The first women's movement in the Church

In 1243 ... Matthew Paris -- surveying the European scene from his English monastery -- made an entry in his Chronicle to which he attached great importance:

"At this time and especially in Germany, certain people -- men and women, but especially women -- have adopted a religious profession, though it is a light one. They call themselves 'religious', and they take a private vow of continence and simplicity of life, though they do not follow the Rule of any saint, nor are they as yet confined to a cloister. They have so multiplied within a short time that two thousand have been reported in Cologne and neighboring cities ..."

We know that (Matthew Paris) was greatly impressed by the news of this new movement because in 1250, when he summarized the main events of the previous half century, he repeated his information ..."

"In Germany there has arisen an innumerable multitude of celibate women who call themselves beguines: a thousand or more of them live in Cologne alone..."

[Here is also Robert Grosseteste, the great bishop of Lincoln]: one day he preached a sermon to the Franciscans in which he extolled ... the highest kind of poverty: this was to live by one's own labor "like the beguines."

Between them, Grosseteste and Paris surveyed a very large slice of European life, and they were both impressed by the new and strange phenomenon. The beguine movement differed substantially from all earlier important movements within the western church. It was basically a women's movement, not simply a feminine appendix to a movement which owed its impetus, direction, and main support to men. It had no definite Rule of life; it claimed the authority of no saintly founder; it sought no authorization from the Holy See; it had no organization or constitution; it promised no benefits and sought no patrons; its vows were a statement of intention, not an irreversible commitment to a discipline enforced by authority; and its adherents could continue their ordinary work in the world ...

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Quoted from: R.W. Southern, Western Society and the Church in the Middle Ages (Penguin Book, 1970) 319-321