EPISODE 4: BEGIN THE “BEGUINE”

…you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for God’s own possession, to proclaim the virtues of Him who called you out of darkness into His marvelous light.

In the translation I am using for this series, the next section in 1 Peter we are looking at is titled A Call to Holiness. This section is particularly intriguing to me because of recent studies I have been doing into the lives of medieval religious women. Most of these women have been excised from the pages of history, but their stories are gradually being told.

During the 13th century, for example, a community of women known as the Beguines made its presence felt. The Beguines were often made up of single or widowed women of means and rank. Though some of the Beguines’ founders were wealthy, what they brought into the community was reinvested in it. This mirrors the picture we see in Acts 2, where the early church held all things in common. Women of fewer means also joined the community, and everyone shared what they had with everyone else. The church authorities often held these women in contempt and regarded them with suspicion because they operated independently and not under the church’s supervision—or anyone else’s—though they still maintained connections with the church through local clerics and priests. They lived together in community, sometimes two or three women in a house, or a larger group of women in an enclave with several houses.

These women were not cloistered. They were not nuns. They were free to enter the community, and to leave it. The Beguines established businesses to support themselves, often in the textile industry. They were involved in the life of the towns and villages in which they settled, ministering to the poor and the sick and sometimes establishing hospitals and schools. But they also studied the Scriptures, debated with their local clerics and priests on spiritual matters, taught the Scriptures, wrote books, translated the Scriptures into the common language of the people, and gave spiritual counsel to anyone who asked—including to popes and civic leaders. Their “rule” was love for God and love for others. They left behind what they had been and what their culture expected of them, to pursue Jesus, to practice holiness, to imitate Christ, and to contemplate His sufferings as something they, as women, felt they uniquely shared with Him.

At times, the Beguines were supported by the church and the civil authorities. At other times in their long history, they were viewed with suspicion and accused of various offences, including sexual misconduct and heresy. Women were considered inferior in every way, and the “presumption” of the Beguines to think they could live independently and study, teach, translate, and write about the Scriptures accurately was offensive in the patriarchal society in which they lived.

Some were persecuted, and a few were martyred. What particularly disturbed the religious authorities were the Beguines’ writings, which were widely distributed beyond their communities, and their translation of Scripture. The Beguines believed that the common people should be able to read the Scripture and worship in their own language rather than in Latin, which most of the population did not understand. This posed a threat to those who held power, who understood Latin and could “interpret” the Scriptures in any way they chose, thereby holding power over those who were less well educated.*

As believers and modern women living in an advanced technological age, we have many resources to help us study the Scriptures for ourselves. That is one of the freedoms we enjoy “in Christ,” who left us the Holy Spirit, our primary resource, to teach and guide us in those studies.  Think like a Beguine might have thought as you read Peter’s letter.

1 Peter 1:13-21

Therefore prepare your minds for action. Be sober-minded. Set your hope fully on the grace to be given you at the revelation of Jesus Christ. As obedient children, do not conform to the passions of your former ignorance. But just as He who called you is holy, so be holy in all you do, for it is written: “Be holy, because I am holy.” Since you call on a Father who judges each one’s work impartially, conduct yourselves in reverent fear during your stay as foreigners. For you know that it was not with perishable things such as silver or gold that you were redeemed from the empty way of life you inherited from your forefathers, but with the precious blood of Christ, a Lamb without blemish or spot. He was known before the foundation of the world, but was revealed in the last times for your sake. Through Him you believe in God, who raised Him from the dead and glorified Him; and so your faith and hope are in God.

I see the Beguines in this passage—women prepared to step forward to embrace their call from God, to let go of the world while still remaining part of it so they could minister to it, to practise holiness, and to seek to know the Lord more intimately and, as the apostle Paul once wrote, to identify with Christ’s sufferings. (Philippians 3:10)

The Beguines and other religious women of their time focused extensively on the death of Christ. This letter from Peter, the apostle, reminds his audience of the importance of never forgetting the cost of the salvation they now share as followers of Jesus. Peter calls them to action, to commitment, to holiness, to being like that Jesus.

The following quote is long but well worth reflecting on in connection with Peter’s words.

For we are obliged to perform virtuous works not to gain admiration or happiness, not for wealth or power, nor for any pleasure in heaven or on earth, but only so that we may be pleasing to God’s greatest honour, who created human nature for this, making it to His honour and His praise, and for our joy in eternal glory.

This is the way that the Son of God walked before us, the way which He showed and made known to us when He lived as a man. For all the time that He was on earth, from His beginning until the end, He performed and perfected in knowledge the will of His Father, in all He did, in all His days, with all that He was, with every service which He could do, in words, in works, in joy, in sorrow, in great things and little things, in miracles, in contempt, in suffering, in labour, in sorrow, in the anguish of His bitter death. With all His heart, with all His soul, with all His strength He stood ready to endure all things at all times to make perfect that which we had undone; and with all His might as God, and with all His goodness as man, He carried us and He drew us up, back to our first honourable state, back to that freedom in which we were created by a loving Creator, back to what we are now called to and chosen for in His predestination, to what He has foreseen from all eternity that we should be.

The mark of grace is holy living.

—Hadewijch of Brabant, in Letters to a Young Beguine

In this episode, we have taken a brief look at the Beguines. In the episodes that follow, I will refer to some of the other religious women of the past and their influence on history.

* And just as an aside, it seems there is a modern house church movement underway, even in countries with no persecution. I googled “house churches in the 21st century” and found some very interesting facts, including accusations against this modern movement that the Beguines would have been familiar with, namely the lack of control the establishment has over groups not under ecclesiastical authority and susceptibility to unsound doctrine (as if “unsound doctrine” was not found inside the establishment! Don’t get me started!).