The beguines began to form in various parts of Europe over eight hundred years ago.
They invite us to listen to their voices, to seek out their wisdom, to discover them anew..
The beguines, across the centuries, have left us a great legacy.
She was not the only beguine suspected of heresy, and often politics were the driving force behind such charges.
Among the beguines were celebrated spiritual writers and mystics, including Mechthild of Magdeburg, Beatrijs of Nazareth, Hadewijch, and Marguerite Porete--who was condemned as a heretic and burned at the stake in Paris in 1310.
They lived by themselves or in communities called beguinages, which could be single homes for just a few women or, as in Brugge, Brussels, and Amsterdam, walled-in rows of houses where hundreds of beguines lived together--a village of women within a Medieval town or city.
Beguines were essentially self-defined, in opposition to the many attempts to control and define them.
But there were common elements that these Medieval women shared across Europe, including their visionary spirituality, their unusual business acumen, and their courageous commitment to the poor and sick.
They practiced a remarkable way of living independently, and they were never a religious order or a formalized movement.
Beguines were laywomen, not nuns, and they did not live in monasteries.
The beguines began to form in various parts of Europe over eight hundred years ago
