The Beguine Way of Life

“Wars, crusades, plague, [and] famine … led to a … gender imbalance in northern Europe in the late 12th  century….”  reducing the number of men available to perform skilled tasks or marry [1].  Despite these conditions, cultural views on gender roles and social class remained inflexible, allowing few choices for women other than marriage or the monastery. 

At the same time, lay religious movements began to emerge throughout Europe, with wandering preachers urging laypeople of all social classes to adopt simplicity and deeper devotion in their daily lives. With monasteries filled or requiring expensive dowries of new members,  religious unmarried and widowed laywomen or those with absent husbands had few options, leaving them without adequate security, respect, or economic stability [2, 3, 4].  

In this climate, the Beguine Movement arose, a new type of  “visible religious life” without binding vows, offering a “less institutional form of whole-hearted devotion” for women [2]. Their way of life provided a means for laywomen to attain intimacy with God within a like-minded community [5, 6] designed flexibly around conditions in the locality and the interests and needs of the beguines themselves [7, 8, 9].

While remaining anchored in practical rhythms of prayer, service, and friendship, beguines supported themselves by their own labor in homes and shops, working as merchants, craftswomen, and domestic laborers. They were well-known for their work in the cloth industry where they spun wool, dyed fibers, wove textiles, and finished cloth, tasks that permitted them to work together in communal areas in their beguinages and convents [10, 11].

Their flexibility made them difficult to categorize [12, 13, 14, 15]. Their lifestyles varied in different locations, but all were inspired by influences that urged simplicity in secular life, equality of rich and poor in society and religious communities, devotion to the human expression of God through Jesus, access to Scripture by both clergy and laity, and service that included  copying Scripture and sermons in the language of the area, teaching, caring for the sick,  preparing bodies for burial, serving food to the poor, and providing other services to meet local needs [9, 11, 13, 14].

As women of prayer, beguines promoted their belief in the humanity of Jesus and his concern for the everyday lives of  “simple souls”, using the language of the people to make their teachings available to all.  In particular, they preached the message that a relationship of spiritual tenderness and friendship with God was possible for everyone [8]. Julian of Norwich, whom scholars have placed within the embrace of beguine spirituality, taught that “we are beings who need to be reassured by the motherhood of God who does not deprive us of the milk of supernatural life”. Her confidence in the mercy and tender care of God for all prompted her famous message that “all will be well, and all will be well, and every kind of thing will be well” [16, 17].

Such teachings challenged the prevailing atmosphere of judgment and fear fostered by clerics at the time. The beguines’ insistence on their authority to preach the compassion and care of God  prompted controversy and difficulties that followed the beguines over the centuries [1, 8, 9].