BOURIGNON DE LA PORTE, ANTOINETTE. – Visionary, born on 13 January 1616 at Lille (France), died on 30 October 1680. Of a restless, eccentric, fanciful temperament, from her youth she imagined herself to have visions and ecstasies. Having rejected several marriages, at the age of twenty she fled her father’s house and began her wandering life, believing herself called to revive the spirit of the primitive simplicity and purity of the Gospel, and seeking for this purpose to gather followers. Returning to Lille on the death of her father (1648), and having won the inheritance lawsuit against her stepmother, she accepted, in 1653, at the proposal of Jean de St-Saulieu, the direction of a girls’ orphanage. When the authorities began an investigation amid grave suspicions, she fled to Ghent (1662), then to Mechelen (1663), where she found a faithful follower in Cristiano de Cort. In conversations with him, published later under the title La lumière du monde (Oeuvres, VI e VII), she declares herself the woman of the Apocalypse who must give birth in pain to spiritual children; whereas, against the Catholic Church in which the Antichrist reigns, she rejects the Baptism of children and falsifies the dogma of the Most Holy Trinity. After stays in Amsterdam (1667) and Haarlem (1670), in 1672 she succeeded in establishing her own printing press at Husum (Schleswig) for her propagandistic writings, but soon became involved in bitter controversies and was accused of heresy and witchcraft. The preacher G. H. Burchhardt, in a writing against her, Christliche gründliche Anmerkungen über die groben Irrtümer der A. B. (Schleswig, March 1674), prompted the authorities to intervene. The printing press was confiscated and her writings were burned by the executioner (April 1674).
We next find her at Flensburg, where M. Wolfgang Ouw attacked her with the Apocalypse Haeresea (Hamburg 1675), then at Schleswig (1675) and Hamburg (1676), where she hid for 15 months. There she was joined by the Calvinist mystic Pietro Poiret, who never left her thereafter. Discovered once more, she took refuge at Lütelsburg with Baron Dodo von Knijphausen (1677); accused by a former follower, La Costa, of being a witch and fraud, she attempted to reach Amsterdam, but, falling ill on the journey, died at Franeker (Frisia).
A skilled writer, with a lively style, she left many works, including two autobiographies: La parole de Dieu ou sa vie intérieure (Mechelen 1663), which asserts her claimed vocation as a mystical reformer; La vie extérieure (Amsterdam 1668), in which she recounts her eventful life. All her writings, the principal ones being: La lumière née en ténèbres; L'aveuglement des hommes de maintenant; Le nouveau ciel et la nouvelle terre; L'autéchrist découvert; Le renouvellement de l'esprit évangélique, were published in 19 volumes: Toutes les Oeuvres de Mlle A. B. (Amsterdam 1679-86), by P. Poiret, who prefaced them with a complete biography and an apologetic preface. They were placed on the Index by decrees of 28 November 1669, 15 May 1687 and 10 May 1757.