Читать книгу The End of the Middle Ages - A. Mary F. Robinson - Страница 5

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In the year 1180, there lived in Liege a certain kindly, stammering priest, known from his infirmity as Lambert le Bègue. This man took pity on the destitute widows of his town. Despite the impediment in his speech, he was, as often happens, a man of a certain power and eloquence in preaching. His words, difficult to find, brought conviction when they came. This Lambert so moved the hearts of his hearers that gold and silver poured in on him, given to relieve such of the destitute women of Liege as were still of good and pious life. With the moneys thus collected, Lambert built a little square of cottages, with a church in the middle and a hospital, and at the side a cemetery. Here he housed these homeless widows, one or two in each little house, and then he drew up a half-monastic rule which was to guide their lives. The rule was very simple, quite informal: no vows, no great renunciation bound the Swestrones Brod durch Got. A certain time of the day was set apart for prayer and pious meditation; the other hours they spent in spinning or sewing, in keeping their houses clean, or they went as nurses in time of sickness into the homes of the townspeople. They were bidden to be obedient; and to be chaste so long as they remained of the sisterhood, but they might marry again at will with no disgrace. If rich women chose to join the new and unsanctioned guild, they might leave a portion of their riches to any heir they chose. Thus these women, though pious and sequestered, were still in the world and of the world; they helped in its troubles, and shared its afflictions, and at choice they might rejoin the conflict.

Soon we find the name Swestrones Brod durch Got set aside for the more usual title of Beguines, or Beghines. Different authorities give different origins for this word. Some, too fantastic, have traced the name to St. Begge, a holy nun of the seventh century. Some have thought it was taken in memory of the founder, the charitable Lambert le Bègue. Others think that, even as the Mystics or Mutterers, the Lollards or Hummers, the Papelhards or Babblers, so the Beguines or Stammerers were thus nicknamed from their continual murmuring in prayer. This is plausible; but not so plausible as the suggestion of Dr. Mosheim and M. Auguste Jundt, who derive the word Beguine from the Flemish verb beggen, to beg. For we know that these pious women had been veritable beggars; and beggars should they again become.

With surprising swiftness the new order spread through the Netherlands and into France and Germany. Every town had its surplus of homeless and pious widows, and also its little quota of women who wished to spend their lives in doing good, but had no vocation for the cloister. The Beguinage, as it was called, became a home and refuge to either class. Before 1250 there were Beguines, or Begging Sisters, at Tirlemont, Valenciennes, Douai, Ghent, Louvain, and Antwerp in Flanders; at all the principal towns in France, especially at Cambray, where they numbered over a thousand; at Bâle and Berne in Switzerland; at Lübeck, Hamburg, Magdeburg, and many towns in Germany, with two thousand Beguines at Cologne and numerous beguinages in the pious town of Strasburg.

So the order spread, within the memory of a man. Lambert may have lived to see a beguinage in every great town within his ken; but we hear no more of him. The Beguines are no longer for Liege, but for all the world. Each city possessed its quiet congregation; and at any sick-bed you might meet a woman clad in a simple smock and a great veil-like mantle, who lived only to pray and to do deeds of mercy. They were very pious, these uncloistered sisters of the poor. Ignorant women who had known the utmost perils of life and death, their fervour was warmer, fonder, more illiterate than the devotion of nuns; they prayed ever as being lately saved from disgrace and ruin and starvation. Their quiet, unutterable piety became a proverb, almost a reproach; much as, within our memories, the unctuous piety of Methodists was held in England. When the child Elizabeth of Hungary fasted and saw visions in the Wartburg, the Princess Agnes, her worldly sister-in-law, could find no more cruel taunt than this: “Think you my brother will marry such a Beguine?” This is in 1213, only eight-and-thirty years since Lambert built the first asylum for the destitute widows of Liege.