Specular Mediation and Loingprès: A Symbolic Hermeneutics of the Imago Dei in Marguerite Porete

This article examines the symbolism of the mirror in Marguerite Porete’s Le Mirouer des simples ames and argues that the mirror does not function as an isolated metaphor of self-knowledge, but as the form of a mediation in which presence takes place through distance. Drawing on the French Chantilly manuscript, the study traces the unfolding of this structure from the initial portrait and the conception of the book as a gift from Love to its internalization in the three deaths and the seven states. Between these two moments, the dialogical composition and the distribution of agency articulate the passage from the received book to the transformed soul, while the medieval constellations of the amorous and transformative mirror situate its symbolic grammar historically. From the perspective of symbolic hermeneutics, the analysis shows that Reason and Love operate as opposed yet complementary mirrors, and that annihilation progressively displaces the initiative of vision until it reaches the formula “Dieu se voit de luy en elle, pour elle, sans elle” (“God sees Himself from Himself in her, for her, without her”). The imago Dei thereby acquires a relational meaning and designates a participatory likeness that preserves the difference between creature and Creator and makes distance the very medium of union.