§ 2. HETERODOX MYSTICISM.

401. General Features. -- Some of the great mystic associations that sprang up in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries came gradually to assume an attitude of hostility to Catholicism: they propounded heterodox doctrines and thus prepared the way for the Reformation. Their favourite theme was the pantheistic effusion of God and of the soul. Thus MARGUERITE PORRETTE published a book, condemned by the Paris theologians, in which she taught "quod anima annihilata in amore conditoris sine reprehensione conscienciae vel remorsu potest et debet dare naturae quidquid appetit vel desiderat".^{1} Similar views are found in BLOMMARDINE.

Heterodox mysticism was addressed to the ordinary people rather than to scholars. Having indicated its general tendency, we need not dwell on it any longer.^{2}

{1} Chartul., ii., p. 143.

{2} Cf. DELACROIX, Essai sur le mysticisme spéculatif en Allemagne au xiv^e siècle, ch. iii. and iv.