OF SIX MEDIÆVAL WOMEN
Front Meadow." Heinrich addresses the gift "To the Sisters in the Front Meadow." "You shall know that the book that is sent by her of the Golden Ring is called The Light of the Godhead, and to this you shall give good heed. It shall also serve in all the houses of the wood, and shall never leave the wood, and shall remain a month in each house. Also it shall go from one to another as required, and you shall take special care of it. Pray for me who was your Confessor, though, alas, unworthy."
In 1235, at the age of twenty-three, Mechthild—not without many a heart-pang, and prompted to this determination by a troubled conscience, a determination doubtless brought about by the preaching of the Dominican friars, who were stirring all classes by their impassioned zeal—left her home and went to Magdeburg, where she entered a settlement of beguines. These settlements, semi-monastic in character, were provided to afford some protection, by living in community, for women who, whilst devoting themselves to a religious life, did not wish to separate themselves wholly from the world. It was at the time of the Crusades, when the land teemed with desolate women, that their numbers increased so greatly, and the first beguinage was founded about the beginning of the thirteenth century. The beguine took no vows, could return to the world and marry if she so desired, and did not renounce her property. If she was without means, she neither
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