FEMINISTS, PROPHETESSES AND WITCHES:

LESSONS FROM A WOMEN'S MOVEMENT IN THE HIGH MIDDLE AGES

by Abraham Van Luik, abevanluik@thoughtsandplaces.org

OVERVIEW

PART 1: This first part of a four part article describes a bona-fide women's movement that was part of a larger restorationist movement in the High Middle Ages, and how the female contribution to this movement was controlled through close relationships between spiritual counselors and confessors and women who were leaders in this new spirituality movement.

PART 2: The close, even intimate, relations that existed between the men and women leaders of this spiritual revolution of the High Middle Ages receives closer scrutiny in Part 2: This intimacy seems to have been both a direct consequence of the advent of a time of renewed spirituality and a tool through which traditional male hegemony over female spirituality was reinforced.

PART 3: The types of love-relationships described in Part 2 partly reflected the nature of the mystic vision that could be shared between mystics and also between a religious woman mystic and a sympathetic leader or confessor. It is the nature of this mystic experience, which allows a man like Francis to see Jesus as his spouse and a woman like Clare to see herself feeding at Francis' breast, that is given attention in this part.

PART 4: Not every prophetess of the High Middle Ages has had her revelations revered by her contemporaries, as will become evident  in Part 4, which begins with the burning of Margaret Porete in Paris in 1310 and ends with a discussion of the witch craze and holocaust. Part 4 is a sobering exercise that follows the potentially euphoric discussion of much that is inspiring and spiritually delightful in Parts 2 and 3. Part 4 is a warning reminding us that hatred of women's spiritual power, or any other power challenging its authority, lies as magma below the crust of Christian theology. And the magma boils on.

REFERENCES: References follow, by Part, at the end of each Part.  References in a later Part may refer to references more fully cited at first use in a previous Part of the paper.

PART 1: A WOMEN'S MOVEMENT IN THE HIGH MIDDLE AGES

Europe in the high middle ages was a seedbed of socio-political and spiritual turmoil from which sprouted the institutions of modern civilization: the breakup of feudalism, the rise of capitalism, the breakup of Catholicism, the rise of the Reformed churches, and the separation of church and state. In every century from the tenth through the fifteenth, events occurred that could be cited to indicate the pending dawn of the modern age.

But some of the movements of the High Middle Ages did not presage the modern age, some flowered and died while others flowered and were transformed. These transformed movements, like Christianity itself, may have continued to flower, but whether they continued as the true incarnations of their founders' visions is debatable.

The twelfth and thirteenth centuries saw the flowering of a number of movements within Europe that could be called restorationist, meaning an attempt to return to what was perceived to be the type of life intended by the original Christian message. For example, Ronald A. Knox, of Trinity College, Oxford, once characterized some of the heretical movements of the Middle Ages as putting forward "the momentous claim" (1) characteristic of restorationists:

The disciples of Amalric, in l2l0, claimed to be the church of the Holy Spirit, destined to succeed an outworn dispensation. Dolcino similarly held that the power of Christ had been made over to himself and his fellowmartyrdom. (4)

Knox continues:

Such were the beliefs abjured by Peter Lucensis, a Spaniard who belonged to Dolcino's Apostolic Brethren. That when poverty was changed from the Church by St. Sylvester, then sanctity of life was taken from the Church, and the Devil entered into the companions of St. Sylvester in this world.... That there is a double Church, the Spiritual and the Carnal that the Spiritual Church is in those men who live in perfect poverty ... that the Carnal Church is of those who live ... in riches and honours ... such as are the bishops and prelates of the Church of Rome.... This Church he says is that carnal Church of which John speaks in the Revelation, which he calls Babylon.

Peter Dominicus, a Beguine examined by the same tribunal, adds that "the Roman Church, which under the name of Babylon, is to be damned, rejected, and exterminated by Christ, ... and ... that the Spiritual Church is to be begun and restored by the rejection of the Carnal Church, even as the old synagogue of the Jews was rejected by Christ!" (5)

This "rage for apostolic poverty" was a characteristic of the High Middle Ages, and especially of the thirteenth century. The movements of that century deserve special study not only because of their "rage for apostolic poverty," but because this rage was accompanied by a genuine "woman's movement" that produced a significant and unique feminist spirituality in that time.  

Vita Apostolica

Part of the provocation for the "rage for apostolic poverty" was the political, social, and religious disorder brought about by centuries of Viking invasions, a couple of centuries of the appointment of church bishops and prelates by emperors and kings, and a number of long-standing abuses within the church. Pope Gregory VII (l073-l085) began an overdue reform within the church and a battle with secular authority over the right to appoint bishops and prelates that wasn't won by the popes until ll22. The cloisters, where monks and nuns lived lives of prayer and contemplation, were refuges for the surplus children of the well to do, and many basked in the relative affluence that feudal land control afforded. Although there were abuses within the monastic system, it is from the ranks of the monks that Gregory rose to reestablish the papacy's power and reform institutions to root out abuses. Gregory's reforms did not have either a sufficient or a lasting impact on abuses, however.

Meanwhile, among the parish priests and the laity, as well as among monks, nuns, and prelates, there were sincere and pious believers who were yearning for a return to the ways of the primitive church. Among the lower class of priest and laity especially, many yearned to live as the apostles lived, in poverty and evangelical purity. This Vita Apostolica, apostolic life, was being radically imitated by men and women discarding their positions and possessions so that they may more perfectly follow Christ. Some did this alone, others in small groups, others in conjunction with or in cooperation with established, cloistered religious orders, and some became the beginnings of new religious orders.

As an example of the interplay between the dark state of the church and the appeal of the gospel of simplicity and purity in the founding of new religious orders, it is instructive to look at Julien Green's assessment of these times and Francis of Assissi's reaction:

Any picture one draws of the Church in the year 1200 would have to be, by and large, very dark. There is no need to look for proof of this among the Church's enemies we have plenty of evidence from within Catholicism, beginning with the many papal bulls issued by Innocent III against the most scandalous abuses. But if the pope was worried about the general decay in Europe, his comminatory bulls could do little to stop the usury, the venality, the gluttony and sexual excesses of many priests, even in the monasteries. Scandal was everywhere.

A few pages above, the "Beguine" Peter Dominicus was cited as confessing his belief that the church was "Babylon." In this with or without the vow of celibacy, want to continue to live in community and apply themselves to penitence and to the humble service of the Lord, let them be permitted to do so. (23)

Olyslager interprets that:

This clause was the salvation of the beguines and bogards in the Low Countries. They did not consider themselves condemned and so went on as before. But not everyone understood it so favorably. All too zealous or antagonistic authorities continued to persecute the beguines and to seize their property. Their very existence threatened, the beguines of the Low Countries again appealed to Rome.

John XXII (l3l6-l334), the immediate successor of Clement V, ordered an inquiry into the morals and orthodoxy of the beguines in the dioceses of the Southern Low Countries. This investigation gave them a clean bill of ecclesiastical health, and John XXII became a great defender of the beguines of the Low Countries . . . .  In his bull, Ratio recta, of l3 August l3l8, John XXII declared that his predecessor, Clement V, had meant the German beguines when he condemned the movement: "Since in addition to the condemned beguines, there are also in some regions other beguines who, although they are called 'beghinae', still lead irreproachable lives and do not adhere to heresies, the Church authorities must restore the property of the orthodox beguines to its former state. He (John XXII) tolerated the continued existence of these orthodox beguines so long as the Holy See did not decide otherwise, but would thereby not approve of their manner of life. The bishops must exercise stringent supervision over them and punish the refactory ones with spiritual censure." (24)

Olyslager interprets these ambiguous statements:

It was not an approval, but nor was it a condemnation. The fundamental problem seems to have been that the beguines were neither 'religious' nor 'laity', and thus did not fit into the otherwise neat categories of the Middle Ages. (25)

Fox's description of the Beguines emphasizes their resemblance to the traveling preachers: the friars of the new orders of Saints Francis and Dominic. He relates, as part of his introduction of the German Dominican friar and mystic, Meister Eckhart, that Eckhart preached to Beguines and learned from them in turn. Fox's somewhat romanticized account of the Beguine movement gives a useful overview of their rise, reception, and the economic, social and spiritual factors in society to which their existence was a response. Their dedication to the "Vita Apostolica" is also to be noted in the following description:

The Beguines were one chapter in a distinguished history of women mystics in northern Europe. Eckhart is a son--not a father --of that history, as Ancelot points out: "German mysticism has earlier representatives [than Eckart], the greatest of them being women." The first mystic to write in German was the great Mechtild of Magdeburg. Magdeburg was a town only l40 miles from Eckhart's hometown and novitiate in Erfurt. For fifty-two years of her life she was a Beguine and her spiritual directors were Dominicans. Her book, 'The Flowing Light of the Godhead,' is famous for its mystical bridal poetry after the style of Song of Songs, but the language and theology of its title are particularly significant. Eckhart also made an important use of the term "Godhead" in his spiritual theology .... Mechtild employs many images in common with Eckhart. Among them are the images of sinking, of dancing, of God's delight, of growth, of awakening, of letting go, of compassion, of God as a flowing stream, of the dialectic between isness and nothingness. Her work deeply influenced German mysticism and Eckhart in particular. Eckhart and the Dominican Order were involved in counseling and preaching to many women's groups along the Rhine, both nuns and Beguines. There was a great influx of women into these alternative life-styles in the latter half of the thirteenth century, perhaps because there seems to have been a precipitous decline in the male population and perhaps, too, for economic reasons, for as the population grew and the economy declined neither marriage nor living singly was always so viable an option. In l277 there were forty convents of Dominican nuns in Germany and ten years later there were seventy. By 1303 the city of Strassburg alone had seven houses of Dominican nuns. Each of these houses might comprise eighty to a hundred women. They were often very well educated persons. By the year 1267 this new ministry of preaching to women in the convents was felt so strongly by church administrators that Clement IV officially charged the Dominicans to direct these nuns. By the time Eckhart appeared on the scene it was a foregone conclusion that interaction with religious women was an important dimension to Dominican ministry.

The Beguines were not nuns. They could not be. For to become a nun meant you had to be of noble class and pay a dowry. They were groups of women who banded together to live a life of dedication to spiritual development and to ministering to others but who were not recognized officially as "religious" or nuns. They did not take formal vows and thus were free of church authorities--a freedom that, one can imagine, was not always relished by those same authorities. They made their living by their own hands, working as artisans and craftspeople. In an important study on the "Beguines in Medieval Strassburg," Dayton Phillips concludes that while some wealthy women distributed their money and joined the Beguines, "it is obvious ... that the beguine condition found its greatest following among the lower classes." He also observes that it was these women, who might be called the forerunners of the active Orders of religious women and who lived and worked and ministered to the world and not in cloistered convents, who "seem to have been almost a sister status of the friars. Living in the midst of the world, beguines, rather than nuns, were the true feminine parallel of the friarsle phenomenon in the spiritual life of the town." One effect of the decrees against the Beguines was to swell the ranks of Third Order Dominicans and Franciscans. By 1318 Rome made the distinction between heretical and orthodox Beguines on the basis of their being transients or being connected with a house. The transient Beguines were considered the heretical ones.

Joan Evans has observed that "the women of the Middle Ages tended to be anonymous, but they were not soft or sheltered. These strong and imaginative women known as Beguines, who sought a place in the world apart from the institution of marriage and a place in the church apart from the institution of the enclosed cloister, were a powerful force on Eckhart's own spiritual imagination. Furthermore, they and Eckhart have shared a similar fate in death as they did in life. Not only were they condemned by the same pope but the great majority of male historians--for example, Ronald Knox and Norman Cohn--have dismissed both the Beguines and Eckhart as rank kooks or heretics. In fact, they were persons seeking personal and collective renewal in a period of institutional decadence. " (27)

Two features of this woman's movement mentioned by Fox will be explored subsequently: The mysticism of the Beguines, and the relations between religious and lay women and the friars. First, however, the range of options available to women who wished to follow the Vita Apostolica, and yet remain orthodox, will be described. This range was explored by Brenda M. Bolton. Bolton uses Jacques de Vitry's "Life" of Mary of Oignies, a Beguine, as her primary source. She concludes that de Vitry's biography of Mary and other women was "propaganda to advance their interest":

In writing of the 'Life' his aim was to make the group which he had found and indeed which he himself had been eager to develop, known to a much wider audience, with the ultimate aim of establishing a tradition sufficient to allow for its possible inwn to have parallels world. Ivetta of Huy also came from a family possessed of considerable wealth. Her father was one of the creditors of the bishop of Liege and was appalled at her disregard of the family property which she gave away all too readily. That Margaret of Ypres's background was far from impoverished we may judge from the threat from the secular world which Siger [her confessor] recognized could corrupt her life. Lutgard too was from a sufficiently affluent background and we see the tension in her early life between her father's secular ambition and her mother's support of her vocation. Christina seems here to be the exception for her origins were far humbler than the others.

That these and many other religious women of the time were largely from the nobility or urban patricate groupings should not surprise us. These were the classes most accessible to the penetration of new ideas and we should remember that the ideals of charity, renunciation and mendicant poverty in opposition to the avidity for riches were still relatively novel at this period. (32)

Like Fox, Bolton mentions the closeness between the beguines and the Dominican friars. This closeness between men and women who had left the world to follow Christ is important because it appears to be inseparable from the unique, feminist spirituality shared by many of these dedicated imitators of the holy apostles.

It is the sharing of this peculiar spirituality between Eckhart and the German beguines that got both of them condemned by the Papal bull, and it is the sharing of the same vision of the best way to live in the imitation of Christ that caused Francis and Clara to be canonized, thus having their places in God's eternal presence made sure, according to their tradition.

It is the spirituality of these saints and heretics, their unique vision of who they were and who God is, that is potentially instructive to our day, and is examined next. As far as the survival of the Beguines of Catholic Flemish Belgium and Holland into the twentieth century, and their demise in German, French, Spanish and Italian speaking Europe are concerned, the lessons to be learned are that in only one part of Europe did the local clergy and the Dominican friars strive diligently to closely regulate and oversee these lay women. In other parts of Europe there was less control and less protection, and "heresy" and persecution took their toll. Olyslager listed the reasons why both clergy and lay people were unable to see the difference between Beguines and the overtly heretical Cathars and Apostolici. Olyslager first describes the demise of the Beguine movement in parts of Europe outside of the southern low countries where it flourished:

In other places, the struggle did not turn out so favorably. In 1318, in the Northern Low Countries, Fredrick II, Bishop of Utrecht, ordered the radical implementation of the decisions of the Council of Vienne (1311). The beguines had to disappear from his diocese. He was willing, however, to allow them to transfer to the Third Order of St. Francis after they had been thoroughly investigated.

In France, Philip the Fair enforced the Constitutions of Clement V with unremitting severity. He closed all beguine houses.... In the German countries, the beguine and bogard system was just as radically uprooted--not always without reason. Too many beguines and bogards in these countries had compromised themselves with the heretical apostolici, constructed their own theologies, and adhered to a very suspect myticism.

Pope Urbanus V (1362-1370) ordered in 1368 that the German bogards be suppressed with all rigor. He wrote: "Pestis illorum haereticorum qui Beghardi vacantur" (the plague of these heretics who are called bogards).

The Roman-German Emperor, Charles IV (l346-l378), followed the example of the Pope and issued an edict requiring the extermination of "the dangerous sects of beguines and bogards".

These drastic measures of the Pope and the Emperor still did not mean the end of the German beguines, who were particularly numerous in the Rhineland.

The Bishops of Cologne, Trier, Strasbourg, and Mainz (where there were 50 beguine convents!) applied the prohibition rather mildly and closed their eyes to the continued existence of beguines. But the vitality of the movement was broken. Many beguines sought shelter behind another religious name or transferred to the Third Order of St. Francis. At the end of the l6th century, there was no longer any trace of the beguines to be found in the German countries.

The obvious question is why the enemies of the beguines in the Low Countries continued to persecute these women so stubbornly in spite of the papal and episcopal pronouncements. There were, of course, a wide variety of reasons-- some well-founded, some dubious, and some malicious.

Though the papal pronouncements were always favorable, they were always weakened by the perennial reservation: "with this we do not wish to approve nor disapprove of your state". The popes never did want to go so far as to give official recognition of the beguine system.

The condemnation by Pope Clement V in l3ll, which was intended for the German beguines and bogards, was all too often applied to the beguines of the Low Countries, for the term 'beguine' covered several kinds of people. There were orthodox beguines and heretical beguines, with the latter particularly concentrated in German countries.

And not everyone was capable of separating the wheat from the chaff in this period of theological confusion, general ignorance (also among the clergy), and morbid fanaticism. Well meaning and generous men and women, being theologically unsophisicated or misled, were heretics without being aware of it.

Between the beguines and some heretical sects and particularly the Rhineland Apostolici, there were many, though superficial, similarities:

--Both the beguines and the Apostolici were lay people.  Their movements grew spontaneously from the people like wild plants, without a particular founder or foundress and without papal or episcopal approval.

--Neither group lived in the context of a cloister. Sometimes they lived alone and sometimes in small groups or convents. They did not call their superiors 'abbot" or 'mother', but 'magister' or 'mistress', as did many heretical sects.

--The first beguines and Apostolici shared the same ideal of poverty, prized celibacy very highly, and wore the same raw wool clothing.

--They both held to daily recitation of the same prayers and to the same penitential practices. Each month they had a 'culpa' or public confession of faults.

--They both had infirmaries or hospitals for their sick and poor.

--The mystics among the beguines and the Apostolici were sometimes very close to each other in their spirit and aspirations.

--It was not a simple matter of chance that the beguines, the Apostolici, and the Cathars all had the same patroness, St. Catherine. She was the model for all pious women of the time.

Catherine--the name means 'the pure one" in Greek--was the chaste maiden who, equiped with an exceptional knowledge of the Scriptures, triumphantly debated with pagan philosophers and engaged in lay preaching, which was something that all Cathar women and sometimes the beguines were tempted to do.

--Then, too, these god-fearing women, living in penitence and poverty, were a constant reproach to those people, clergy among them, who were living too luxuriously.

There were also economic factors involved in the persecution of the beguines. In most of the begijnhofs [beguinages], the cloth and linen industry was their only source of income. The beguines worked cheaply and sometimes had the help of apprentice girls. The guilds naturally tried to suppress this competition and demanded restrictive regulations. (33)

To ensure Beguine orthodoxy in Low Country areas where the Beguines continued to flourish, the church ensured that Beguines, who were not nuns, came to live as nuns lived. In Olyslager's words, no doubt reflecting his own orthodox perspectives:

Only in the Low Countries could the beguines hold out. For this, they had to thank the wise vision of their bishops, who took the necessary measures in time to protect them from heretical aberrations, gave them stable and proper direction, and obliged them to live in a closed court, a 'hortus conclusus' or begijnhof. (Above the gate of the Diest begijnhof is inscribed: "Closed Court, Come to My Court, My Sister Bride"). Some begijnhofs were called vineyards (Bruges and Brussels), which was an allusion to the Canticle of Canticles [Song of Songs], 2:l5: "That the foxes not plunder the vineyard of the Lord". The foxes here were heretics and false dogmas....

Finally, only those who lived in such a 'closed court' were recognized as orthodox beguines. They were the 'beghinae clausae,' the 'cloistered beguines'. Only they could claim the 'privilegia beghinalia' and wear the beguine habit.

The Dominicans contributed a great deal to securing the orthodoxy of the beguines, primarily by establishing a number of begijnhofs in the Duchy of Flanders. Indeed, the Dominicans were the fiercest combatants of all heresies, and particularly the Albigensians. (34)

This returns us to the previous observation cited by Eleanor (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1950), p. 109. 2. Ibid., p. 110.
3. Ibid., p. 111.
4. Ibid.
5. Ibid.
6. Green, Julien, "God's Fool: the Life and Times of Francis of Assisi," (San Francisco, Harper & Row, 1985), p. 93.
7. Ibid., p. 92.
8. Holl, Adolf, "The Last Christian," (Garden City, New York, Doubleday & Company, Inc., 1980). Translated by Peter Heinegg.
9. Green, Op. cit., pp. 108-109.
10. Ibid, p. 108.
11. Roggen, Heribert, "Clara van Assisi, Zien Met Het Hart (Amsterdam, Lannoo, 1980), p. 17.
12. Ibid., p. 18.
13. Ibid., p. 31.
14. Ibid., pp. 109-158.
15. Ibid., pp. 143-144.
16. Ibid., pp. 142-143.
17. Ibid., p. 18.
18. Ibid.
19. Wessley, Stephen E., "The Thirteenth-Century Gugliemites: Salvation through Women," pp. 289-303. In Derek Baker, "Medevial Women," (Oxford, Basil Blackwell, 1978), 289-303.
20. McLaughlin, Eleanor, "Women, Power and the Pursuit of Holiness in Medevial Christianity," Chapter Three, In: Rosemary Ruether and Eleanor McLaughlin, "Women of Spirit, Female Leadership in the Jewish and Christian Traditions," (New York, Simon and Shuster, l979), p. 124.
21. Fox, Matthew, "Breakthrough: Meister Eckhart's Creation Spirituality in New Translation," (Garden City, New York, Image Books, 1980), pp. 39-40.
22. Ibid., pp. 38-39.
23. Olyslager, W. A., "The Great Begijnhof of Leuven," (Leuven, University Press, 1983), p. 105.
24. Ibid., pp. 105-106.
25. Ibid.
26. Fox, Op. cit., pp. 36-40.
27. Ibid., pp. 39-40.
28. Bolton, Brenda M., "VITAE MATRUM: A Further Aspect of the FRAUENFRAGE," pp. 253-273, In Derek Baker, "Medieval Women," (Oxford, Basil Blackwell, 1978), p. 255.
29. Ibid., p. 254.
30. Ibid., p. 256.
31. Ibid., p. 260.
32. Ibid., p. 260-261.
33. Olyslager, op. cit., pp. 110-112.
34. Ibid., pp. 112-113.
35. McLaughlin, op. cit., p. 124.
36. Undset, Sigrid, "Catherine of Siena," (New York, Sheed and Ward, 1954), Translated by Kate Austin-Lund, pp. 186-188.
37. Deen, Edith, "Great Women of the Christian Faith," (New York, Harper & Row Brothers, Publishers, 1959), pp. 328-329.
38. Ibid., pp. 329-330.
39. Ibid., pp. 330-331.
40. Ibid., pp. 331-333.
41. Ibid., pp. 331-334.
 

PART 2: BURNING LOVE: MYSTICS, SAINTS, CELIBATES

The close, even intimate, relations that existed between the men and women leaders of the spiritual revolution of the High Middle Ages deserve close study. This intimacy seems to have been both a direct consequence of the advent of a time of renewed spirituality and a tool through which traditional male hegemony over female spirituality was reinforced.

The lesson for modern religious feminist reformers may thus be a double-edged one: on the one hand greater spirituality may result in closer emotional and spiritual relations between men and women, which may be desirable. On the other hand, such closer ties can be used, in a setting where the men are the acknowledged spiritual authorities, to guide and control the spiritual development of women. The mechanism for allowing "rebellion in the context of obedience," which McLaughlin cited (1) as the key to survival of the Middle Ages' new women's roles in orthodoxy, may well lie in the close relations that were developed between the spiritual women and their male mentors. Indeed, Olyslager asserted (2) that the Beguines survived in the southern Low Countries precisely because they were closely supervised by their bishops and required to live in closed courts.

The history of women who responded to the spiritual call of these times to renounce the world, its pleasures and riches, and to seek a new life in the spiritual realm by loving God and serving humanity in poverty has been sketched by Olyslager, when he reports the following scenario for the beginnings of the Beguine movement:

Not all those eager for reform ended up in heretical, Cathar, or anti-Church groups. Far from it. Under Greek-Byzantine influence and after the example of the Egyptian, Syrian, and Palestinian monks, there developed after the First Crusade (around 1100) a movement in the West to flee the world and, by seclusion and poverty, to sanctify it.

Women, in particular seemed to be drawn to this ideal. But instead of withdrawing into the wilderness, they retired to cells or hermitages near a church, a chapel, or a cloister, and lived alone or with a few other women. These women were called 'reclusae' (recluses) or 'mulieres religiosae' (pious women). Their number increased rapidly and their hermitages soon grew into small agglomerations in and alongside abbeys.

They were the so-called double cloisters. But however good the intention, these double cloisters were far from the ideal solution. Between 1140 and 1200, the Norbertines decided to gradually remove these recluses from their abbeys. The Cistercians, of whom St. Bernard was the principal leader, concerned themselves with the fate of these women, but they did not repeat the double cloister experiment. Instead they allowed them to affiliate with their order, but this privilege was soon also abolished. These women found themselves literally in the street. And not all pious women or girls were so lucky as to be able to find a hermitage. Even a hut next to an abbey or in a secluded place cost money. Many women made a virtue of necessity and had their room in their family home converted into a cell. Thus in the middle of cities and villages, there were many women who wanted to live like recluses. One could call them 'quasi-hermitesses'. Soon, and particularly after the elimination of the double cloisters, they began to congregate in huts around chapels, hospitals, or leprosaria without binding themselves to a monastic order.

There were other reasons, too, for these women not being able or wishing to associate themselves with a monastic order. Entrance into an order required a dowry that not everyone could pay. Then, too, many did not feel they were strong enough to endure the rigors of monastic life, so the less restricted life of a recluse was more attractive. It is from the ranks of these quasi-hermitesses and groups of pious women that the first beguines came. (3)

Olyslager then describes the gradual institutionalization of this rather spontaneous movement:

As we mentioned above, there were many 'mulieres religiosae' (pious women) who could or would not live in a hut by an abbey and who lived in the city with their family or in their own houses. They were called the 'beghinae indisciplinatae' or non-organized beguines as well as 'beghinae in saeculo manentes' or beguines residing in the world. They would gather several times a day in a church or chapel for religious exercises under the direction of a priest. The constant contact with the secular world, however, was soon perceived to be not conducive for advance in the spiritual life. The first step to improve this situation was the gathering of a number of beguines in the same house, 'in eadem domo,' under the direction of their own house rules. These houses were preferably located near a hospital or leprosarium and were called beguine convents or 'curtes beghinarum.' Thus we can speak of the 'beghinae disciplinatae' or the organized beguins.

The Beguine movement flourished in the Flemish part of what is now Belgium even though it had originated in the Walloon region of such cities as Liege, Nivelles, and Huy. After the papal approval of l2l6, the movement in the Flemish regions saw such an influx of women that soon the existing convents no longer sufficed. In the cities, there was not enough room and it was too expensive to build.

The ideal was conceived to bring all the beguines together in one place outside the gates of the city. This would eliminate the daily trek through the city to the church or chapel. Since most of the self-supporting women and girls of the l3th century earned their living in the weaving industry, the site had to be near a river and fields, which were necessary for washing wool and bleaching linen. On such a site, securely ringed by walls or canals and with gates that were closed at night, the beguines built their first small houses around their own chapel with their own pastor and cemetery. Thus we have the 'beghinae clausae' or enclosed beguines. These gatherings of beguines became the beguine parishes or 'begijnhofs.' They bring to mind the Greek-Byzantine colonies of monks.

To accelerate this grouping, the ecclesiastical authorities decided that only those beguines who lived in a begijnhof could claim the privilege of the Beguines and wear the beguine habit. The establishment of the begijnhofs for 'beghinae clausae' was the third and last phase of the organization of the beguine system. (4)

Thus, this spontaneous women's movement, which at first avoided becoming another cloistered order, finally either became cloistered, or, as seen in the previous chapter, did not survive. However, the history of the development of the Beguine movement involved some definite experimentation regarding the relationship of these women to the established male religious orders, which is of some interest. The Norbertines and Cistercians are specifically mentioned as attempting double-cloister and affiliated-order (secondaries or tertiaries) formations, respectively, both unsuccessfully. Sally Thompson (5) has developed the history of the Cistercian experience, and Jacqueline Smith (6) has shown that a number of other orders were also involved in this response to a very large and extraordinary movement.

An example of an early double-cloister experiment in England was described by Constable (7) in the course of his recounting a tale regarding the early history of the Gilbertine order. It appears that a certain young nun and monk snuck around and the nun conceived, showing the relatively relaxed state of male-female relations in this particular double-cloister. Gilbert reformed this cloister, and it is of interest how "restoration", being "self-supporting", and experiencing spiritual manifestations are all interwoven in the account by Aelred of Rievaulx cited by Constable:

In the introduction Aelred stressed the importance of making known miracles and other manifestations of Divinity and cited the evidence of his own eyes and of reliable witnesses as proof of the truth of the present story. Then in the first parenthesis he gave a brief account of the origins of the nunnery of Watton in Yorkshire and of its reform by 'the venerable man' Gilbert, who renewed 'the ancient religion' and 'the ancient miracles' in that place. The nuns were dedicated not only to manual labour and psalmody but also 'to spiritual offices and heavenly theories,' Aelred wrote, 'so that many [of them] ... are often taken in ineffable raptures and seem to participate in the heavenly choirs'.(8)

The story of the pregnant nun is then told with many deprecations heaped on the principals, and the young man left the convent to return to secular life. Constable then tells a horror story of how the young man was found, taken alone by nuns, and how the unfortunate nun was forced to castrate her lover, whom she had hoped to join. A zealous nun then stuffed the bloody body parts into the pregnant girl's mouth. Both were thus punished. The young man fades from the scene, and the young girl receives miraculous Divine forgiveness: her baby is taken away by angelic visitors and her virginity is as good as restored. As interesting as this story is, its worth in the present context lies in its description of an early double-cloister (9), wherein it seems to be relatively easy for two young people to meet, in sharp contrast with "later provisions forbidding a woman from so much as seeing a man, let alone from speaking with him or leaving the monastery to meet him." (10) Constable then goes on to a general survey of:

. . . religious houses and orders in the twelfth century, which shows that the process of development from relatively inchoate and flexible origins into highly disciplined institutions often extended over a period of years. This seems to have been particularly true of communities involving both men and women, in many of which an early attitude of freedom and trust was later replaced by a policy of strict separation. (11)

The theme of restoration is unmistakable in these early attempts to recapture the innocence of Eden in human relationships. The commingling of male and female virgins dedicated to the life of the spirit was an imitation of life in paradise, before the fall, reminiscent of the Free Spirit Adamites. Note that the populace had their suspicions:

Further research needs to be done on the persistence, or re-emergence at this time, of the practice of men and women leading a chaste religious life under the same roof or within the same community. There are at least two well-known examples of such relationships between individuals. One was between a monk of Vendome named Herveus and the English recluse Eve, to whom Goscelin of St. Bertin addressed his 'Liber confortatorius' in l082-83. Eve had been given as a girl to the abbey of Wilton and later moved to the priory of St. Eutropius near Angers, where she lived under the spiritual guidance of Herveus. 'There Eve lived for a long time with her companion Herveus,' according to a contemporary poem. 'I sense that you who hear this are disturbed at this statement. Be not suspicious, brother and banish this thought. This love was not in the world but in Christ.'

Christina of Markyate also combined an emphasis on virginity with a practice of spiritual relationships with men, especially abbot Geoffrey of St. Albans. The author of her 'Vita' admitted that they were the subject of gossip. 'Before they became spiritual friends, the abbot's well-known goodness and the maiden's holy chastity had been praised in many parts of England. But when their mutual affection in Christ had inspired them to greater good, the abbot was slandered as a seducer and the maiden as a loose woman.'

Many religious reformers in the early twelfth century attempted to provide for the religious life of both men and women. They were like Gaucherius of Aureil, who was said by his biographer to have known 'that neither sex is excluded from the kingdom of God'. Wherefore he tried to build the heavenly Jerusalem out of the double wall, that is of men and of women, and constructed the habitation of women a stone's throw from his cell, distributing what little he had to both men and women. The biographer of Gilbert of Sempringham compared his order to the chariot of God, 'which has two sides, that is one of men and the other of women four wheels, two of men, clerics and laymen, and two of women, literate and illiterate two beasts dragging the chariot, the clerical and monastic disciplines.' He then went on to praise 'this marvelous unity of persons and churches and this unheard-of community of all things, which made all things one and one thing all in the diversities of so many hearts and such great monasteries.' This ideal was one of paradisiacal harmony in which men and women lived side by side united in spiritual love. (12)

To pursue this paradisiacal ideal properly, men and women had to overcome all lustfulness. Examples of this quest and its natural conclusion for men have been given regarding Gilbert and Robert of Arbissel. Constable pieces together the following regarding Gilbert which contains an interesting if not onimous note: to be chaste gives a man greater ability or authority in the control of women:

According to his biographer, he was reputed never to have touched a woman from the beginning of his long life to the end, 'and since he overcame the more severe struggle of youth, he was all the more worthy later to assume the steadfast rule of the weaker sex.' William of Newburgh, writing shortly after Gilbert's death, described him as 'a clearly extraordinary man, and of singular grace in the care of women' and as supported in his undertaking 'by the consciousness of his own chastity and confidence in divine grace ... In my opinion, indeed,' William continued, 'he holds the palm in this region among all those whom we know to have devoted their religious labors to ordering and controlling women.' This confidence is reflected in an extraordinary story--almost as extraordinary as that of the nun of Watton--told by Gerald of Wales about Gilbert, who when an old man and, as Gerald puts it, 'most unsuited for the purposes of lust', was looked upon with lascivious eyes by one of his own nuns. Gilbert was horrified, and the following day, after preaching in chapter of the virtue of chastity, he disrobed entirely, walked around three times for all to see him, 'hairy, emaciated, scabrous and wild', and then cried, evidently pointing to the crucifix, 'Behold the man who should be duly desired by a woman consecrated to God and a bride of Christ'. He then went on, pointing to himself: 'Behold the body on account of which a miserable woman has made her body and soul worthy of being lost inOther examples of celibate lovers that deserve attention have been documented. Among them are Christina of Stommeln, Christina of Markyate, and Francis of Assisi.

Christina of Stommeln

In Part 1, Christina of Stommeln was introduced as a mystic Beguine from a small town of Cologne whose biography was drawn up by a Swedish monk, Peter of Dacia. It appears that Petrus von Dacien was, for a while, Christina's confessor. As such, they used to meet, often perhaps, and discuss their common faith, which brought them to such great mutual joy that they were not unaware of, nor shy about, being in love with each other. Witness these excerpts from letters exchanged between these two (my translation of excepts published by Peter Nieveler). (16) In l280 Petrus wrote to Christina:

When I either asked you or you asked me if I loved you or was loved by you, so can both of us answer with surety: "I love and I am loved." When anyone asks me, if I love Christina, I answer thus with full conviction: "I love." (17)

Christina, in turn, writes:

When I see in your letter how close you are to me, so must you know that I have for you, in turn--by God--the same feelings. (18)

A careful reader may see some restraint in the words used by Christina. By contrast Petrus, in one of his bolder letters, writes without evident restraint:

My dearest loved one, my daughter, sister and girl friend! You deserve to be most delectibly loved by yours truly, your most deeply loving friend. (19)

Christina answers in, again, a somewhat subdued tone:

Dearest, you shall know that for you I experience the deepest love. (20)

The heart-stirring love between these two dedicated religious persons is evident in the frustration Peter felt when Christina came to visit in Cologne and he reports that the devil took silverware a dedicated to him, snt size=+0>eyes were not dry. (23)