Hunting for more background to the Trobairitz (see Jan 13), I found, on the Library of Congress' website - not quite as comprehensive a collection of world literature as the British Library's, but getting there - what looked like a fascinating book by one Tanya Stabler Miller, which gave me several names that I mistook for Trobairitz, but who turned out to be equally but very differently intellectually sophisticated: "The Beguines of Mediaeval Paris".
"In the thirteenth century," so the book's PR-blurb informs us, "Paris was the largest city in Western Europe, the royal capital of France, and the seat of one of Europe's most important universities. In this vibrant and cosmopolitan city, the Beguines, women who wished to devote their lives to Christian ideals without taking formal vows, enjoyed a level of patronage and esteem that was uncommon among like communities elsewhere. Some Parisian Beguines owned shops and played a vital role in the city's textile industry and economy. French royals and nobles financially supported the Beguinages, and university clerics looked to the Beguines for inspiration in their pedagogical endeavors. The Beguines of Medieval Paris examines these religious communities and their direct participation in the city's commercial, intellectual, and religious life. Drawing on an array of sources, including sermons, religious literature, tax rolls, and royal account books, Tanya Stabler Miller contextualizes the history of Parisian Beguines within a spectrum of lay religious activity and theological controversy. She examines the impact of women on the construction of medieval clerical identity, the valuation of women's voices and activities, and the surprising ways in which local networks and legal structures permitted women to continue to identify as Beguines long after a church council prohibited the Beguine status. Based on intensive archival research, "The Beguines of Medieval Paris" makes an original contribution to the history of female religiosity and labor, university politics and intellectual debates, royal piety, and the central place of Paris in the commerce and culture of medieval Europe."
Women's Lib in a haute couture habit! Feminism in the city square not the abbey cloister, but with a crucifix for a necklace. No surprise the male church authorities eventually got scared and shut it down!
But still religious, committedly, even evangelically religious, which tends to put me off. And yet... using the Lib of Cong search-bar to see what else there might be, I then found "The Wisdom of the Beguines" by Laura Swan, and again not the whole book (though you can reserve it and read it in situ if you happen to be in the area), but just the PR-blurb:
"The Beguines began to form in various parts of Europe over eight hundred years ago, around the year 1200. Beguines were laywomen, not nuns, and thus did not take solemn vows and did not live in monasteries. The Beguines were a phenomenal movement that swept across Europe, yet they were never a religious order or a formalised movement. But there were common elements that rendered these women distinctive and familiar, including their common way of life, their unusual business acumen, and their commitment to the poor and marginalised. These women were essentially self-defined, in opposition to the many attempts to control and define them. They lived by themselves, or together in so-called Beguinages, which could be single houses for as few as a handful of Beguines or, as in Brugge and Amsterdam, walled-in rows of houses (enclosing a central court with a chapel) where over a thousand Beguines might live - a village of women within a medieval town or city. And each region of Europe has its own Beguine stories to tell. Among the Beguines were celebrated spiritual writers and mystics, including Mechthild of Magdeburg, Beatrijs of Nazareth, Hadewijch of Brabant, and Marguerite Porete, who was condemned as a heretic and burned at the stake in Paris in 1310. She was not the only Beguine suspected of heresy, and often politics were the driving force behind such charges. Certain clerics defended Beguines against charges of heresy, while other women had to go undercover by joining a Benedictine or Cistercian monastery. Amazingly, many Beguine communities survived for a long time despite oppression, wars, the plague, and other human and natural disasters. Beguines lived through - and helped propel - times of great transition and reform. Beguines courageously spoke to power and corruption, never despairing of God's compassion for humanity. They used their business acumen to establish and support ministries that extended education, health care, and other social services to the vulnerable. And they preached and taught of a loving God who desired a relationship with each individual person while calling to reform those who used God's name for personal gain. What strength of spirit protected the lives of these women and their beguinages? What can we learn from them? What might they teach us? The Beguines have much to say to our world today. This book invites us to listen to their voices, to discover them anew."
Beatrijs of Nazareth 1200-1268: and already I am confused, because the first website to come up when I surfed her name (here) tells me that she was: "prioress in the Cistercian abbey of Our Lady in Nazareth (near Lier in Brabant). She is well known for her treatise 'Seven manieren van minne' ('Seven manners of love') in which she describes levels of love (minne) that will be rewritten later by Ruusbroec as 'active', 'inner' and 'supra-essential'." Which latter sounds like early Freud! But it's the former that confuses me - how can she have been a Beguine if she was also a prioress?
Maybe try another wesbite (here) and I will leave you to read it for yourself: a complicated back-and-forth between the Beguinage and the convent, resolved by setting up her own convent, where, presumably, she and her sisters... see my page on Hildegard of Bingen, who lived half a century before her, and is highly likely to have been the silent-mentor, the influence behind Beatrijs, though Hildegard's convent was probably much less commitedly religious than Beatrijs'.
Hadewijch of Brabant: and what better name could a condemned Christian woman ask for, provided you give it an English rather than a Dutch pronunciation (apparently it should sound like Harder-vech)! Born around 1200 in or near Antwerp in the duchy of Brabant (Belgium), she died around 1260, leaving behind forty-five poems, collected as "Mystieke minneliederen (Mystical Courtly Songs)", which are better explained than I can do by clicking here and/or here, both sites include links to several of her poems in translation.
Marguerite Porete: born 1240, condemned as a heretic and burned at the stake in Paris on June 1 1310 for refusing to remove her book "Mirouer des simples ames anienties" ("The Mirror of Simple Souls") from circulation or to recant her views. A full acount of the trial here, of her and her book here.
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