Cities of Ladies: Beguine Communities in the Medieval Low Countries, 1200-1565 (The Middle Ages Series) - Hardcover

Simons, Walter

3.87

53 ratings by Goodreads

9780812236040: Cities of Ladies: Beguine Communities in the Medieval Low Countries, 1200-1565 (The Middle Ages Series)

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0812236041 ISBN 13: 9780812236040

Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2001

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In the early thirteenth century, semireligious communities of women began to form in the cities and towns of the Low Countries. These beguines, as they 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 available in English in almost 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. Based on the archival records left by about 300 beguine communities, Cities of Ladies illuminates the context of beguine writings, which are considered among the most significant documents of medieval women's mysticism. In updating and expanding our knowledge of the beguines, Simons makes a significant contribution to the history of urbanization, religious change, and gender in medieval Europe.

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Review:

"Comprehensive and authoritative."—Medium Aevum

"This fine work reveals medieval religion as a web of overlapping interests. . . . Simons has thus both provided a detailed study of the movement in the Low Countries and place it in its wider religious, social, and economic context."—Ecclesiastical History

"A tour de force."—David Nicholas, Clemson University

"A vivid, valuable portrait."—History

"The definitive study. . . . A learned, lively, and highly readable book, now the essential introduction to the subject."—Choice

"Indispensable for students of medieval religion and women's history."—Journal of Religion

"Walter Simons has written a thorough, scholarly study, long on careful research, to the point on analysis, and without theoretical trappings. Cities of Ladies is a most welcome contribution to the study of medieval religious life and women's place in the life of the Low Countries."—Speculum

"Destined to become the standard work in beguine history."—Renaissance Quarterly

About the Author:

Walter Simons is Associate Professor of History at Dartmouth College.

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