Marguerite Porete wrote a terrifyingly beautiful manuscript claiming the annihilated soul no longer needed the church or even human morality because it had literally dissolved…

A closer look

You know your poetry is fire when the Inquisition literally sets you on fire for it. Marguerite Porete was a Beguine—a laywoman living a religious life outside formal monastic vows. In her book The Mirror of Simple Souls, she bypassed the entire Catholic hierarchy, arguing that a soul completely consumed by divine love enters a state of absolute "nothingness." At that point, the soul cannot sin because it *is* God, making virtues and the Church entirely obsolete. The medieval authorities fundamentally disagreed.