Beguines and Beghards

Etymology

The term "Beguine" is of uncertain origin and may have been pejorative. Scholars no longer credit the theory expounded in the Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition that the name derived from Lambert le Bègue, a priest of Liège. Other theories, such as derivation from the name of St. Begga and from the purported, reconstructed Old Saxon word *beggen, "to beg" or "to pray", have also been discredited. The origin of the movement's name continues to be uncertain, as are the dates for the beginning of the movement itself.

Beguines (laywomen)

Communities and status

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. At first there were only a few, but in the course of the century, their numbers increased. In the Middle Ages there were more women than men due to the structure of urban demographics and marriage patterns in the Low Countries. 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. 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. Several clerics sought to promote these mulieres religiosae as saints after their deaths. 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. 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. 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.
Beguines were not nuns, but they are sometimes conflated with them. 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. As women, Beguines were forbidden to preach and teach, yet they actively exhorted their fellow Christians to live lives of penance, service, and prayer.
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.
In cities such as Cambrai, Valenciennes, and Liège, local officials established formal communities for these women that became known as beguinages. Beguinages 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.
Beguines were an influential group when it comes to the spread of writing and manuscripts. Because Beguines could read and write in the vernacular, they valorized the use of vernacular writing for religious purposes. They played a crucial role in shaping and transmitting the vernacular and increasing common literacy by translating spiritual and mystical texts in their own local languages. This in turn allowed complex theological ideas to become accessible to a greater and more diverse audience. Not only did they translate existing religious texts, they wrote their own original manuscripts as well. These written works of Beguines were not only accepted but quite popular. Some texts, upon completion, were quickly translated into Latin, representing their broad appeal and authority. One example of this was the work of Mechthild of Magdeburg, entitled, The Flowering Light of the Godhead, which was translated very near the time of its composition. Given the Latin-literate and male-dominated religious elite of the time, the translation of Beguine texts to the authoritative Latin signifies the esteem that was attributed to them. Many Beguines were born from noble families, indicating their familiarity with courtly literature which commonly centered around romantic ideals such as courtly love and chivalry. This understanding is eminent in their writings which often combined biblical themes with more secular, romantic imagery. This style of writing can also be seen as a metaphor for their greater existence which binds religious devotion with secular action. Whereas scribes who were confined to the convent or monastery contributed to the spread of literacy and biblical texts intermediately, by means of their inscriptions, Beguines took this a step further by being the disseminators of their own works. In addition, they contributed to the transmission of vernacular religious and secular texts through their writing, teaching and wider network of religious and secular patrons.
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. 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. Douceline of Digne founded the Beguine movement in Marseille; her hagiography, which was composed by a member of her community, sheds light on the movement in general.
This semi-monastic institution was adapted to its age and spread rapidly throughout the land. Some Beguines became known as "holy women", 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.
Some influential Beguinages were Begijnhof, Begijnhof, and Begijnhof.

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 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. 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. 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 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.
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, to its reference in the trial of the doomed mystic Marguerite Porete, to its centrality in the condemnation of lay religious women at the Council of Vienne in 1311–1312.

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 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. Porete taught that souls in such a state desired only good and would not be able to sin.
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. 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".