Articles of Issy

1695. These thirty-four articles issued at Issy near Paris were the result of an ecclesiastical investigation of the works of [[Madame Guyon]]* in 1694-95. She chose three bishops to sit in judgment on her doctrine, and their verdict (the Articles) condemned for Quietism*: e.g., indifference to one's own salvation or past sins, desire to suppress explicit acts of faith, secret mystical doctrine, or any claim that extraordinary states of prayer are the only way to perfection. The Articles were a compromise; she signed them herself, retracting her Quietism, as did Archbishop Fénelon* of Cambrai. Consequently Bishop Bossuet* of Meaux, who had been one of her judges, was determined to remove any traces of her influence, while Fénelon wanted her principles to stand. Sympathetically he published forty-five articles (1697) on true and false mysticism which Bossuet attacked and the Holy See condemned.