The Beguine: Medieval Women in charge of their Spirit.

by Jani Farrell Roberts. c2000

An extract from her book "Seven Days: Tales of Magic, Sex and Gender."

But Cohn's theory did not explain why charges against High Magic magicians were relatively few and why charges of calling on demons came to be levelled mostly against women who had never seen or used a grimoire. Cohen like many male historians missed many of the gender dimensions of this persecution.

When the Roman Church sent out Gui as an Inquisitor against the Waldensians, a religious movement in France that rejected war service, the death sentence, the need for church buildings and the doctrine of purgatory, Gui reported that the Waldensians were a kind of Beguine. The Beguine were then a major and very influential movement involving thousands of women. From the 12th century, large numbers of secular women in the Low Countries, in Germany, France and Switzerland, organised themselves to live apart from men. They set up what had became known as Beguine communities - with those in the Low Countries having up to 2000 members each and those in Germany averaging around 70-80 women each.

These Beguine quarters were effectively cities or sections of cities and were sometimes fortified with walls. They were self governing communities of lay women.. practising skilled and manual labour, composing books, poems and songs in the vernacular languages - including the earliest such works in Dutch and Low German. They studied all the crafts and worked as blacksmiths, bricklayers, brewers, soldiers and surgeons. They engaged in communal rituals and developed a Beguine spirituality.

They wrote exultantly of the spirit of love and the ancient mystic marriage spirituality, perhaps rediscovering this from within themselves, perhaps because it had been passed down from in from earlier centuries. They were part of a movement that included the troubadours who at that time were celebrating human love and sexuality in song at many a noble woman's court.

This troubadour movement was influenced by a Sufi mysticism then sweeping the Islamic world including Spain - until Grenada was conquered in by a Catholic army a century later. The influential Ibn al-Arabia, 1165 - 1240 had a vision when on pilgrimage to Mecca and ritually walking around the Kabah. He saw the Goddess Sophia in a young woman. Her beauty for him was a reflection of divine beauty. He wrote of her 'as the object of his quest, the virgin most pure.' He said that "love was the faith I hold", and that love made one all including the pagans who worshipped idols: "his heart is capable of every form, a cloister for the monk, a fane for idols, pasture for gazelles, the votary's Kabah" ("The Mecca Revelations") One branch of the Sufis was known as the Mawlawiyyah, or in the West as the "Whirling Deverishes". This was a stately dignified dance used as a method of concentration in which in movement and ecstasy one sought to dissolve the boundaries of the self.

The revival at this time of the Jewish Qabbalah mystical school lead also to a renewed emphasis on the female principle in religion. Judaism and Islam were then peacefully co-existing in Grenada in South Spain and were influencing each other's development. A book known as "The Bahir" (c1200) identified the female Jewish figure of Shekinah in the Qabbalah with the Goddess Sophia of the Gnostics. It said she had become alienated and lost in our world and needed to be re-discovered for us to regain wholeness.

Another influence was Neoplatonic mysticism. This became known more widely in France in the 9th Century when the works of the 5th Century Pseudo-Dionysius (he wrote under an assumed name) were presented in 827 to King Louis the Pius by the Emperor of Constantinople, Michael the Stammerer. This was based not so much on nature but on holding the mind in suspension before the unknowable and on asceticism.

But the Beguine movement that commenced in the 12th Century was not at all abstract. It was an amazing piece of self-empowerment by women that lasted through the Middle Ages. Women needed an alternative to a male dominated society in which they were being sold into marriage, belittled in Church and denied access to higher education. The Beguine set up an alternative. Their all female walled towns were reminiscent of Greek stories about the Amazons. They saw women as needing space away from men in order to develop skills and spiritual work. They helped each other to acquire Guild qualifications. They supported themselves. They were not originally under the control of the Church although from the 14th Century on they were increasingly curtailed. They vowed to share communal goods and to minimalise consumption. They were free to decide to marry but if they did, they had to leave as their communities did not admit men They had their own rituals and were inspired by a mysticism in which women could be self-empowered, or directly empowered by God. They had brother communities made up by men living by the same principles and known as Beghards - but there were far fewer of them than of the women.

The Church and its allies in the 13th Century were in practice countering the all-female Beguine centres in setting up the all male Universities that, unlike the Beguine, did not use the language of the people but Latin, the language of the Church.

Some "Beguinages' still exist in Belgium. One is in the city of Bruge. When recently visited, an lace-making elderly women living there were asked about what the Beguinage was originally - and replied "Oh, I think they were hostels for reformed prostitutes"! This story reminded me of how Mary Magdelen, a leading figure among the Apostles who clearly had a very close relationship to Jesus, was later identified with the 'reformed prostitute" mentioned elsewhere in the Gospels. She was depicted as a repentant sinner rather than the strong woman who rallied the apostles after the Crucifixion.. It seems the Beguines had suffered the same fate.

A further note:

The women of Italy also gave the Church a shock in the 13th Century when a Princess Blazema of Milan became Guglielma the Prophetess and attracted other women to what was effectively a female lead alternative religion. She said that the Holy Ghost was female - in the old tradition of Sophia - and that in the coming era of "The Age of the Holy Spirit", all the cardinals and the Pope would be women. One of her supporters, the priestesss Maifreda, was designated as the coming Popess and at Easter 1300 celebrated secretly a solemn Mass in the company of a selected 6 men and 6 women. They also preached and forgave sins. In 1296 they were condemned by Pope Boniface and several were then "incinerated"..