Cities of Ladies: Beguine Communities in the Medieval Low Countries, 12-1565

by Walter Simons

Selected by Choice magazine as an Outstanding Academic Title

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.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, European History, Feminism, Belgium, Medieval, Religion

352 pages, Paperback

First published September 1, 2001

Reviews

[Peter Murray · Rating 4 out of 5]

Simons packs together a large amount of incomplete information to give us a pretty complete picture. He spent a decade researching the beguine communities of the Low Countries, and it shows. For someone whose only gotten the casual knowledge of the orthodox Christian communities (monasteries and convents), the beguines provide an eye-opening portrayal of lay person devotion - and the internal and external problems inherent in this kind of system. A striking notion one learns reading this book is that the definition of heresy is in the eye of the beholder. "Heretical" practices need not be anti-orthodox, just different enough (and attractive enough) that those who gain from orthodoxy are threatened by it.

[Autumn · Rating 3 out of 5]

A decent intro to béguin life.

[Boho Beannie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Incredible amount of information, not a quick read. Well cited with an extensive bibliography for further reading

[Holly · Rating 3 out of 5]

Scholarly work that examines functions and placement of Beguine communities. The notes and the bibliography are worth a look, worthwhile for lay reader interested in the subject as it is very readable and also for research.

[Rebekah · Rating 3 out of 5]

2.5 stars -- pretty dry, and sometimes confusingly written, but interesting information overall, especially the overview at the beginning.

Bumped it up to 3 just because I enjoyed the hilarious stream-of-consciousness commentary of my book's previous owner in the margins. X-D

[AskHistorians]

A study of female religious groups in northern Europe during the later Middle Ages.