Beghards
Encyclopedia
Beghards and Beguines (or Beguins) were Roman Catholic lay
religious communities active in the 13th and 14th centuries, living in a loose semi-monastic community but without formal vows. They were influenced by Albigensian teachings and by the Brethren of the Free Spirit
, which flourished in and near Cologne
around the same time but was condemned as heretical.
, a priest of Liège
who around 1170 preached the establishment of an association of women devoting themselves to a life of religion without taking the monastic vows - opponents of Bègue's idea called these women Beguines. The Encyclopaedia dismissed derivations from Saint Begga and from an imaginary old Saxon word beggen, "to beg" or "to pray". In the course of the 20th century, still another explanation was put forward: Beguines would be a derivation of Albigenses. Encyclopedias, when they mention this latter explanation at all, tend to dismiss it.
At the start of the 12th century there were women in the Low Countries
who 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 desolate women—the raw material for a host of neophytes. These sole women made their homes not in the forest, where the true hermit normally dwells, but on the fringe of the town, where their work lay, for they attended to the poor. About the beginning of the 13th century some of them grouped their cabins together to form a community, called Beguinage
.
The Beguine were not nun
s; 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, and, if she could afford it, was attended by her own servants. The same aim in life, kindred pursuits, and community of worship were the ties which bound her to her companions.
There was no mother-house, nor common rule, nor common general of the order; every community was complete in itself and fixed its own order of living, though later on many adopted the rule of the Third Order of Saint Francis
. These communities were no less varied as to 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 Beguinage of Ghent
, numbered their inhabitants by thousands.
Such was this semi-monastic institution. Admirably adapted to the spiritual and social needs of the age which produced it, it spread rapidly throughout the land and soon began to exercise a profound influence on the religious life of the people. Each of these institutions was an ardent centre of mysticism
, and it was not the monks, who mostly dwelt on the countryside, nor even the secular clergy, but the Beguines, the Beghards, and the sons of Saint Francis who moulded the thought of the urban population of the Low Countries. There was a Beguinage at Mechlin as early as 1207, at Brussels
in 1245, at Leuven
before 1232, at Antwerp in 1234, at Bruges
in 1244, and by the close of the century there was hardly a commune in the Low Countries without its Beguinage, whilst several of the great cities had two or three or even more.
As the 13th century progressed they tended to become mystics
and relied less and less on their own labour, often turning to begging instead. In some cases, this shift toward mysticism caused problems for the Beguines. For example, Marguerite 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 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 be her refusal to remove her book The Mirror of Simple Souls
from circulation.
By the 14th century some communities were absorbed by monastic and mendicant orders, and others developed into Flagellant
s or other practices considered heretical. In 1311, Pope Clement V
accused the Beguines of spreading heresy, and they were suppressed under John XXII
, Urban V
, and Gregory XI
. They were rehabilitated in the 15th century by Eugene IV
.
Most of these institutions were suppressed during the religious troubles of the 16th century or during the stormy years which closed the 18th, but a few convents of Beguines persisted until the early 20th century in parts of Belgium, among them those of Bruges, Lier
, Mechlin, Leuven, and Ghent, which last numbered nearly a thousand members in 1905; the last Beguine of Belgium, Sister Marcella, 88, was living in a rest home in 2008, in Turnhout.
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 Reformation
as a staunchly Catholic community, though their parish church was confiscated and given over to exiled English
Puritan
s. The last Amsterdam Beguine died in 1971, but the Begijnhof remains one of the city's best-known landmarks.
They were for the most part, though not always, men of humble origin—weavers, dyers, fullers, and so forth—and thus they were intimately connected with the city craft-guilds. Indeed, no man could be admitted to the Beghards' convent at Brussels unless he were a member of the Weavers' Company, and this was in all probability not a unique case. 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, as a recent writer has it, "the medieval towns of the Netherlands found in the Beguinage a solution of their feminine question", the establishment of these communities afforded them at least a partial solution of another problem which pressed for an answer: the difficult problem of how to deal with the worn-out workingman.
Albeit the main object of all these institutions was not a temporal but a spiritual one, they had banded together in the first place to build up the inner man. While working out their own salvation they remained mindful of their neighbours in the world, and thanks to their intimate connection with the craft-guilds, they were able to largely influence the religious life, and to a great extent moulded the religious opinion of the cities and towns of the Netherlands, at all events in the case of the peasant, during more than two hundred years.
, or that some of them gradually developed opinions not in harmony with the Catholic Church, opinions, indeed, if we may trust John of Ruysbroeck, which seem to have differed little from the religious and political opinions professed by anarchists of later centuries. Such heretical tendencies of the Beghards and Beguines provoked disciplinary measures, sometimes severe, on the part of ecclesiastical authority. Various restrictions were placed upon them by the Synod of Fritzlar (1259), Mainz (1261), Eichstätt (1282); and they were forbidden as "having no approbation" by the Synod of Béziers (1299). They were condemned by the Council of Vienne
(1312), but this sentence was mitigated by John XXII (1321), who permitted the Beguines, as they had mended their ways, to resume their mode of life. The Beghards were more obstinate and during the 14th century they were repeatedly condemned by the Holy See, the bishops (notably in Germany), and the Inquisition. Even the Catholic Encyclopedia
admits, on the other hand, that men of faith and piety were found among the Beghards. In their behalf Gregory XI (1374–77) and Boniface IX (1394) addressed Bulls to the bishops of Germany and the Netherlands. An echo of the theological position held by the Beghards is found in the doctrine of Quietism
.
In the last decades a new beguine-movement arose in Germany. Recently, the Beguines of Mercy were founded, a contemplative, secular order of educated Catholic women, whose roots are in spiritual community and a heretical questioning of doctrine. Their affiliations are pacifism and the preservation of the earth, human dignity and well-being. The Beguines of Mercy are based in Vancouver, Canada
, Laurence Sterne
narrated Corporal Trim's description of a Beguine.
Françoise Mallet-Joris
' first novel, The Illusionist
, has as its French title Le Rempart des Béguines. This is the name of the street where Tamara, a courtesan, lives apart from the bourgeois and stultifying society of the Flemish
(Belgian) town of Gers
. Tamara is supported by an industrialist, who calls upon her occasionally, but her passion is for women, and the novel describes her seduction of the industrialist's 15 year-old daughter.
In Umberto Eco
's The Name of the Rose
, the Beghards are frequently mentioned among the heretic movements the inquisition has to persecute, and the difficulty in distinguishing among all the spiritual movements (as well as deciding which are heretical and which not) is pointed out.
Karen Maitland
's novel, The Owl Killers centers on a group of Béguines in the fictional English village of Ulewic during the fourteenth century.
Laity
In religious organizations, the laity comprises all people who are not in the clergy. A person who is a member of a religious order who is not ordained legitimate clergy is considered as a member of the laity, even though they are members of a religious order .In the past in Christian cultures, the...
religious communities active in the 13th and 14th centuries, living in a loose semi-monastic community but without formal vows. They were influenced by Albigensian teachings and by the Brethren of the Free Spirit
Brethren of the Free Spirit
The Brothers, or Brethren of the Free Spirit, was a lay Christian movement which flourished in northern Europe in the 13th and 14th centuries. Antinomian and individualist in outlook, it came into conflict with the Catholic Church and was declared heretical by Pope Clement V at the Council of...
, which flourished in and near Cologne
Cologne
Cologne is Germany's fourth-largest city , and is the largest city both in the Germany Federal State of North Rhine-Westphalia and within the Rhine-Ruhr Metropolitan Area, one of the major European metropolitan areas with more than ten million inhabitants.Cologne is located on both sides of the...
around the same time but was condemned as heretical.
Etymology
Over the centuries, the etymology of Beguines has been the subject of some controversy. However, by 1911 the Encyclopaedia Britannica concluded that the name derived from Lambert le BègueLambert Le Bègue
Lambert le Bègue was a priest and reformer, who lived in Liège, Belgium, in the middle of the 12th century.The son of poor people, he was ordained priest, and was probably parish priest of St. Christopher at Liège...
, a priest of Liège
Liège
Liège is a major city and municipality of Belgium located in the province of Liège, of which it is the economic capital, in Wallonia, the French-speaking region of Belgium....
who around 1170 preached the establishment of an association of women devoting themselves to a life of religion without taking the monastic vows - opponents of Bègue's idea called these women Beguines. The Encyclopaedia dismissed derivations from Saint Begga and from an imaginary old Saxon word beggen, "to beg" or "to pray". In the course of the 20th century, still another explanation was put forward: Beguines would be a derivation of Albigenses. Encyclopedias, when they mention this latter explanation at all, tend to dismiss it.
Beguines
Low Countries
The Low Countries are the historical lands around the low-lying delta of the Rhine, Scheldt, and Meuse rivers, including the modern countries of Belgium, the Netherlands, Luxembourg and parts of northern France and western Germany....
who 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
Crusades
The Crusades were a series of religious wars, blessed by the Pope and the Catholic Church with the main goal of restoring Christian access to the holy places in and near Jerusalem...
, and the land teemed with desolate women—the raw material for a host of neophytes. These sole women made their homes not in the forest, where the true hermit normally dwells, but on the fringe of the town, where their work lay, for they attended to the poor. About the beginning of the 13th century some of them grouped their cabins together to form a community, called Beguinage
Béguinage
A béguinage or begijnhof is a collection of small buildings used by Beguines. These were various lay sisterhoods of the Roman Catholic Church, founded in the 13th century in the Low Countries, comprising religious women who sought to serve God without retiring from the world.-Description:A...
.
The Beguine were not nun
Nun
A nun is a woman who has taken vows committing her to live a spiritual life. She may be an ascetic who voluntarily chooses to leave mainstream society and live her life in prayer and contemplation in a monastery or convent...
s; 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, and, if she could afford it, was attended by her own servants. The same aim in life, kindred pursuits, and community of worship were the ties which bound her to her companions.
There was no mother-house, nor common rule, nor common general of the order; every community was complete in itself and fixed its own order of living, though later on many adopted the rule of the Third Order of Saint Francis
Francis of Assisi
Saint Francis of Assisi was an Italian Catholic friar and preacher. He founded the men's Franciscan Order, the women’s Order of St. Clare, and the lay Third Order of Saint Francis. St...
. These communities were no less varied as to 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 Beguinage of Ghent
Ghent
Ghent is a city and a municipality located in the Flemish region of Belgium. It is the capital and biggest city of the East Flanders province. The city started as a settlement at the confluence of the Rivers Scheldt and Lys and in the Middle Ages became one of the largest and richest cities of...
, numbered their inhabitants by thousands.
Such was this semi-monastic institution. Admirably adapted to the spiritual and social needs of the age which produced it, it spread rapidly throughout the land and soon began to exercise a profound influence on the religious life of the people. Each of these institutions was an ardent centre of mysticism
Mysticism
Mysticism is the knowledge of, and especially the personal experience of, states of consciousness, i.e. levels of being, beyond normal human perception, including experience and even communion with a supreme being.-Classical origins:...
, and it was not the monks, who mostly dwelt on the countryside, nor even the secular clergy, but the Beguines, the Beghards, and the sons of Saint Francis who moulded the thought of the urban population of the Low Countries. There was a Beguinage at Mechlin as early as 1207, at Brussels
Brussels
Brussels , officially the Brussels Region or Brussels-Capital Region , is the capital of Belgium and the de facto capital of the European Union...
in 1245, at Leuven
Leuven
Leuven is the capital of the province of Flemish Brabant in the Flemish Region, Belgium...
before 1232, at Antwerp in 1234, at Bruges
Bruges
Bruges is the capital and largest city of the province of West Flanders in the Flemish Region of Belgium. It is located in the northwest of the country....
in 1244, and by the close of the century there was hardly a commune in the Low Countries without its Beguinage, whilst several of the great cities had two or three or even more.
As the 13th century progressed they tended to become mystics
Mysticism
Mysticism is the knowledge of, and especially the personal experience of, states of consciousness, i.e. levels of being, beyond normal human perception, including experience and even communion with a supreme being.-Classical origins:...
and relied less and less on their own labour, often turning to begging instead. In some cases, this shift toward mysticism caused problems for the Beguines. For example, Marguerite Porete
Marguerite Porete
Marguerite Porete was a French mystic and the author of The Mirror of Simple Souls, a work of Christian spirituality dealing with the workings of Divine Love. She was burnt at the stake for heresy in Paris in 1310 after a lengthy trial, after refusing to remove her book from circulation or recant...
, 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 Church for heresy and accused of being a Free Spirit
Brethren of the Free Spirit
The Brothers, or Brethren of the Free Spirit, was a lay Christian movement which flourished in northern Europe in the 13th and 14th centuries. Antinomian and individualist in outlook, it came into conflict with the Catholic Church and was declared heretical by Pope Clement V at the Council of...
. She was finally condemned and executed for reasons that are still not entirely clear. One reason may be her refusal to remove her book The Mirror of Simple Souls
The Mirror of Simple Souls
The Mirror of Simple Souls is an early 14th century work of Christian mysticism by Marguerite Porete dealing with the workings of Divine Love....
from circulation.
By the 14th century some communities were absorbed by monastic and mendicant orders, and others developed into Flagellant
Flagellant
Flagellants are practitioners of an extreme form of mortification of their own flesh by whipping it with various instruments.- History :Flagellantism was a 13th and 14th centuries movement, consisting of radicals in the Catholic Church. It began as a militant pilgrimage and was later condemned by...
s or other practices considered heretical. In 1311, Pope Clement V
Pope Clement V
Pope Clement V, born Raymond Bertrand de Got was Pope from 1305 to his death...
accused the Beguines of spreading heresy, and they were suppressed under John XXII
Pope John XXII
Pope John XXII , born Jacques Duèze , was pope from 1316 to 1334. He was the second Pope of the Avignon Papacy , elected by a conclave in Lyon assembled by Philip V of France...
, Urban V
Pope Urban V
Pope Urban V , born Guillaume Grimoard, was Pope from 1362 to 1370.-Biography:Grimoard was a native of Grizac in Languedoc . He became a Benedictine and a doctor in Canon Law, teaching at Montpellier and Avignon...
, and Gregory XI
Pope Gregory XI
Gregory XI was pope from 1370 until his death.-Biography:He was born Pierre Roger de Beaufort, in Maumont, in the modern commune of Rosiers-d'Égletons, Limousin around 1336. He succeeded Pope Urban V in 1370, and was pope until 1378...
. They were rehabilitated in the 15th century by Eugene IV
Pope Eugene IV
Pope Eugene IV , born Gabriele Condulmer, was pope from March 3, 1431, to his death.-Biography:He was born in Venice to a rich merchant family, a Correr on his mother's side. Condulmer entered the Order of Saint Augustine at the monastery of St. George in his native city...
.
Most of these institutions were suppressed during the religious troubles of the 16th century or during the stormy years which closed the 18th, but a few convents of Beguines persisted until the early 20th century in parts of Belgium, among them those of Bruges, Lier
Lier, Belgium
Lier is a municipality located in the Belgian province of Antwerp. The municipality comprises the city of Lier proper and the village of Koningshooikt. On January 1, 2010 Lier had a total population of 33,930. The total area is 49.70 km² which gives a population density of 669 inhabitants per...
, Mechlin, Leuven, and Ghent, which last numbered nearly a thousand members in 1905; the last Beguine of Belgium, Sister Marcella, 88, was living in a rest home in 2008, in Turnhout.
The community of the Amsterdam Begijnhof
Begijnhof, Amsterdam
The Begijnhof is one of the oldest inner courts in the city of Amsterdam. A group of historic buildings, mostly private dwellings, centre on it. As the name suggests, it was originally a Béguinage...
, credited with having considerably influenced the development of what was the city's southern edge in the late Middle Ages, survived the Reformation
Protestant Reformation
The Protestant Reformation was a 16th-century split within Western Christianity initiated by Martin Luther, John Calvin and other early Protestants. The efforts of the self-described "reformers", who objected to the doctrines, rituals and ecclesiastical structure of the Roman Catholic Church, led...
as a staunchly Catholic community, though their parish church was confiscated and given over to exiled English
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...
Puritan
Puritan
The Puritans were a significant grouping of English Protestants in the 16th and 17th centuries. Puritanism in this sense was founded by some Marian exiles from the clergy shortly after the accession of Elizabeth I of England in 1558, as an activist movement within the Church of England...
s. The last Amsterdam Beguine died in 1971, but the Begijnhof remains one of the city's best-known landmarks.
Beghards
The widespread religious revival of which the Beguinage was the outcome brought forth also about the same time 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; but, unlike them, they had 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, though not always, men of humble origin—weavers, dyers, fullers, and so forth—and thus they were intimately connected with the city craft-guilds. Indeed, no man could be admitted to the Beghards' convent at Brussels unless he were a member of the Weavers' Company, and this was in all probability not a unique case. 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, as a recent writer has it, "the medieval towns of the Netherlands found in the Beguinage a solution of their feminine question", the establishment of these communities afforded them at least a partial solution of another problem which pressed for an answer: the difficult problem of how to deal with the worn-out workingman.
Albeit the main object of all these institutions was not a temporal but a spiritual one, they had banded together in the first place to build up the inner man. While working out their own salvation they remained mindful of their neighbours in the world, and thanks to their intimate connection with the craft-guilds, they were able to largely influence the religious life, and to a great extent moulded the religious opinion of the cities and towns of the Netherlands, at all events in the case of the peasant, during more than two hundred years.
Relation to the Church
Bearing in mind the wretched and down-trodden class from which the Beghards were generally recruited, and the fact that they were so little trammelled by ecclesiastical control, it is not surprising that the mysticism of some of them presently became a sort of mystical pantheismPantheism
Pantheism is the view that the Universe and God are identical. Pantheists thus do not believe in a personal, anthropomorphic or creator god. The word derives from the Greek meaning "all" and the Greek meaning "God". As such, Pantheism denotes the idea that "God" is best seen as a process of...
, or that some of them gradually developed opinions not in harmony with the Catholic Church, opinions, indeed, if we may trust John of Ruysbroeck, which seem to have differed little from the religious and political opinions professed by anarchists of later centuries. Such heretical tendencies of the Beghards and Beguines provoked disciplinary measures, sometimes severe, on the part of ecclesiastical authority. Various restrictions were placed upon them by the Synod of Fritzlar (1259), Mainz (1261), Eichstätt (1282); and they were forbidden as "having no approbation" by the Synod of Béziers (1299). They were condemned by the Council of Vienne
Council of Vienne
The Council of Vienne was the fifteenth Ecumenical Council of the Roman Catholic Church that met between 1311 and 1312 in Vienne. Its principal act was to withdraw papal support for the Knights Templar on the instigation of Philip IV of France.-Background:...
(1312), but this sentence was mitigated by John XXII (1321), who permitted the Beguines, as they had mended their ways, to resume their mode of life. The Beghards were more obstinate and during the 14th century they were repeatedly condemned by the Holy See, the bishops (notably in Germany), and the Inquisition. Even the Catholic Encyclopedia
Catholic Encyclopedia
The Catholic Encyclopedia, also referred to as the Old Catholic Encyclopedia and the Original Catholic Encyclopedia, is an English-language encyclopedia published in the United States. The first volume appeared in March 1907 and the last three volumes appeared in 1912, followed by a master index...
admits, on the other hand, that men of faith and piety were found among the Beghards. In their behalf Gregory XI (1374–77) and Boniface IX (1394) addressed Bulls to the bishops of Germany and the Netherlands. An echo of the theological position held by the Beghards is found in the doctrine of Quietism
Quietism (Christian philosophy)
Quietism is a Christian philosophy that swept through France, Italy and Spain during the 17th century, but it had much earlier origins. The mystics known as Quietists insist, with more or less emphasis, on intellectual stillness and interior passivity as essential conditions of perfection...
.
Decline
Before the close of the Middle Ages, Beghard communities were in full decline; by 1631 there were only 2,487 members of the Beghard communities. Their numbers diminished with the waning of the cloth trade, and, when that industry died, gradually dwindled away. The highest number of these medieval foundations in Belgium 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 more than halved to 1,010.Second wave
A second wave of the Beguine Movement has been identified by Jean Hughes Raber. This occurred in the 17th century, being encouraged and supported by Archbishop Matthias Hovius. His involvement included helping improve the Great Beguines at Mechelen. In regards to the end of the Second Movement, Raber proposes that there is not a defined date, and offers such Catholic lay movements as those of Dorothy Day, the Company of Ursula and women communities initiated by Francisca Hernandez 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 the conditions of the current times. Economic uncertainty or worse, single women comprising a larger section of the population, loss of wealth in the form of deflated values of housing. A California based group named American Beguines is offered as an example of nascent revival of the Beguine Movement, with notable but not necessarily problematic differences.In the last decades a new beguine-movement arose in Germany. Recently, the Beguines of Mercy were founded, a contemplative, secular order of educated Catholic women, whose roots are in spiritual community and a heretical questioning of doctrine. Their affiliations are pacifism and the preservation of the earth, human dignity and well-being. The Beguines of Mercy are based in Vancouver, Canada
Literary references
In his novel, The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, GentlemanThe Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman
The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman is a novel by Laurence Sterne. It was published in nine volumes, the first two appearing in 1759, and seven others following over the next 10 years....
, Laurence Sterne
Laurence Sterne
Laurence Sterne was an Irish novelist and an Anglican clergyman. He is best known for his novels The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman, and A Sentimental Journey Through France and Italy; but he also published many sermons, wrote memoirs, and was involved in local politics...
narrated Corporal Trim's description of a Beguine.
Françoise Mallet-Joris
Françoise Mallet-Joris
Françoise Mallet-Joris is the nom de plume of Françoise Lilar.She was born in Antwerp, the daughter of the writer Suzanne Lilar and the Belgian Minister of Justice and Minister of State Albert Lilar, and the sister of the 18th century art historian Marie Fredericq-Lilar...
' first novel, The Illusionist
The Illusionist
The Illusionist is a 2006 period drama written and directed by Neil Burger and starring Edward Norton, Jessica Biel, and Paul Giamatti. Based loosely on Steven Millhauser's story "Eisenheim the Illusionist", The Illusionist tells the story of Eisenheim, a magician in turn-of-the-20th-century...
, has as its French title Le Rempart des Béguines. This is the name of the street where Tamara, a courtesan, lives apart from the bourgeois and stultifying society of the Flemish
Flemish
Flemish can refer to anything related to Flanders, and may refer directly to the following articles:*Flemish, an informal, though linguistically incorrect, name of any kind of the Dutch language as spoken in Belgium....
(Belgian) town of Gers
Gers
The Gers is a department in the Midi-Pyrénées region in the southwest of France named after the Gers River.Inhabitants are called les Gersois or Gersoises.-History:...
. Tamara is supported by an industrialist, who calls upon her occasionally, but her passion is for women, and the novel describes her seduction of the industrialist's 15 year-old daughter.
In Umberto Eco
Umberto Eco
Umberto Eco Knight Grand Cross is an Italian semiotician, essayist, philosopher, literary critic, and novelist, best known for his novel The Name of the Rose , an intellectual mystery combining semiotics in fiction, biblical analysis, medieval studies and literary theory...
's The Name of the Rose
The Name of the Rose
The Name of the Rose is the first novel by Italian author Umberto Eco. It is a historical murder mystery set in an Italian monastery in the year 1327, an intellectual mystery combining semiotics in fiction, biblical analysis, medieval studies and literary theory...
, the Beghards are frequently mentioned among the heretic movements the inquisition has to persecute, and the difficulty in distinguishing among all the spiritual movements (as well as deciding which are heretical and which not) is pointed out.
Karen Maitland
Karen Maitland
Karen Maitland is a British author of medieval thriller fiction. Maitland has an honours degree in Human Communication and doctorate in Psycholinguistics. Her works include The White Room published in 1996 by Yorkshire Art Circus, Company of Liars, published in 2008 by Delacorte Press; The Owl...
's novel, The Owl Killers centers on a group of Béguines in the fictional English village of Ulewic during the fourteenth century.
See also
- Christian anarchismChristian anarchismChristian anarchism is a movement in political theology that combines anarchism and Christianity. It is the belief that there is only one source of authority to which Christians are ultimately answerable, the authority of God as embodied in the teachings of Jesus...
- Christian mystics
- Christina von StommelnChristina von StommelnBlessed Christina of Stommeln , also known as Christina Bruso and Christina Bruzo, was a Roman Catholic mystic, ecstatic, and stigmatic....
- Brethren of the Free SpiritBrethren of the Free SpiritThe Brothers, or Brethren of the Free Spirit, was a lay Christian movement which flourished in northern Europe in the 13th and 14th centuries. Antinomian and individualist in outlook, it came into conflict with the Catholic Church and was declared heretical by Pope Clement V at the Council of...
- Heresy of the Free SpiritHeresy of the Free SpiritThe Free Spirit heresy consisted of small groups of Christian heretics living mostly in Bohemia, now the Czech Republic, during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. Their worship was not well organized and their doctrine was not well defined. Their beliefs were mostly spread in the form of...
- Marguerite PoreteMarguerite PoreteMarguerite Porete was a French mystic and the author of The Mirror of Simple Souls, a work of Christian spirituality dealing with the workings of Divine Love. She was burnt at the stake for heresy in Paris in 1310 after a lengthy trial, after refusing to remove her book from circulation or recant...
- Mechtild of Magdeburg
- Nicholas of BaselNicholas of BaselNicholas of Basel was a prominent member of the Beghard community, who travelled widely as a missionary and propagated the teachings of his sect....
- HadewijchHadewijchHadewijch was a 13th century poet and mystic, probably living in the Duchy of Brabant.Most of her extant writings, none of which survived the Middle Ages as an autograph, are in a Brabantian form of Middle Dutch...
- Sister Catherine TreatiseSister Catherine TreatiseThe Sister Catherine Treatise is a work of Medieval Christian mysticism seen as representative of the Heresy of the Free Spirit of the thirteenth and fourteenth Centuries in Europe...
- Begijnhof, AmsterdamBegijnhof, AmsterdamThe Begijnhof is one of the oldest inner courts in the city of Amsterdam. A group of historic buildings, mostly private dwellings, centre on it. As the name suggests, it was originally a Béguinage...
- BéguinageBéguinageA béguinage or begijnhof is a collection of small buildings used by Beguines. These were various lay sisterhoods of the Roman Catholic Church, founded in the 13th century in the Low Countries, comprising religious women who sought to serve God without retiring from the world.-Description:A...
Further reading
- SIMONS Walter, Cities of Ladies: Beguine Communities in the Medieval Low Countries, 1200-1565, Philadelphia: University of Philadelphia Press, 2001.
- DE CANT Geneviève, MAJÉRUS Pascal & VEROUGSTRAETE Christiane, A World of Independent Women: From the 12th Century to the Present Day: the Flemish Beguinages, Riverside: Hervé van Caloen Foundation, 2003.
- MACDONNELL Ernest W., The Beguines and Beghards in Medieval Culture: With Special Emphasis on the Belgian Scene, New York: Octagon Books, 1969.
- REICHSTEIN Frank-Michael, Das Beginenwesen in Deutschland, Berlin, 2001.
- VAN AERSCHOT Suzanne & HEIRMAN Michiel, Les béguinages de Flandre. Un patrimoine mondial, Brussels: éditions Racine, 2001.
- VANDENBROECK Paul, Le jardin clos de l'âme. L'imaginaire des religieuses dans les Pays-Bas du Sud, depuis le 13e siècle, Brussels-Ghent, 1994.
- NEEL, Carol, The Origins of the Beguines, Signs, 1989.
- MURK-JANSEN, Saskia, Brides in de Desert: The Spirituality of the Beguine, Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1998
- PETROFF, Elizabeth Alvilda, Body and Soul: Essays on Medieval Women and Mysticism, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994
External links
- Chambers, Ephraim. Cyclopædia, 1728, p. 95
- CATHOLIC ENCYCLOPEDIA: Beguines, Beghards
- Marygrace Peter's article on Beguines