Cities of Ladies is a social and economic (rather than a theological) study of the Beguines. What emerges from this perspective is that spiritual communities are as much a product of economic forces as ideological ones. I found it interesting, as I was reading, to contrast the multi-generational success of the Beguines with the many relatively short-lived lay communities of the 1960s and 70s.

In the early thirteenth century, it was easy for young women to migrate from the countryside to the growing towns of the Low Countries. There was plenty of work in domestic service and the skilled crafts. However, once they became grown women, there were only two respectable lifestyle choices: marriage or the cloister. The surplus of young women in the cities made marriage impossible for many, and at the same time the traditional religious orders had closed their doors to new female postulants. Hence there was a real economic and social purpose for informal lay communities of religiously motivated women. Provided they stayed close to the cities, they could support themselves with teaching and crafts. Moreover, there was huge social support for any form of piety.

Compare this with the lay communities of the 1960s and 1970s, when there were many more economic avenues open to young people, and in any case, people by now were the product of a culture of individualism. No wonder so many of the experimental communities of the time disintegrated after only a few years.

There were religious reasons for the decline of the Beguine communities: a few naughty Beguines apparently got their whole communities a bad reputation, and some of their ideas raised ecclesiastical suspicions. But quite apart from this, economic depressions in the Low Countries led to the communities’ being unable to support themselves.

This is a good study, but for those of you who like value for your reading dollar, I should point out that only half the pages of the volume are taken up by the text, the remainder consisting of notes, appendices, a bibliography, and an index.

Walter Simons. Cities of Ladies: Beguine Communities in the Medieval Low Countries, 1200-1565. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2001. Paperback. 351 pages. ISBN 9780812218534. $27.50.

From my blog at http://true-small-caps.blogspot.com