The Mirror of Simple Souls
I waited a few days after finishing this exquisite book before writing this review because I needed time to mull it over. The ending of the book did not give me as much satisfaction as the rest, and I needed time to understand why, and if my initial impression, that of not finding out exactly what because of most of the players, was justified. But this story lingered with me and the more I thought about it, the more I realised that ending was in fact perfect, perhaps the most meaningful aspect of it all. For 'The Mirror of Simple Souls' is real life re-created in all its complexities - and real life is not a novel. In reality we rarely get the neatly wrapped up ending we desire. This is also a work set in a historical period with limited source material – these lost lives ultimately remained lost to us down the ages, even if their impact still remains.
The Mirror of Simple Souls concerns a popular medieval movement called The Beguines, communities of women who chose to live together and follow a life of prayer, work and study, not as religious nuns, but as independent free communities. The institution had been originally sanctioned by King Louis IX, Saint Louis, and came under royal protection, ultimately spreading throughout France and beyond. Most beguines were widows or unmarried women (some young even women spent a few years there before marriage). Women who fell on hard times, girls born with physical or mental impairments, victims of abuse etc were often taken in spent their lives in the community; others eventually left or married. Some remained in the beguinage itself, others worked outside in commerce, living in communal houses,s upporting other women by teaching them a trade or helping set them up in business. Many of the women who found refuge in these beguinages had suffered at the hands of men in different ways, so the movement provided a respectable alternative way of life that was surprisingly liberal for the time.
Not surprisingly, this state of affairs did not continue. The Mirror of Simple Souls concerns the fall out after a beguine from Valenciennes is burnt at the stake on account of a controversial book she has written (The Mirror of Simple Souls) that is deemed heretical. From that moment on, the eyes of the Inquisition are turned on to the beguines. It is by now the brutal reign of Philip the Fair, the king who wiped out the Knights Templar. The early years of the fourteenth century, often seen as a turning point in the kingdom of France, heralding a darker age which will of course be compounded with the arrival of the Black Death half a century later.
The book unfolds slowly, introducing its players and their world in detail. Meanwhile there is a growing sense of foreboding as events outside the walls of the beguinage progressively become more threatening. Few sources remain on the life of the Royal Beguinage in Paris, so Aline Kiner's re-creation is particularly masterful, weaving her characters and their lives in with the known history of the period. We come to know these women, their characters, flaws, backstories, occupations, worldviews in the small day to day details of their lives.
The historical record mentions this controversial book that may have inadvertently played a part in the ultimate fate of the beguinage movement. The work seems to have survived the period, for an early contemporary copy has been identified, as well as later versions. From these fragmentary sources, Kiner has imagined the part the beguinage may have played in protecting the important treatise for posterity.
If the end does not quite satisfy us, for we don't really know how some of the main characters end up, then that is where the mastery lies. We have no idea what happened to these women in history either. All we know for sure is somehow they played their part.
This is a brave and uncompromising story, beautifully written and realised. If there are a few glaring historical errors in the translation, they are not in the original (I checked!) so are mistakes of the translator, who made incorrect clarifications that should have been detected before publication.But that is not the fault of the author. Other than that issue, the translation is beautifully renderedl. It is so very sad that Alice Kiner died not long after this book was published. She was a very important voice in rediscovering the lost world of medieval women.
