Beguines and Beghards

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.

Although they promised not to marry "as long as they lived as Beguines", to quote an early Rule of Life, 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.

[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.

[7][better source needed] At the beginning of the 12th century, some women in the Low Countries lived alone and devoted themselves to prayer and good works without taking vows.

In the Middle Ages there were more women than men due to the structure of urban demographics and marriage patterns in the Low Countries.

[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, in the early 13th century.

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.

[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.

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.

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.

On the other hand, admirers such as the secular cleric Robert de Sorbon (died 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.

While clearly popular throughout the Middle Ages and beyond (perhaps dozens of copies circulated throughout late-medieval western Europe) the book provoked controversy, likely because of statements such as "A soul annihilated in the love of the creator can, and should, grant to nature all it desires", which was viewed as meaning some kind of immorality towards the Church, its sacraments, or its canons.

[27] Also at issue was the manner in which Porete disseminated her teachings, which was evocative of actions and behaviors some clerics were finding increasingly problematic among lay religious women in that era.

A few béguinages persisted until the early 20th century in parts of Belgium, including those of Bruges, Lier, Mechelen, Leuven and Ghent, which last numbered nearly a thousand members in 1905.

The community of Begijnhof, Amsterdam, credited with having considerably influenced the development of what was the city's southern edge in the late Middle Ages, survived the Protestant Reformation staunchly Catholic.

Born in the Belgian Congo in 1920, she was accepted into the Holy Corner of Elizabeth of Hungary at Sint-Amandsberg, Ghent, in 1941 and moved to the Béguinage of St Elisabeth at Kortrijk in 1960, where she became one of a community of nine.

She suggests that Catholic lay movements, such as those of Dorothy Day in the United States, the Company of St. Ursula and communities of women initiated by Francisca Hernandez,[who?]

[36] Among Beguines who have become well-known representatives of the movement in contemporary literature are: Christina von Stommeln, Douceline of Digne, Hadewijch, Marguerite Porete, Marie d'Oignies, and Mechthild of Magdeburg.

The Beghards were all laymen and, like the Beguines, they were not bound by vows, the rule of life which they observed was not uniform, and the members of each community were subject only to their own local superiors.

The Beghards were often men to whom fortune had not been kind—men who had outlived their friends, or whose family ties had been broken by some untoward event and who, by reason of failing health or advancing years, or perhaps on account of some accident, were unable to stand alone.

If "the medieval towns of the Netherlands found in the Beguinage a solution of their feminine question",[citation needed] the growth of the Beghard communities provided a place for the worn-out working man.

They were condemned by the Council of Vienne (1312), but this sentence was mitigated by Pope John XXII (1321), who permitted the Beguines to resume their mode of life after reform.