Author: Jeanne Marie Bouvier de la Motte Guyon

Jeanne Marie Bouvier de la Motte Guyon (1648–1717) was a French Catholic laywoman who became the most famous, and most punished, advocate of Quietist prayer in the reign of Louis XIV. Her short manual "A Short and Very Easy Method of Prayer" (1685) taught an inward, passive surrender to God that struck church authorities as an attack on the sacraments and on religious effort itself. Defended by Fénelon and prosecuted by Bossuet, she spent roughly eight years in custody, including her long stretch in the Bastille, and died under supervision at Blois. Catholic France largely set her aside; Protestant Pietists, Methodists and Quakers did not.