polilogues

Veerle Fraeters 0101

Question: What was the setting for female mysticism in the 12th and 13th century in the Low Countries?

Fraeters: From the beginning of the 13th century onwards a new phenomenon appeared in the Low Countries, especially around Liège and Brabant, which researchers call the movement of the mulieres religiosae, or religious women. In fact, this marked the rise of the beguine. The main characteristic of these women was that they led a religious life without entering a monastery. Of course they already stood in the tradition of the new monastic movements of the Franciscans and Dominicans of the 12th century, and the renewal of the Benedictine movement by the Cistercians, who preferred - especially the the mendicant orders of Franciscans and Dominicans - not to retreat in a monastery and to live a religious life in the world. So the beguines were a part of that tradition. They search for a kind of imitatio Christi (imitation of Christ) in the way of the early apostles, which was typical of the new monastic orders of the 12th century. So they, too, wished to lead a religious life without having to withdraw from the world.

This phenomenon was viewed with suspicion by the church at first. Also around 1200 there was the problem of the Cathars and such like: various lay groups who were developing their own forms of spirituality. And the same was true for the early beguines.