1. Beguines and Beghards
A drawing of a Beguine from Des dodes dantz, printed in Lübeck in 1489.
The Beguines were Christian lay religious orders that were active in Germany and the Low
Countries in the 13th–16th centuries. Their members lived in semi-monastic communities but did
not take formal religious vows. They were influenced by Catharism and also by the Brethren of
the Free Spirit, which flourished in and around Cologne at the same time but was later
condemned as heretical.
Over the centuries, the etymology of Beguines has been the subject of some controversy. By
1911 the Encyclopædia Britannica concluded that the name derived from
formerly used as a béguinage. It was built in 1463 and restored in 1983. It is now occupied by an
upscale restaurant.
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 of
them, but in the course of the century, their numbers increased. This was the age of the Crusades
and the land teemed with widowed women[citation needed] — the raw material for a host of
neophytes. These single women tended to live on the fringe of towns, where they attended to the
poor. About the beginning of the 13th century, some of them grouped their cabins together to
form a community called a béguinage.
Beguines were not nuns; they did not take vows, could return to the world and wed if they chose
and did not renounce their property. If one was without means, she neither asked nor accepted
alms but supported herself by manual labour or by teaching the children of burghers. During the
time of her novitiate, she lived with "the Grand Mistress" of her cloister, but afterward she had
her own dwelling. If she could afford it, she was attended by her own servants. She was bound to
her companions by having the same goals in life, kindred pursuits and a community of worship.

2. Beguines had no mother-house, common rule, or common general of the order; 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. These communities were varied in terms of the social status of their
members; some of them only admitted ladies of high degree; others were exclusively reserved
for persons in humble circumstances; others again opened their doors wide to women of every
condition and these were the most densely peopled. Several, like the great béguinage of Ghent,
numbered their inhabitants by thousands (ca. 1215-74) founded the Beguine movement in
Marseille; her hagiography, which was composed by a member of her community, sheds light on
the movement in general.[4]
This semi-monastic institution was adapted to its age and spread rapidly throughout the land. The
women influenced the religious life of the people. Each of these institutions was a centre of
mysticism and it was Beguines, Beghards and Franciscans who shaped the thought of the urban
population of the Low Countries. There was a béguinage at Mechelin 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 béguinage; several of the great cities
had two or more.
As the 13th century progressed, the women tended to become mystics and relied less on their
own labour, often turning to begging instead. In some cases, this shift toward mysticism caused
problems for them. Marguerite HYPERLINK
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marguerite_Porete"Porete, a French Beguine and mystic, was
burned at the stake in Paris in 1310 by civil authorities (heresy was against state law at that
time). She was condemned by the Catholic Church for heresy and accused of being a Free Spirit.
She was finally condemned and executed for reasons that are still not entirely clear. One reason
may have been her refusal to remove her book The Mirror of Simple Souls from circulation.
Most of these institutions were suppressed during the Protestant Reformation of the 16th century
or during the stormy years of revolutions and social unrest of the French Revolution. A few
béguinages persisted until the early 20th century in parts of Belgium, including those of Bruges,
Lier, Mechelin, Leuven and Ghent, which last numbered nearly a thousand members in 1905.
Béguinage of St Elisabeth, Kortrijk
Marcella Pattyn, the last traditional Beguine, died on 14 April 2013 in Kortrijk at the age of 92.
Born in the Belgian Congo in 1920, she was accepted into the Béguinage of St Elisabeth 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.[5 HYPERLINK "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beguines_and_Beghards"]
HYPERLINK"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beguines_and_Beghards"[6] HYPERLINK
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beguines_and_Beghards"[7]

3. The community of the Amsterdam Begijnhof, 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. Their parish church was confiscated and given over
to exiled English Puritans. The last Amsterdam Beguine died in 1971,[8] but the Begijnhof
remains one of the city's best-known landmarks.
Beghards[edit]
The widespread religious revival inspired several kindred societies for men. Of these the
Beghards were the most widespread and the most important. 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.
They held no private property; the brethren of each cloister had a common purse, dwelt together
under one roof and ate at the same board. They were for the most part men of humble origin—
weavers, dyers, fullers and so forth—they were closely connected with the city craft-guilds. For
example, no man could be admitted to the Beghards' community at Brussels unless he were a
member of the Weavers' Company. 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 workingman. The men had banded together in
the first place to build up the inner man. While working out their own salvation, they remained
mindful of their neighbors and, thanks to their connection with the craft-guilds, they influenced
the religious life. They are credited with shaping the religious opinion of the cities and towns of
the Netherlands for more than 200 years, especially for the peasant.
Before the close of the Middle Ages, Beghard communities were in full decline. By 1631 they
retained only 2,487 members.[citation needed] Their numbers diminished with the waning of the
textile trade and, when that industry died, gradually dwindled away. The highest number of such
medieval foundations in Flanders and Wallonia was 94, but in 1734 they had been reduced to
just 34 and in 1856 to 20. Over the period of nearly two centuries, between 1631 and 1828, their
membership had decreased to 1,010.
The historian Jean Hughes Raber defined a second wave of the Beguine Movement occurring in
the 17th century, when it was supported by Archbishop Mathias HYPERLINK
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mathias_Hovius"Hovius. His involvement included helping
improve the Great Beguines at Mechelen. Raber says there was no clear end to the Second
Movement. He 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?] can be seen as extensions of the Beguines into the 20th century.
Third wave
Raber suggests the Beguines' response to social and economic forces in the 12th century offer a
model that can meet current conditions: economic uncertainty or worse, single women
comprising a larger section of the population, loss of wealth in the form of deflated values of
housing. He notes a California-based group, the American Beguines, as an example of revival of
the Beguine Movement, with notable but not necessarily problematic differences.[9] In the last

4. decades, a new Beguine movement arose in Germany.[10] Recently, the Beguines of Mercy were
founded in Vancouver, Canada. It is a contemplative, secular order of educated Catholic women,
whose roots are in spiritual community. Their affiliations are good works, quiet contemplation
and living out their spiritual values.[11]
Thomas of Hookton. Karen Maitland in her 2009 novel The Owl Killers portrays a group of
Beguines in the fictional early 14th-century English village of Ulewic.
• Sister Catherine Treatise