ANTOINETTE DE LA PORTE. 
486 
' Antoinette De La Porte, (Madam Bourignon.) 
This remarkable character in the tribe of self-inspired fanatics was 
born at Lisle in 1616. Early impressed with a notion of the decay 
of pure Christianity among all sects and churches, she fancied herself 
destined to revive it by a particular interference of Providence. Her 
family, which was opulent, wished her to enter into the marriage state, 
but such was her aversion to it, that she eloped to avoid their perse- 
cution, and underwent a variety of adventures. Her fortune and her 
enthusiastic turn rendered her the object of much hypocritical arti- 
fice ; but she seems to have been far from deficient in care of herself 
and property. Her temper appears to have been extremely unaniia- 
ble, involving herself in perpetual quarrels with the persons con- 
nected with her, and making her a tyrant over her servants and 
dependants ; nor is any thing of the gentleness or simplicity of the 
gospel to be discovered in her conduct. She was the governess of 
a hospital at Lisle, and took the order and habit of St. Augustin ; but 
such were the disturbances in the hospital, that the magistrates inter- 
fered, and she thought fit to withdraw to Ghent. 
About this time she made a convert of Christian Bartholomew de 
Cordt, a Jansenist, and priest of the oratory at Mechlin, who had 
made the purchase of part of an island gained from the sea in Hol- 
stein, called Noordtstrandt. Madam Bourignon bought of him an estate 
there, meaning to settle upon it with her disciples, and in the mean 
while resided a considerable while at Amsterdam, where she was much 
noticed by fanatics of various kinds. She wrote several books there, 
particularly one entitled, “Of the Light of the World,” in which her 
leading principles are explained, as far as her mystical and incoherent 
ideas are capable of explanation. The fundamental doctrine is, that 
the Christian religion neither consists in knowledge nor in practice, 
but in a certain internal feeling and divine impulse, that arises im- 
mediately from communion with the Deity. 
De Cordt died, and made her his heiress, and she left Holland in 
j.671 to go to Noordstrandt. She became disgusted with many of 
the disciples who wished to join her, fearing lest their intention was 
to live at her cost. She set up a printing-press in her house, and 
wrote books, with prodigious facility, in French, Dutch, and German. 
Her opinions and disposition subjected her to a variety of persecutions, 
which drove her from place to place, and made her life very uneasy. 
At length she retired to East Friesland, whgre she had the direction 
of a hospital ; but though she was willing to devote her time to the 
poor, she was always averse to bestowing her money upon them,^ — never, 
as she said, being able to find any whose conduct was deserving of 
encouragement. She ended her turbulent life at Franeker in 1680. 
Though the number of her personal followers was almost dwindled to 
nothing, her writings gained a considerable number of proselytes after 
her death. 
One Peter Poiret, a man of. ability, and a great Cartesian, dressed 
up in artful colours, and reduced to a kind of system, the vagaries of 
Madam Bourignon, in a large work, entitled L’Oeconomie Divine, or 
Systeme Universe!, published at Amsterdam. Her notions also were 
