivid comparisons and, indeed, the further one reads in this document, the more apparent it becomes that the author does not merely view the Mirror as an erroneous book, but an evil one, a book which, like Satan himself, is tempting others to commit mortal sin with promises of achieving a God-like state through rejecting traditional Church teachings and virtuous behaviour. His rhetoric makes this abundantly clear. The Mirror's assertions are described as 'poisonous' (venenosa), 'false, deceitful, and heretical' (falsa, ficta, et heretica), and as coming from 'Tartarean [i.e. demonic] council' (ex concilio Tarthareo). To him the Mirror speaks with a vox diabolica, a 'diabolical voice', and it 'vomits out' (evomit) venom, lies and deceit. At one point he invokes the image of a snake lurking in its words (hic latet anguis in verba). Marguerite's famous 'Holy Church the Greater', the Church of the Simple Souls, is designated as the 'synagogue of Satan' (sinagoga Satane) from Revelation 3:9, and is called a 'chimera' (chimera) and a 'monster' (monstrum). As noted above, the Simple Soul itself is equated with Satan, and is an 'evil spirit' (malignus spiritus) which 'is lying prostrate in the filth of the vices, and is fixed deep in the muck, and is stripped naked of all virtues without any inward cure, without any works of goodness.' 36 Along with being evil, the Mirror is also portrayed as ignorant. Its arguments are variously described as 'stupid' (stolidus), 'folly' (fatuitas), and, as noted above, 'foolish and worthless'. At one point he even invokes the image of a bumpkin or a boor, writing: 'We see how he speaks churlishly (rusticaliter) about Christ.' 37 The author is unrelenting in his criticism and takes a very literal approach to the Mirror. He clearly has no patience for the paradoxes and metaphors of speculative mysticism, as these are taken at face value. This occasionally produces an almost comic result, such as his response to one of Marguerite's expressions of humility. Where Marguerite writes that she knows herself to be 'the root of all evil and the abundance of sin', the refuter responds 'I believe this consideration to be true.' 38 Unlike another commentator on the Mirror, the Middle English translator M.N., he displays no willingness to accommodate any of the Mirror's assertions, and his characterisation of it as 'diabolical' demonstrates clearly that this is a work which is not only unacceptable, but dangerous. 39 This is driven home in the conclusion of the work, where the author says precisely what he thinks ought to be done with the Mirror. He writes: 'We pursue this heretic with his work, and we abandon (relinquimus) this heretic with his work to be burnt by fire.' 40 This is a striking, even eerie, pronouncement, not only because it clearly indicates that the author was writing with no knowledge of the Mirror's other conflicts with authority, but also for the fact that, despite this lack of knowledge, he came to precisely the same conclusion as those who prosecuted Marguerite in 1310.
Who was this man who so fervently believed the Mirror to be worthy of destruction? At this juncture, there is very little evidence to go on, and only a vague sketch can be compiled. It was most certainly the work of one man alone. Though he frequently makes use of 'we' in his refutations, occasionally he slips into the first person singular, showing the 'we' to be merely a stylistic choice. His use of the first person combined with the emotional tone of the work indicates that he was probably acting against the Mirror on his own initiative, rather than on a commission from someone else. Though his judgement that the Mirror ought to be burnt carries echoes of inquisitorial language, as in his use of the word relinquimus, it does not quite carry the formality that one would expect from an official condemnation. So his statement that the heretic 'ought to be burnt' suggests that, though he may have been familiar with inquisitorial language and forms, he may not have been an inquisitor himself, as standard inquisitorial sentencing usually involved the phrase 'relaxation to the secular arm' rather than 'burning'. 41 That he was well versed in canon law is certain; whether or not he was actually a canon lawyer is less so, but his detailed knowledge of Gratian's Decretum and the Decretals, and his use of legal vocabulary make it likely. His literal, un-nuanced interpretation of the Mirror indicates that he did not at all care for speculative mysticism, and he certainly had no patience for the paradoxical, metaphorical language of such mysticism. He assesses the Mirror almost entirely upon a legal and scriptural basis, with only a few theological citations. He is meticulousone could even say pedanticin his approach, often revisiting and re-refuting the same point many times.
His citations are also revealing. This was a highly literate and well equipped man. He was certainly familiar with anti-heretical legislation, as he makes multiple references to the decrees Ad abolendam of 1184 and Cum ex iniuncto of 1199, as well as referencing the relevant sections in the Decretum which deal with heresy. 42  can be found on ff. 219r-v, in responding to a passage from the Mirror which states that the Soul has heard from the Holy Spirit that God will put the least in the highest place, and thus the Soul has no anxiety over any sin which she may commit (see Speculum CCCM, 127-9). The author refutes this by referring to Cum ex iniunctoa decree which, among other things, dealt with unsubstantiated claims to divine knowledgebecause the Soul's claim to having knowledge from the Holy Spirit cannot be proven by any legitimate authority (f. 219r). The author then also references Ad abolendam in this section, referring to the lack of anxiety over sin, saying that this implies that man can be saved without penitence (posse salvari sine penitentia), which is 'false and heretical, in the chapter ad abolendam de hereticis does not merely cite a source, but provides whole blocks of verbatim text from that source, indicating that he surely had access to physical copies of most of the works from which he quoted. This amounts to an impressive array of books at his disposal, either personally owned or to which he had access in some way. He certainly used a Bible and a copy of Gratian. He probably owned a copy of the Decretals and the Liber sextus. His use of long quotations from two of Bernard of Clairvaux's Sermons on the Song of Songs suggests that he owned a copy of at least two of these sermons. 43  Amongst all the distinctions, causae and capitula of the Decretum and the Decretals which are used against the Mirror, there is one legal textand collection of textswhich are conspicuously absent. At no point in this document is Ad nostrum, the antiheretical decree noted above, cited. Indeed, no Clementine decree at all is mentioned anywhere in the text. The last major compilation of canon law to be published in the Middle Ages, the Clementines were well known and heavily commented upon, and would have been a standard text for any canonist to have. As noted above, Ad nostrum was a mainstay of anti-heretical legislation in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries and frequently used as an inquisitorial interrogatory, and its close resemblance to the Mirror's doctrines has received much scholarly comment. 44 Nor was this resemblance between the two lost on other medieval readers and critics of the Mirror. The hugely popular fifteenth-century Franciscan preacher Bernardino of Siena attacked the Mirror a number of times in his sermons; in at least two of these, he explicitly links the Mirror with Ad nostrum, at one point even suggesting that the errors of Ad nostrum had their origin in the Mirror. 45 This belief is also expressed in an anonymous fifteenth-century treatise against beghards, owned by Johannes Wenck, a theologian at the University of Heidelberg. In attacking the 'errors of the beghards', the treatise notes that six errors (those of Ad nostrum) 'burst forth and spread' (pullularent) from a book entitled De simplici anima, a copy of which was said to be owned by the Carthusians of 43  Strassburg. 46 James Grenehalgh, the early sixteenth-century annotator of Richard Methley's Latin translation of the Mirrorwhich he made from its Middle English versionfound in Cambridge, Pembroke College, MS 221, directed readers to Ad nostrum with a note written on the work's title page. 47 Finally, the discrepancy between the Vatican error list and MS 1647 further highlights its absence from the latter. As mentioned earlier, the Vatican list's references are much more theologically based, in contrast to the legal mindset of MS 1647's author. References to authorities such as Augustine, Peter Lombard or Bonaventure far outnumber any references to legal texts such as the Decretum or the Decretals. Yet, despite the lack of other legal citations, Ad nostrum still makes numerous appearances in the Vatican documentit is by far the most cited legal text, used against six Mirror quotations; five of these same quotations also appear in MS 1647. Thus there is clear evidence that Ad nostrum was frequently linked to the Mirror, and was the 'go-to' legal text for those looking to criticise it. What is more, in the cases of Bernardino of Siena and the anonymous treatise, the errors of Ad nostrum were even thought to have originated with the Mirror. The absence of Ad nostrum from the document in MS 1647 is highly interesting. It seems unlikely that this is due merely to ignorance or oversight. The author clearly has professional and detailed knowledge of canon law, and gives every impression of trying to be as thorough and meticulous as possible, making numerous citations to drive home even a single point. He draws upon every major collection of law from the Decretum as far as the Liber sextus of 1298, but makes no mention of the Clementines. He also knows other mainstays of anti-heretical legislation, Ad abolendam and Cum ex iniuncto, and the relevant sections in the Decretum. If he could see the relevance of these decrees to his arguments, then surely any canonist worth his salt would not fail to use Ad nostrum, the most relevant, recent and useful decree at his disposal. This makes it extremely likely that Ad nostrum and the Clementines are missing from this text not because of ignorance or oversight, but because they were not yet published, or possibly even written, at the time that this document was originally composed. In other words, the anti-Mirror treatise in MS 1647 may be a fifteenth-century copy of a work which was composed before the formal promulgation of the Clementines in 1317, or soon enough after their publication that they were not yet widely available, an interval of perhaps only a year or two. 49 This possibility carries significant implications for the history of The Mirror of Simple Souls. First and foremost, it would provide a more specific date range for the origins of the Latin translation of the Mirror, something which in the past has been mostly confined to the broad category of 'the fourteenth century'. Recently, Sylvain Piron has suggested the period between 1310 and 1330. 50 This is based on his study of the dissemination of the word philocapta, which appears in the Mirror and which originated in the work of the Catalan theologian Ramon Lull between 1273 and 1283. 51 Piron, like other scholars, also notes that the language of the Latin translation suggests that the original translator would have been French-speaking, but not familiar with the northern Picard dialect in which Marguerite would have originally written. 52 Based on these two pieces of evidence, Piron theorises that the Latin Mirror may have originated in the Rhône Valley, potentially brought there when the Council of Vienne was laying the groundwork for Ad nostrum. 53 I agree that southern France seems a likely geographic area of origin, given the translator's difficulties with the dialect and the Mirror's fairly rapid appearance in Italy, and would suggest that the earliest date of origin could be pushed back even further to around 1300, as Piron notes that philocaptus circulated in the south of France at the end of the thirteenth and beginning of the fourteenth centuries, appearing in a treatise by Bernard de Gordon, a doctor in Montpellier, written between the years 1295 and 1308. 54 The fact that there seem to have been a large number of Mirror copies circulating early on, during Marguerite's lifetime, makes it possible that a copy could have found its way into the hands of a non-Picard speaking translator prior to the Mirror's condemnation in Paris. 55 However, while the earliest date of origin is open-ended, the latest possible date can for the first time be set more definitively. If the document in MS 1647 is in fact pre-Clementine, then the origins of the Latin translation can be no later than 1317. Thus 1300 × 1317 can be suggested as the newest date range for the origins of the Latin translation. Since the original French text's genesis is usually placed in the last decade of the thirteenth century, this demonstrates a broad dissemination and translation of Marguerite's book early on, and indeed that a Latin version could have circulated alongside the French one during Marguerite's lifetime. This early dissemination is not a new idea in and of itself, but this has mostly been applied to the French versionan early origin for the Latin translation has had far less consideration. Furthermore, if this is a copy of an early document, then it means that the Mirror extracts in it representtextually, if not physicallysome of the earliest surviving text of both the Latin Mirror and of the Mirror in general, matched only by the extracts found in Valenciennes, Bibliothèque municipale, MS 239, thought to date originally from c.1300. 56 With such an early date attached to this document, one tantalising question cannot fail to be asked: is this a copy of the error list, the document detailing the theologians' judgement of The Mirror of Simple Souls, formally given in April of 1310? It is possible that the theologians did not have any knowledge of Marguerite's authorship when they assessed the Mirror, and could have examined it as an anonymous work. 57 But the judgement made in MS 1647 is very clearly based primarily on legal grounds and not theological ones. Though canon lawyers were consulted on whether Marguerite Porete herself could be condemned as a heretic, there is no record indicating that they were ever consulted on the matter of her book. Additionally, the first and fifteenth errors which are cited in the university theologians' judgement of the Mirror do not correspond to the first and fifteenth errors cited in MS 1647. Furthermore, if the list had been involved in her Parisian trial, then one would expect some indication of this connection in the document itself, given William of Paris' meticulous direction of Marguerite's trial and production of its documentation. 58 What of the first condemnation, that which was meted out by Guido de Collemezzo at Valenciennes a few years earlier, between 1297 and 1305? Guido was a trained canon lawyer, more than capable of authoring a text like that of MS 1647, and whose own works indicate a man both pedantic and meticulously literal in his critique and approach to even the most straightforward of texts, very similar to the approach taken to the Mirror in the Paduan document. 59 He, like the pronouncement at the end of this text, ordered the book to be burnt, though it is unclear if this condemnation took written form; it merely states that he condemned it 'publicly and solemnly'. 60 But both references in the trial documents to Guido's actions against Marguerite state that after the burning of the Mirror in Valenciennes Guido composed a letter specifically forbidding Marguerite from recomposing or redistributing her work, indicating that, though perhaps he did not deal with her face-to-face, Guido was certainly aware of Marguerite's identity and her authorship of the Mirror. 61 This conflicts with MS 1647, which clearly has no knowledge of the Mirror's authorship or its origins, as is evident in its use of the term apocryphus and its repeated reference to the author as a male. It is possible that Guido himself did not read and assess the book; like William of Paris with the theologians, he could have had the work assessedwithout providing any information on its authorshipby someone else, a canonist who set his opinion down in writing and gave it to Guido. Though the pronouncement at the end of MS 1647 calls for both author and book to be burntwhereas it is clear that Marguerite walked away from this first incident unharmedthis would not necessarily mean that Guido would have taken this suggestion on board. He could have felt that, if Marguerite recanted her viewsand her escape from the flames this time shows that she probably didthen merely burning the book would have sufficed. 62 But this theory, too, has many weak points. If Guido had given the Mirror to a canonist for assessment, even without imparting any knowledge of the author's identity, it seems unlikely that the assessment would state that the book was apocryphus. 63 Even without explicitly mentioning Marguerite, Guido would surely have indicated that this was not a random work that had merely fallen into his hands. In fact, the Mirror's apocryphal nature is the very first point noted against it, giving the impression that the author of this text was encountering the Mirror in a context unconnected with any specific person or situation. Additionally, as noted above, the author's tone suggests he was acting on his own initiative, rather than on the orders of another.
If not associated with Marguerite's trial, from where did this document come? There is very little evidence to go on at this juncture, and thus only the barest of speculations can be made. The author's lack of awareness of the Mirror's origins and inquisitorial treatment suggests that the document was first written outside the areas surrounding Valenciennes and Paris, where Marguerite's two trials and execution would probably have been known. But if the document were written before Marguerite's Parisian trial had taken place, then the Valenciennes area would stand as the main area of exclusion. Needless to say, this still leaves a vast geographic spread, and there is nothing in MS 1647 to indicate from where the exemplar for this document came. Though its fifteenth-century form was almost certainly copied in Bologna, this does not necessarily mean it originated there, or had even been there for long before coming to the attention of Giacomo de Zocchi, as the university attracted a large number of international scholars who could have brought it with them at any time. For now, its origins remain a mystery.
Mysteries aside, MS 1647 opens up exciting new avenues of investigation for scholars of the Mirror. Its dual historical contextsorigins in the early fourteenth century, and copying in the early fifteenthallow for new perspectives on the Mirror in both its earliest years and its post-condemnation circulation. It provides a unique glimpse into the thought process of a cleric who was genuinely alarmed by what was contained in its pages, and who expended a great deal of emotional and intellectual energy in denouncing it. Furthermore, this cleric was contemporaryor nearly sowith Marguerite herself. This demonstrates 61 Field, BAI, 44. 62 For a discussion of Marguerite's apparent co-operation in her first clash with ecclesiastical authorities, see Field, BAI, 45. 63 I thank Sean Field for this point. Personal correspondence. that the Mirror, around the same time as the events surrounding Marguerite's trial and execution, but entirely separate from them, could receive the same judgement as that which Guido of Collemezzo and the Parisian theologians meted out to it. This reveals that to some, the Mirror could stand on its own as a dangerous heretical text, unconnected to any specific author. Its later copying and possession by Giacomo de Zocchi adds another facet to the Mirror's colourful fifteenth-century career as well, and stands as another example of the interest inand concern overthe Mirror in northern Italy. Finally and crucially, MS 1647 provides a new terminus ante quem for the origins of the Latin translation and adds to the corpus of surviving Latin Mirror text. This is a significant step forward in our knowledge of the Latin tradition, a step that brings the Latin closer in time to Marguerite herself. Further study of MS 1647 will no doubt continue to yield interesting results. Thus, by remembering this forgotten manuscript, we can begin to unravel at least a few of the many mysteries which surround The Mirror of Simple Souls.