More on the Norwich Beguinage

You might have noticed the reference to beguinages in England from the earlier post today--as in, there weren't many in England. There was one in Norwich, however:

The Briton‘s Arms is a unique survival in England of a beguinage. This was the home of a small group of single women, who had devoted themselves to a life of prayer and charitable work within the community. Such institutions were very common on the Continent in the middle ages, particularly in the Low Countries, northern France and the Rhineland, but they were very rare in England. There are some references in medieval documents to small groups of women living together, in towns such as York and Ipswich.

However, Norwich is the only English city where there is definite evidence for informal female communities following a religious vow. One thing which links all these places is a strong trading connection with north-east Europe. This may have influenced Norwich merchants to support beguinages in their own city. There are references to three such communities in late medieval Norwich. They are called "poor women" or "sisters" who are "dedicated to chastity" or "dedicated to God". One of these groups is known to have lived in the churchyard of St Peter Hungate in the first half of the fifteenth century, and the Briton‘s Arms was almost certainly their home.

This is shown by several features of the building. The construction methods and the type of brick used are typical of the fifteenth century. The really telling factor is the door to the churchyard, and the unusual plan of the building, with a series of independent heated rooms. This provided ideal accommodation for a group of women living together, but also engaged in private prayer.

We have only a limited idea of how the women who lived in the beguinage passed their time. Unlike the nuns of Carrow Abbey, to the south of the city, they were not enclosed within a convent. Nuns tended to be the daughters of gentlemen and wealthy merchants, whereas the beguines were usually poorer women. They would have supported themselves through work such as spinning (the term ‘spinster‘ for a single women dates from the medieval period), as well as begging for alms. They also undertook charitable work in the local community, caring for the poor and sick. They would no doubt have worshipped in St Peter Hungate church, with easy access to the churchyard through the door in the rear wall.

Late medieval Norwich had a rich devotional and spiritual culture. There was the great Cathedral, the nunnery at Carrow, nearly fifty parish churches, and four large friaries. One of these, the Dominican Friary, stands opposite the Briton‘s Arms. At the Dissolution it was purchased by the City Corporation and made into a civic hall, as which it still serves.

There were also many anchoresses in Norwich - women who were enclosed in a cell attached to a church, and dedicated to a life of contemplation. The most famous of these was Julian of Norwich. Another anchoress, Katherine Manne, was attached to the Dominican Friary church - the arches of her cell can be seen through the gate opposite the Briton‘s Arms. Both the anchoresses and the beguines were supported by the ordinary people in the city, and played an active and important role in the spiritual life of the community.

Please note that St. Julian of Norwich and Katherine Manne are from quite different eras: Katherine Manne's tenure as an anchorite dates from the English Reformation period--she had a copy of Tyndale's English translation of the Holy Bible and of his Obedience of a Christian Man, according to Norman Tanner's history of the Church in Norwich in the late middle ages. Katherine Manne is also featured in Women, Reading, and Piety in Late Medieval England by Mary C. Erler from Cambridge University Press:

Women, Reading, and Piety in Late Medieval England traces networks of female book ownership and exchange which have so far been obscure, and shows how women were responsible for both owning and circulating devotional books. In seven narratives of individual women who lived between 1350 and 1550, Mary Erler illustrates the ways in which women read and the routes by which they passed books from hand to hand. These stories are prefaced by an overview of nuns' reading and their surviving books, and are followed by a survey of women who owned the first printed books in England. An appendix lists a number of books not previously attributed to religious women's ownership. Erler's narratives also provide studies of female friendship, since they situate women's reading in a network of family and social connections. The book uses bibliography to explore social and intellectual history.

Table of Contents
Acknowledgments

Prologue
Introduction: Dinah's story
1. Ownership and transmission of books: women's religious communities
2. The library of a London vowess: Margery de Nerford
3. A Norwich widow and her devout society: Margaret Purdans
4. Orthodoxy: the Fettyplace sisters at Syon
5. Heterodoxy: anchoress Katherine Manne and abbess Elizabeth Throckmorton
6. Women owners or religious incunabula: the physical evidence
Epilogue
Appendices
Notes
Select bibliography
Indexes

See, I found someway to bring us back to the subject of the English Reformation even as I discussed the Beguines and beguinages in Belgium!

When They Began the Beguines (And the Last Beguine)

Thanks to Elena Maria Vidal's Tea at Trianon blog for this story from The Telegraph about the last Beguine:

In the late 12th century a Flemish priest named Lambert le Begue established a community in Liège for the widows of crusaders who had not returned from the Holy Land. Without a protector, such women often felt obliged to seek security by joining a religious order, but many of them did not wish to devote their lives exclusively to religion. Called Beguines, the women lived in walled districts called beguinages.

Beguines took no religious vows. They could leave and marry, if they chose. They could own property and took no alms. Women of all classes were welcomed, and wealthy Beguines often brought their servants with them. They carried on professions, often in the textile industry; they did good works, such as teaching or caring for the sick. They elected women — Grandes Dames — to lead their communities. Each Beguine was expected to support herself and make a contribution to the beguinage, through work or rent payments. They had no motherhouse, no common rule, no general of the order. Every community was run according to its own rules.

Such institutions flourished in northern Europe in the High Middle Ages, particularly in the Low Countries, in northern France and the Rhineland, although they never took off in England, Norwich being the only city where there is evidence of such informal female communities. . . .

Marcella Pattyn was born in the Belgian Congo on August 18 1920 and, as a child, dreamed of entering a missionary religious order. But as she was almost blind she was rejected by several communities. It was only when a rich aunt intervened with a donation that she was accepted into the beguinage of St Amandsberg in Ghent in 1941.

There, and at the beguinage of St Elizabeth at Courtrai, where she moved in 1960, she spent her days praying, knitting clothes, weaving and making Beguine dolls, which she sold to tourists. She played the organ in the chapel and gave comfort to the sick by entertaining them on the banjo or accordion. In her later years she became a familiar figure in the streets of Courtrai, whizzing around in a motorised wheelchair.

In 1960 she was one of a community of nine. By 2008, when she moved into a nursing home, she had become, officially, the only surviving Beguine in the world.

On two trips to Belgium at the beginning of this century, I saw several of the beguinages in Flanders, especially in Leuven, Bruges, and Tongeron, and the accompanying "Beguinage Churches", where the Beguines attended Mass. In Bruges I remember the tour guide's flippant remark that there just weren't enough men to go around, so the young women starting living together. I particularly enjoyed a visit to Tongeren, the home of my hostesses' grandmother, with its great beguinage and St. Catherine's Church. For me, Tongeren was doubly fascinating not only because of the beguinage, St. Catherine's and the beautiful Gothic basilica of Our Lady, but also because of  its Gallo-Roman museum and its great hero Ambiorix, who rebelled against the Romans and Julius Caesar. Unfortunately, at that time during my travels, I was not a very good photographer, as my husband often complained. (And at the time, we did not have digital cameras!) Not much to share, I'm afraid. (photo source: Wikipedia commons.) More on Tongeren here.

Returning from our first trip to Belgium, I did some research and reading into the history and spirituality of the beguine movement and found this book: Brides in the Desert: The Spirituality of the Beguines by Saskia Murk-Jansen. She focuses on the mysticism of Hadewijch of Brabant, Mechtild of Magdeburg, Marguerite Porete, and Beatrijs of Nazareth. I also dipped into Bernard McGinn's Meister Eckhart and the Beguine Mystics: Hadewijch of Brabant, Mechthild of Magdeburg, and Marguerite Porete. I think now the standard work is by Walter Simons, published by the University of Pennsylvania Press: Cities of Ladies: Beguine Communities in the Medieval Low Countries, 1200-1565, part of The Middle Ages Series:

In the early thirteenth century, semireligious communities of women began to form in the cities and towns of the Low Countries. These beguines, as the women came to be known, led lives of contemplation and prayer and earned their livings as laborers or teachers.


In Cities of Ladies, the first history of the beguines to appear in English in fifty years, Walter Simons traces the transformation of informal clusters of single women to large beguinages. These veritable single-sex cities offered lower- and middle-class women an alternative to both marriage and convent life. While the region's expanding urban economies initially valued the communities for their cheap labor supply, severe economic crises by the fourteenth century restricted women's opportunities for work. Church authorities had also grown less tolerant of religious experimentation, hailing as subversive some aspects of beguine mysticism. To Simons, however, such accusations of heresy against the beguines were largely generated from a profound anxiety about their intellectual ambitions and their claims to a chaste life outside the cloister. Under ecclesiastical and economic pressure, beguine communities dwindled in size and influence, surviving only by adopting a posture of restraint and submission to church authorities.

Walter Simons is Associate Professor of History at Dartmouth College.

I wonder if I will ever have the opportunity to return to Belgium, to Brussels and Bruges, Antwerp and Leuven, Mechelen and Tongeren--and visit Ghent for the first time to see the "Mystic Lamb"--this time with a digital camera and taking lots of pictures!