Rings are for brides

[nablator]

Margureite Porete is interesting, though a bit too early. Where were her books in 1400-1450? 

I'm not sure how influential she was at the time. Anyway, she is just an example of what Sainte Colette was not: an author. Not writing a book was clearly the safe option. And yet the difference between heretic and saint was mostly political: this is also the case of Sainte Jeanne d'Arc, 1412-1431. Marguerite Porete was a target because she was both successful, as an author, and highly critical of religious authorities. Her book may have been 'full of errors', but it was more original, in an eastern mystical kind of way, than heretical. The moral, there, is that heresy was not the only way to get into trouble, originality and politics were enough.

I don't want to hijack your thread, maybe I should have started a new one. I just wanted to say that your discovery goes well with my speculations and research.

About the Hortulus Animae, it was too late to be relevant (but it had some popular predecessors in the XVth century), and of course it must have been a coincidence that E.A. Poe mentioned it in the context of an unreadable book, but having both the garden metaphor (also possible in alchemy) and a type of book that was (later) considered reprehensible and yet was a popular prayer book, is interesting in view of the possible hidden religious iconography and also what f. 116v suggests (parts of a charm/prayer).

Quoted from Dictionnaire historique, ou Mémoires critiques et littéraires, concernant la vie et les ouvrages de divers personnages distingués particulièrement dans la république des lettres by Prosper Marchand (1758), a description later translated in Isaac D'Israeli's Curiosities of Literature (1791):

It is a small octavo en lettres gothiques, printed by John Grunninger, 1500. "A garden," says the author, "which abounds with flowers for the pleasure of the soul;" but they are full of poison. In spite of his fine promises, the chief part of these meditations are as puerile as they are superstitious. This we might excuse, because the ignorance and superstition of the times allowed such things: but the figures which accompany this work are to be condemned in all ages; one represents Saint Ursula and some of her eleven thousand virgins, with all the licentious inventions of an Aretine.