These small communities of women soon attracted the attention of secular and clerical authorities.
During the 13th century, some of them bought homes that neighbored each other. These women lived in towns, where they attended to the poor. In the Middle Ages there were more women than men due to the structure of urban demographics and marriage patterns in the Low Countries. At first there were only a few, but in the course of the century, their numbers increased. It was built in 1463 and restored in 1983.Īt 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. Beguines (laywomen) Communities and status Ī house in Bad Cannstatt formerly used as a beguinage. Encyclopedias, when they mention this latter explanation at all, tend to dismiss it.
There is likewise no evidence that Beguines ever formed part of the Cathar heretical groups. The origin of the movement's name continues to be uncertain, as are the dates for the beginning of the movement itself. Begga and from the purported, reconstructed Old Saxon word * beggen, "to beg" or "to pray", have also been discredited.
Other theories, such as derivation from the name of St. 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. The term "Beguine" ( Latin: beguinas Dutch: begijn) is of uncertain origin and may have been pejorative. 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. 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. The Beguines ( / b eɪ ˈ ɡ iː n z, ˈ b ɛ ɡ iː n z/) and the Beghards ( / ˈ b ɛ ɡ ər d z, b ə ˈ ɡ ɑːr d z/) were Christian lay religious orders that were active in Western Europe, particularly in the Low Countries, in the 13th–16th centuries. Print of a Beguine in Des dodes dantz of Matthäus Brandis, Lübeck 1489.
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