‘Female Intuition’ – book-less, vs. ‘Male Reasoned Learning’ – book-bound.

Swamiji – ‘In the West, one of your greatest mistakes is you only educate with the intellect, you take no care of the heart. (He would have loved this!)

A Beguine. In a lay sisterhood, no vows.

In his masterpiece, ‘Cities of Ladies’, Walter Simons describes the fascinating 400 year story of the Béguines. 1200-1600. (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2001).

The ‘Female Way’ as opposed to the ‘Male Way’ –

Here, a Parisian Master of Theology meets a Beguine. Over centuries, funded and controlled by the French king, the Divinity faculty of Paris University produced many great, male thinkers of theology. But no great intuitive females! (impossible for the king to appoint a clever female).

No females at Paris University till 1870s (first female students – medical/surgical – at Edinburgh University in 1869. No degrees till 1892!)

The learned master assuming his superiority, firstly reproaches the Beguine for her irreverent attitude! Undeterred, confident, she replies –

You talk – We act.

You learn – We seize.

You inspect – We choose.

You eat – We swallow.

You bargain – We buy.

You glow – We catch fire.

You assume – We know.

You ask – We take.

You search – We find.

You love – We languish.

You languish – We die.

You sow – We reap.

You work – We rest.

You grow thin – We grow fat.

You ring – We sing.

You sing – We dance.

You blossom – We bear fruit.

You taste – We savour.

She shreds the book-bound, intellectual male. That vast knowledge and power of reasoning reduced to ashes. (Original in French ca 1300. City Library of Bern, CH).

Beguines were celibate women living together as a sisterhood (without vows and free to leave) in towns, who wanted to be free of the obligation of marriage and free of possessions (numbers could be 10 or 20 in smaller towns but went up to 200, 500 or 1000 in Ghent, Liège or Cologne).

They worked and what they earned was their contribution to their Beguinage. A few were rich but the most operated at breadline, always stretching their resources. They were the only ones who went out and tended leper colonies (lepers were below sheep), they were visiting nurses, they ran their own nursing wards in the larger Beguinages, they were teachers (this region of northern France, Belgium, southern Holland and the western edge of Germany was unique with some 25%-30% literacy, including women [so some current, local surveys stated], against the general European level of possibly 2-3%). They worked in the wool industry, the silk industry (often some cooperation with the guilds was needed) and they ran their own businesses.

This wonderful work meant the town councillors protected them, exempting them from taxes, and assisted them wherever they could. While many clergymen appreciated and took strength from the Beguines, the higher up you went in the church heirarchy, the stronger the hate and there was an organised campaign with false accusations of heresy (Papal banning in 1312. Rescinded in 1323). They could not be controlled, some of them were charismatic preachers (the church forbade women to preach) and, the deepest sore, they received significant amounts of deserved alms which could have gone to the church’s usually corrupt institutions.

Beguines were free of male dominance, which they expressed often.

In his book, Simons says, from 13th to 18th C, ‘…  clergymen, troubled by the Church’s frailty, repeatedly sought the company of devout Beguines to bolster their own confidence. In these relationships, their own deficiencies could be offset by the women’s special holiness’. Simons then quotes John Coakley (‘Friars as Confidants of Holy Women in Medieval Times’. Cornell University Press, 1991), roughly – ‘Such clergymen admired in these Beguines what they were lacking: true poverty, integrity, sponteneity, charisma, the clear presence of the Divine.’