Antoinette Bourignon de la Porte (January 13, 1616 – October 30, 1680) was a Flemish mystic. From an early age she was under the influence of religion, which took in course of time a mystical turn.
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Born in Lille with a facial deformity, Antoinette belonged to a rich Catholic family. She left her family and home after being proposed to, unwilling to marry. She started a girls' correction home with inheritance money. When one of the girls died, she fled to Ghent and Mechelen. With a follower she moved to Amsterdam, where she met Jean de Labadie, Comenius and Anna Maria van Schurman. There she published her ideas. Her religious enthusiasm, peculiarity of views and disregard of all sects raised both zealous persecutors and warm adherents. In 1671 she inherited the island Nordstrand not far from Husum, where she moved with a few followers and started a commune. She set up a printing press and carried on the liveliest literary controversy, calling herself the new Eve until her press was confiscated by the local government. The Lutheran clergy no longer tolerating her actions, she moved to East-Friesland and founded a hospital. On her way to Amsterdam she died at Franeker, Friesland, on 30 October 1680. She left a large number of followers, which dwindled rapidly away.
In the early 18th century her influence was revived in Scotland (see Andrew Michael Ramsay), sufficiently to call forth several denunciations of her doctrines in the various Presbyterian general assemblies of 1701, 1709 and 1710. So far as appears from her writings and contemporary records, she was a visionary of the ordinary type, distinguished only by the audacity and persistency of her pretensions.
Her writings, containing an account of her life and of her visions and opinions, were collected by her disciple, Pierre Poiret (19 vols, Amsterdam, 1679–1686), who also published her life (2 vols, 1683):
For a critical account see Hauck, Realencylopädie (Leipzig, 1897), and Étude sur Antoinette Bourignon, by M. E. S. (Paris, 1876). Three of her works at least have been translated into English, some by Robert Boyle in an earlier stage: