From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The Beguines (/beɪˈɡiːnz, ˈbɛɡiːnz/) and the Beghards (/ˈbɛɡərdz, bəˈɡɑːrdz/) were Christian lay religious orders that were active in Western Europe, particularly in the Low Countries, in the 13th–16th centuries. Their members lived in semi-monastic communities but did not take formal religious vows; although they promised not to marry “as long as they lived as Beguines,” to quote one of the early Rules, they were free to leave at any time. Beguines were part of a larger spiritual revival movement of the 13th century that stressed imitation of Jesus‘ life through voluntary poverty, care of the poor and sick, and religious devotion.
Etymology
The term “Beguine” (Latin: beguinas; Dutch: begijn) is of uncertain origin and may have been pejorative.[2] Scholars no longer credit the theory expounded in the Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition (1911) that the name derived from Lambert le Bègue, a priest of Liège.[3] Other theories, such as derivation from the name of St. Begga and from a purported, reconstructed Old Saxon word *beggen, “to beg” or “to pray”, have also been discredited.[4] The origin of the movement’s name continues to be uncertain, as are the dates for the beginning of the movement itself.[5][6]
There is likewise no evidence that Beguines ever formed part of the Cathar heretical groups. Encyclopedias, when they mention this latter explanation at all, tend to dismiss it.[7][better source needed]
Beguines (laywomen)
Among Beguines who have become well-known representatives of the movement in contemporary literature are: Begijnhof (Amsterdam), Begijnhof (Breda), Begijnhof (Utrecht), Christina von Stommeln, Douceline of Digne, Hadewijch, Marguerite Porete, Marie d’Oignies, and Mechthild of Magdeburg. Modern Beguines include Marcella Pattyn, and perhaps Dorothy Day.
Communities and status
A house in Bad Cannstatt formerly used as a beguinage. It was built in 1463 and restored in 1983.
At the start of the 12th century, some women in the Low Countries lived alone and devoted themselves to prayer and good works without taking vows. At first there were only a few, but in the course of the century, their numbers increased. Due to the structure of urban demographics and marriage patterns in the Low Countries, in the Middle Ages there were more women than men.[8] These women lived in towns, where they attended to the poor. During the 13th century, some of them bought homes that neighbored each other. These small communities of women soon attracted the attention of secular and clerical authorities.[9] Moved or inspired by the women’s commitment to prayer, the sacraments, and charitable service in the world, local clergy sought to channel and deploy the women’s spiritual fame in response to contemporary problems, especially the institutional church’s war on heresy.[10] Several clerics sought to promote these mulieres religiosae (or religious women) as saints after their deaths.[11] Probably the most famous instance of this was the relationship between James of Vitry and Marie d’Oignies, who is sometimes referred to as the prototypical Beguine.[12] Marie d’Oignies inspired James. She encouraged and improved his preaching and many of her miracles served to promote the sacramental program of Lateran IV.[13] After Marie’s death, James traveled to Rome on behalf of the “religious women” in the diocese of Liège, seeking papal permission for the women to live in common and incite one another to live good Christian lives.[14]
Beguines were not nuns, but they are sometimes conflated with nuns.[15] Beguines took personal, informal vows of chastity. Animated by the ideals of the vita apostolica—the same ideals that led to the formation of the mendicant orders—Beguines pursued a life of contemplative prayer and active service in the world.[16] As women, Beguines were forbidden to preach and teach, yet they actively exhorted their fellow Christians to live lives of penance, service, and prayer.[17]
Beguines were never recognized as an official, papally approved religious order. They did not follow an approved rule, they did not live in convents, and they did not give up their personal property. In fact, Beguines were free to abandon their religious vocation at any time since it was not enforced by any binding monastic vow. In many cases, the term “Beguine” referred to a woman who wore humble garb and stood apart as living a religious life above and beyond the practice of ordinary laypeople.[18]
In cities such as Cambrai, Valenciennes, and Liège, local officials established formal communities for these women that became known as beguinages.[19] Beguinages (Begijnhoven in Dutch-speaking areas) tended to be located near or within town centers and were often close to the rivers that provided water for their work in the cloth industry.
While some women joined communities of like-minded lay religious women, adopting the label “Beguine” by virtue of entering a beguinage, many women lived alone or with one or two other like-minded women. Beguines engaged in a range of occupations to support themselves. Women in the Low Countries tended to work in the cities’ lucrative wool industry. Parisian Beguines were important contributors to the city’s burgeoning silk industry.[20]
Beguinages were not convents. There was no overarching structure such as a mother-house. Each beguinage adopted its own rule. The Bishop of Liège created a rule for Beguines in his diocese.[21] However, every community was complete in itself and fixed its own order of living. Later, many adopted the rule of the Third Order of Saint Francis.
Beguine communities varied in terms of the social status of their members; some of them only admitted ladies of high degree; others were reserved exclusively for persons in humble circumstances; others still welcomed women of every condition, and these were the most popular. Several, like the great beguinage of Ghent, had thousands of inhabitants. The Beguinage of Paris, founded before 1264, housed as many as 400 women.[22] Douceline of Digne (c. 1215-1274) founded the Beguine movement in Marseille; her hagiography, which was composed by a member of her community, sheds light on the movement in general.[23]
This semi-monastic institution was adapted to its age and spread rapidly throughout the land. Some Beguines became known as “holy women” (mulieres sanctae), and their devotions influenced religious life within the region. Beguine religious life was part of the mysticism of that age. There was a beguinage at Mechelen as early as 1207, at Brussels in 1245, at Leuven before 1232, at Antwerp in 1234, and at Bruges in 1244. By the close of the century, most communes in the Low Countries had a beguinage; several of the great cities had two or more.
Criticism and social response
As the 13th century progressed, some Beguines came under criticism as a result of their ambiguous social and legal status. As a conscious choice to live in the world but in a way that effectively surpassed (at least in piety) or stood out from most laypeople, Beguines attracted disapprobation as much as admiration. In some regions, the term Beguine itself denoted an ostentatiously, even obnoxiously religious woman; an image that quickly led to accusations of hypocrisy (consider the Beguine known as “Constrained Abstinence” in the Roman de la Rose). Some professed religious were offended by the assuming of “religious” status without the commitment to a rule, while the laity resented the implicit disapproval of marriage and other markers of secular life.[24] The women’s legal standing in relation to ecclesiastical and lay authorities was unclear. Beguines seemed to enjoy the best of both worlds: holding on to their property and living in the world as laypeople while claiming the privileges and protections of the professed religious.
On the other hand, admirers such as the secular cleric Robert de Sorbon (d. 1274) noted that Beguines exhibited far more devotion to God than even the cloistered, since they voluntarily pursued a religious life without vows and walls, surrounded by the world’s temptations.[25]
The power of the Beguine label is evident in the “watershed” moments of Beguine history, from its first appearance in the sermons of James of Vitry (the Beguine movement’s earliest and perhaps most famous promoter), to its reference in the trial of the doomed mystic Marguerite Porete (who was burned at the stake in Paris on charges of heresy in 1310), to its centrality in the condemnation of lay religious women at the Council of Vienne in 1311–1312.[26]
Marguerite Porete
Sometime during the early to mid-1290s, Marguerite Porete wrote a mystical book known as The Mirror of Simple Souls. Written in Old French, the book describes the annihilation of the soul, specifically its descent into a state of nothingness—of union with God without distinction. While clearly popular throughout the Middle Ages and beyond (perhaps dozens of copies circulated throughout late-medieval western Europe) the book provoked some controversy, likely because of statements such as “a soul annihilated in the love of the creator could, and should, grant to nature all that it desires,” which some took to mean that a soul can become one with God and that when in this state it can ignore moral law, as it had no need for the Church and its sacraments, or its code of virtues. This was not what Porete taught, since she explained that souls in such a state desired only good and would not be able to sin. Nevertheless, the book’s teachings, for some, were too easily misconstrued, particularly by the unlearned.[27]
At issue too was the way Porete disseminated her teachings, which was evocative of actions and behaviors some clerics were—at the time—finding increasingly problematic among lay religious women. Indeed, Porete was eventually tried by the Dominican inquisitor of France and burned at the stake as a relapsed heretic in 1310. In 1311—the year after Porete’s death—ecclesiastical officials made several specific connections between Porete’s ideas and deeds and the Beguine status in general at the Council of Vienne. One of the council’s decrees, Cum de Quibusdam, claimed that Beguines “dispute and preach about the highest Trinity and the divine essence and introduce opinions contrary to the catholic faith concerning the articles of the faith and the sacraments of the church.”[28]