BE6UINES
390
BEGUINES
was without means slie neither asked nor accepted
alms, but supported herself by manual labour, or by
teacliing the children of burgliers. During the time
of her novitiate she lived with "the Grand Mistress"
of lier cloister, but afterwards she had her own
dwelling, and, if she could afford it, was attended by
her own servants. The same aim in life, kindred pur-
suits, and community of worship were the ties which
bound lier 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 conununities were no less varied as to the
social status of their members; some of them only
admitted ladies of high degree; others were exclu-
sively 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 pro-
duced it, it spread rapidly tliroughout the land and
soon began to exercise a profound influence on the
religious life of the people. Each of tliese institutions
was an ardent centre of mysticism, and it was not the
monks, who mostly dwelt on the country side, nor
e\-en the secular clergy, but the Beguines, the Beg-
hards, and the sons of Saint Francis who moulded the
thought of the urban population of the Netherlands.
There was a Beguinage at Mechlin as early as 1207,
at Brussels in 12-45, at Louvain in 1234, at Bruges in
1244, and by the close of the century there was hardly
a commune in the Netherlands without its Beguinage,
whilst several of the great cities had two or tlrree or
even more. Most of tliese institutions were sup-
pressed during the religious troubles of the fifteen-
hundreds or during the stormy years which closed
the eighteentli century, but a few convents of Be-
guines still exist in various parts of Belgium. The
most notable are those of Bruges, Mechlin, Louvain,
and Ghent, which last numbers nearly a thousand
members.
The widespread religious ^e^^val 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 of them 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 onlj' to their o\\ii local superiors; but, unlike them, they had no private property; the breth- ren of each cloister had a common purse, dwelt to- gether 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 tlius 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 ad- vancing years, or perhaps on acount of some acci- dent, were unable to stand alone. If, as a recent WTiter has it, "the medieval towns of the Nether- lands 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 workingnian. 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. Nor whilst working out their
own salvation were they unmindful of their neigh-
bours in the world, and thanks to their intimate
connexion with the craft-guilds, they were able to
largely influence the religious life, and to a great
extent to mould the religious opinion of the cities
and towns of the Netherlands, at all events in the
case of the proletariat , during more than two hundred
years.
Bearing in mind the wretched and down-trodden class from which the Beghards were generally re- cruited, and the fact that they were so little tram- melled by ecclesiastical control, it is not surprising that the mysticism of some of them presently became a sort of mystical pantheism, or that some of them gradually developed opinions not in harmony with the Catholic Faith, opinions, indeed, if we may trust Jolin Ruysbroek, which seem to have differed little from the religious and political opinions professed by anarchists to-day. The heretical tendencies of the Beghards and Beguines necessitatetl disciplinary measures, sometimes severe, on the part of ecclesias- tical authority. Various restrictions were placed upon them by the Synods of Fritzlar (1259), Mainz (1261), Eiclistatt (1282); and they were forbidden as "having no approbation" by the Synod of B^ziers (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. During the fourteenth centurj' they were repeatedly con- demned by the Holy See, the bishops (notably in Germany), and the Inquisition. It should be noted, on the other hand, that in spite of widespread abuses, men of faith and piety were found among the Beg- hards. 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 errors into which the Beghards fell is found in the doctrine of Quietism.
Nor did the Beghard communities of the Nether- lands escape the fate which sooner or later overtakes aU human institutions: before the close of the Middle Ages most of them were in full decadence. Not, as so often happens, that their life was crushed out by the weight of gold; though, as time went on, they acquired endowments, they were never rich; they waned \\ith the waning of the cloth trade, and, when that industry died, gradually dwindled away. Their crazy ships were sorely tried by the storm of the fifteen-hundreds; some of them went to the bottom, some weathered its fury, but were so battered that they afterwards sank in still water; a few, somehow or other, managed to keep afloat till the hurricane of the French Revolution at last dashed them to pieces. The highest number of these medie^•al foundations in Belgium was 94. They were reduced (1734) to 34 and (1856) to 20. Tlieir membership in 1631 was 2,487; in 1828, 1,010; in 1856, about 1,600.
GELDTLPHrs A. Kyckel, Vita S. BeggiV et Historia Beggina- riorum Belgii (Louvain, 1630'; Helyot, Hutoire des ordres moTMStiques (Paris. 1719). VIII; Thomas de Cantimpre. Ds Apibus (Douai. 1627): Thomassin, Discip. Ecc. Vet. II. IV; CoENS, Disquis. HistoT. de orig. Begh. (Lifege. 1629); Doutre- MAN, Hist, de Valenciennes (referred to by Helyot): Mosheim, De Begh. et Begu. C ommentaHum (Leipzig, 1790): Wauters. Histoire des environs de Brurelles (Brussels, 1855), contains much curious information about the numerous Beguine con- vents in the neighbourhood of Brussels. See Table Alphab. in I and II, 500-508; Pirenne, Hist, de Belgiqtie (Brussels, 1903), I, 337-340; Mohler. Kirchengesch.: Vo.v Gruse. Ger- hartGrool u. seine Stiftungen (Bonn, 1883); Delprat, Verhandl. over de BroeJerschap van G. G. (Utrecht. 1822); Gerardi Magni Epislola- XIV (.\msterdam, 1857); BcsCHlcos. Chronican Canon. Reg. (1621); The Chronicles of the Canons regular of Mount .Agnes (London, 1906); Kettlewell, Thomas h Kempis ami the Brothers of the Common Life (London, 1886); Heim- BUCHER, Die Orden u. Kongregationen; Bauer in Kirchenlex,
Ernest Gillht-Smith.
