Le Miroir de Jésus Christ crucifié dans le champ des textes dévotionnels

Abstract:

The Miroir de Jesus Christ crucifié, written by Marguerite de Navarre shortly before her death (1549), is a devotional text, i.e. associated with the practice of prayer and spiritual exercises. It aims at arousing the experience of an inner transformation both in its author and in its reader. In this poem, the body of the Crucified, contemplated part by part, acts as an accusing mirror in which the worshipper sees her/his own “darkness”, and at the same time as an illuminating mirror through which the soul gradually perceives the “clarity” of divine charity until it reaches the threshold of annihilation as a prelude to mystical union. The poem is therefore a meditation on the Passion and belongs to a long and dense tradition of texts, from the Bible to contemporary spiritual literature, which work on the same motifs.

This study adopts the point of view of the editor of the poem, anxious to identify its sources correctly. It shows how the devotional character of the text and its belonging to a particularly rich and uninterrupted meditative tradition modify the constraints and difficulties of this work. Getting lost in a labyrinth of motifs reflected as far as the eye can see in countless texts is an indispensable step, but the search for models allowing to clarify certain choices of composition of the poem is the means to deepen the reflection on its mode of operation, even if it does not deliver the keys for its understanding.