- published: 09 Apr 2011
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A beguinage (From the French béguinage) is an architectural complex which formerly housed beguines, lay religious women who lived in community without taking vows or retiring from the world. There are two types of beguinages: those housing small, informal, and often poor communities that emerged across Europe from the twelfth century on, and the 'court beguinages' (begijnhof (Dutch)), a much larger and more stable type of community that emerged in the region of the Low Countries in the first decades of the thirteenth century. Several of these are now listed by UNESCO as World Heritage. By the mid-thirteenth century, the French king Louis IX founded a beguinage in Paris, which was modeled on the court beguinages of the Low Countries.
The Oxford English Dictionary, citing Du Cange, gives the origin of the word "beguine" in the name of Lambert le Bègue, "Lambert the Stammerer", an early supporter of the movement who died around 1180.
While a small beguinage usually constituted just one house where women lived together, a Low Countries court beguinage typically comprised one or more courtyards surrounded by houses, and also included a church, an infirmary complex, and a number of communal houses or 'convents'. From the twelfth century through the eighteenth, every city and large town in the Low Countries had at least one court beguinage: the communities dwindled and came to an end, over the course of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries). They were encircled by walls and separated from the town proper by several gates which were closed at night. During the day the beguines could come and go as they pleased. Beguines came from a wide range of social classes, though truly poor women were only admitted if they had a wealthy benefactor who pledged to provide for their needs.
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