A Cyclopaedia of Female Biography/Bourignon, Antoinette
BOURIGNON, ANTOINETTE,
Was a celebrated religious enthusiast, and founder of a sect which acquired so much importance that, under the name of the Bourignian doctrine, it is to this day one of the heresies renounced by candidates for holy orders in the Church of Scotland. She was the daughter of a Lille merchant, and was born in 1616; she was so singularly deformed at her birth, that a family consultation was held on the propriety of destroying the infant, as a monster. This fate she escaped, but remained an object of dislike to her mother, in consequence of which her childhood was passed in solitude and neglect; the first books she got hold of chancing to be "Lives of the Early Christians" and mystical tracts, thus her ardent imagination acquired the visionary turn that marked her life. It has been asserted that her religious zeal displayed itself so early, that at four years of age she entreated to be removed to a more Christian country than Lille, where the unevangelical lives of the towns-people shocked her.
As Antoinette grew up, her appearance improved in a measure, and, being a considerable heiress, her deformity did not prevent her from being sought in marriage; and when she reached her twentieth year, one of her suitors was accepted by her parents. But the enthusiast had made a vow of virginity; and on the day appointed for celebrating her nuptials, Easter-day, in 1680, she fled, disguised as a hermit. She soon after obtained admittance into a convent, where she first began to make proselytes, and gained over so many of the nuns, that the confessor of the sisterhood procured her expulsion, not only from the convent but from the town. Antoinette now wandered about France, the Netherlands, Holland, and Denmark, everywhere making converts, and supporting herself by the labour of her hands, till 1648, when she inherited her father's property. She was then appointed governess of an hospital at Lille, but soon after was expelled the town by the police, on account of the disorders that her doctrines occasioned. She then resumed her wanderings. About this time, she was again persecuted with suitors, two of whom were so violent, each threatening to kill her if she would not marry him, that she was forced to apply to the police for protection, and two men were sent to guard her house. She died in 1680, and left all her property to the Lille hospital, of which she had been governess.
She believed that she had visions and ecstatic trances, in which God commanded her to restore the true evangelical church, which was extinct. She allowed no Liturgy, worship being properly internal. Her doctrines were highly mystical, and she required an impossible degree of perfection from her disciples. She is said to have been extraordinarily eloquent, and was at least equally diligent, for she wrote twenty-two large volumes, most of which were printed at a private press she carried about with her for that purpose. After her death, Poiret, a mystical, Protestant divine, and a disciple of the Cartesian philosophy, wrote her life, and reduced her doctrines into a regular system. She made numerous proselytes, among whom were many men of ability.