Jeanne-Marie Bouvier de la Motte-Guyon (Commonly known as Madame Guyon, ; 13 April 1648 – 9 June 1717) was a French Christian accused of advocating Quietism, which was considered heretical by the Roman Catholic Church. Madame Guyon was imprisoned from 1695 to 1703 after publishing the book A Short and Very Easy Method of Prayer. Personal life Guyon was the daughter of Claude Bouvier, a procurator of the tribunal of Montargis, 110 kilometers south of Paris and 70 kilometers east of Orléans. She was sickly in her childhood, and her education was neglected. Her childhood was spent between the convent, and the home of her affluent parents, moving nine times in ten years. Guyon's parents were very religious people, thus they gave her an especially pious training. Other important impressions from her youth came from reading the works of St. Francis de Sales, and being educated by nuns. Prior to her marriage she had wanted to become a nun, but this desire did not last long. In 1664, when she was 15 years old, after turning down many other proposals, she was forced into an arranged marriage to a wealthy gentleman of Montargis, Jacques Guyon, aged thirty eight. During their marriage, Guyon suffered terribly at the hands of her mother-in-law and maidservant. Adding to her misery were the deaths of her half-sister, followed by her mother, and her son. Her daughter and father then died within days of each other in July 1672. She bore another son and daughter shortly before her husband's death in 1676. After twelve years of being unhappily married and after the birth of five children, of whom only three survived, Madame Guyon became a widow at the age of 28. Date of birth There is some controversy surrounding the date of birth of Madame Guyon, but the date of 18 April 1648 given in the (highly condensed) English translation of Madame Guyon's autobiography, published by Moody Press, appears to be a typographical error—all French editions of the autobiography from the earliest one on, published in 1720, state 13 April 1648 as her birthday. Her date of birth, however, nonetheless remains unclear since Madame Guyon writes Je naquis, à ce que disent quelques uns, la veille de Pâques, le 13. d'Avril [...] de l'année 1648 ("I was born, as some say, on the Eve of Easter [...], the 13th of April of the year 1648"). The