Justine Trombley

Thesis Title: ‘The Latin Manuscripts of Marguerite Porete’s Mirror of Simple Souls.’

I received my undergraduate degree in 2009 from the University of Vermont, with a major in History and a double minor in German and Theatre, and in 2010 I received my M.Litt in Mediaeval History from the University of St. Andrews.  My main topic of interest is heresy and inquisition in the High and Late Middle Ages.
I am particularly interested in the life and work of the fourteenth-century author Marguerite Porete, who was burned at the stake in Paris in 1310 for writing and circulating her vernacular mystical work Le mirouer des simple ames (The Mirror of Simple Souls).  Despite inquisitorial efforts to exterminate it, The Mirror of Simple Souls survived and enjoyed wide circulation in four languages as an anonymous work in the later Middle Ages.  My doctoral research focuses on the Latin manuscript tradition of the Mirror. I am investigating the origins, provenance, structure and content of the surviving codices in order to build a more detailed picture of the Latin Mirror’s reception, use, and circulation in fourteenth-and fifteenth-century medieval Europe. Particular attention is given to ecclesiastical opinions of and reactions to the Latin manuscripts.

Supervisors: Professor Frances Andrews and Professor Chris Given-Wilson

Publications: ‘The Master and the Mirror: The Influence of Marguerite Porete on Meister Eckhart,’ Magistra: A Journal of Women’s Spirituality in History 16 (2010).

One of five organisers for the Gender and Transgression Conference at St. Andrews, May 2012.

 

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