Origin (§ 1).
The Early Communities (§ 2).
Extension during the Twelfth Century (§ 3).
Relation to the Mendicant Orders (§ 4).
The Male Communities (§ 5).
Persecution as Heretics (§ 6).
Surviving Beguinages in the Netherlands (§ 7).
Beghards and Beguines are the names applied to certain religious communities which flourished especially in the Middle Ages. The Beguines were women and earlier in origin than the male associations, the Beghards (also called in France Béguins). As early as the thirteenth century the authentic tradition as to the origin of the Beguines had been lost, so that it was possible in the fifteenth for the belief to gain acceptance that they had been founded by Begga, the canonized daughter of Pepin of Landen and mother of Pepin of Heristal. This belief was supported by several scholars in the early seventeenth century, and approved at Mechlin and at Rome. In 1630 Puteanus (van Putte), a Louvain professor, produced three documents supposed to date from 1065, 1129, and 1151, relating to a convent of Beguines at Vilvorde, near Brussels. The view as to the date of their origin which these documents supported was prevalent for two centuries, and is presupposed in the modern works of Mosheim and of Lea; but the researches of Hallmann proved finally in 1843 that Puteanus's documents were forgeries, probably belonging to the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. The origin of these communities is now, accordingly, almost universally placed in the twelfth century, and attributed to a priest of Liége, Lambert le Bègue (q.v.).
The scarcity of information about the earliest
period has caused the significance of the movement to be underestimated or misconceived. As
a matter of fact, the career of Lambert has many
points of affinity with those of his younger contemporaries Peter Waldo and Francis of Assisi.
Like them, he renounced his property, to
endow with it the hospital of St. Christopher at Liége
and the new convent of Beguines there. He felt
his special mission to be the preaching of repentance,
which brought him into conflict with the ecclesiastical authorities when he attacked the vices of the
clergy, but had an enduring influence especially
on the women of Liége. By 1210 there is con-
The religious impulse given by Lambert continued active after his death (probably 1187), and familiarized the people of the Netherlands with the idea of ascetic following of Christ long before the advent of the mendicant orders. Throughout the next century, the need of founding similar institutions for the large numbers of Beguines was felt, first in Flanders and then in the neighboring French and German districts. In France St. Louis showed them special favor, and erected a large Beguinage in Paris, modeled after the Flemish, in 1264; others sprang up, large or small, in all parts of France during the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. The extension of the system in the other Latin countries was probably considerable, but exact data are wanting. In Germany only a few towns on the lower Rhine, such as Aix-la-Chapelle and Wesel, had Beguinages in the strict sense. Here the usual rule was for women who wished to renounce the world at first to live separately in their own houses or in solitary places; as time went on, they came together in larger or smaller houses put at their disposal by pious gifts, and formed communities of a monastic type. The growth of these convents was remarkable, and continued from the first third of the thirteenth century to the beginning of the fifteenth, by which time the majority of German towns had their convents of Beguines. The statutes varied much in the different houses; the number of inmates was between ten and twenty on an average. There was no uniform dress, but most of the members wore hoods and scapulars resembling a religious habit. Sometimes those who had property retained full control of it; in other cases a portion fell to the convent when they died or left. Celibacy was required as long as they stayed, but they were always free to leave and marry.
The name of "voluntary poor," which many convents bore, and the regulations of such houses, show the continuance of Lambert's influence in favor of desertion of the world and penitential asceticism; but the Franciscan ideas, very similar in their tendency, which were widely spread not long after, found here a fruitful soil. As early as the thirteenth century a large proportion of the Beghards or Beguines of France, Germany, and northern Italy were under the direction of Franciscans or Dominicans, and so closely related with the penitential confraternities attached to both these orders that the members of these (tertiaries) were commonly known in the Latin countries as beguini and beguinœ--a fact which has caused much confusion in the study of the history of the real Beguines. The disapproval of these latter by the papal authorities brought about, when it came, a still closer identification with the tertiaries; many joined these for protection, and in the fifteenth century numerous Beguinages were transferred to the Augustinian order. While the original Beguines abstained from begging, it became more common among them in France and Germany by the beginning of the thirteenth century. As in the Latin countries the Beguines are found among the extreme defenders of the Franciscan ideal of poverty, so we find frequently among those of Germany the belief that their strict poverty designated them as the true followers of Christ. In accordance with this view, they were apt to withdraw themselves from the teaching of the clergy and listen rather to the exciting exhortations of their "mistresses" or of wandering preachers in sympathy with their beliefs. They developed a system of extreme corporal austerity, and lost themselves in mystic speculations which increased their tendency to see visions and to condemn the ordinary means of grace; even the moral law seems at times to have been regarded as not binding upon them. The impulse of apocalyptic enthusiasm, given by Joachim of Fiore (q.v.) and spread by the "spiritual" Franciscans among the laity, as well as the quietistic mysticism of the Brethren of the Free Spirit (q.v.), found an entrance into their houses before the end of the thirteenth century. Early in the next century, the influx of women of high social position declined more and more, and the new foundations took on more of the modern character of benevolent institutions. By the end of the fifteenth century, in Germany at least, they had almost completely lost their first religious fervor and had forfeited much of the popular respect they had formerly enjoyed.
As to the Beghards or male communities, the
question whether the first associations known by
this name can be directly connected with Lambert
le Bègue, or sprang up after his death in imitation
of the Flemish Beguinages, can not be decided with
our present knowledge. They are first met with
in Louvain (c. 1220) and Antwerp (1228). The
names beguin and begard (Flemish usually
bogard; Middle High German
begehart and biegger) were given
in mockery and are of Walloon origin; other names
are Lollards (probably from the Middle Dutch löllen,
to murmur; see LOLLARDS), "voluntary poor," boni pueri, boni valeti,
etc. In the course of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries they spread throughout Germany, into
Poland and the Alpine districts, and even into the