About the Beguines: The Wisdom of the Beguines

Summer Moon Ceremony June 2017

Laura Swan, a historian and author of Wisdom of the Beguines

It was the Beguines’ skill in caring for the poor, the sick, and the dying that earned these women the respect of townspeople, local authorities, and, at first, church leaders.  The Beguines were seen as primarily as religious communities with self-governing rules and a magistra (rather than an abbess or prioress) who served as a leader and spiritual guide.

Beguines did not take vows, though many stayed in the bougienage their whole lives; they were free to leave their communities to marry and raise families.  As their learning increased, Beguines took a lively interest in theology, wrote their own meditations, and when Christianity arrived, they even translated Bible stories into the vernacular.  They embraced a lively form of worship that involved singing and spontaneous dancing.

A Hybrid Sisterhood Born

by Sister Kate, April 2017

We are a cross of the Beguine ancestors and the Catholic nuns, because the concept of life-time vows came from the Catholics.  I believe that the Catholic nun morphed out of an era of witch-accusations and women-burning, and that the Beguine orders died out for that very reason.  At that time in history, the only way a woman could declare herself spiritual was if she also hid from the public, in a tower or remote hillside, prayed all day, and remained celibate and poor.

The Beguines held personal property. They promoted the holding of personal property by women, the holding and growing of businesses – by women, and promoted the accumulation of wealth of the enclave in order to re-invest in other women, in more housing, more training, more commerce.

I believe that the celibacy and restrictions on the women by Saint Scholastica’s catholic nuns might have been a matter of survival.  It was the era of burning women at the stake — about 3,000 women a year over something like three hundred years, were burned at the stake in cities and towns across Europe for practicing their own spirituality.  This, as a result of ranting mad men at the pulpits of churches, creating a mainstream belief system that inherently distrusted women.

We are lucky women.  We are lucky that we can put a prayer ceremony together under a full moon and not have to worry about being burned at the stake.