View of the Beguinage in Kortrijk beguine, inhabitant of a beguinage. Excerpt from a manuscript of the beguinage of Sint-Aubertus in Ghent. Made ca. 1840. A beguinage, from the French term béguinage, is an architectural complex which was created to house beguines: lay religious women who lived in community without taking vows or retiring from the world.
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The Groot Begijnhof Sint-Amandsberg is an eight-hectare beguinage in the Sint- Amandsberg suburb just outside the centre of the Belgian city of Ghent. It was built between 1873 and 1874 on the abandonment of the Old Saint Elisabeth Beguinage in the city centre. There is also a third beguinage in Ghent, that of Our-Lady Ter Hooyen.
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Church of Saint John the Baptist at the Beguinage Faydherbe is the presumed designer of the Church of Saint John the Baptist at the Beguinage in Brussels. This church is characterized by its very exuberant facade.
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After World War I the duke had to relinquish his rights because he was a German citizen. And then finally in 1925, the newly founded non-profit organisation Begijnhof O.L.V. Ter Hoyen bought the entire beguinage complex. The beguinage became a protected monument on October 30, 1963.
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The complete beguinage is owned by the University of Leuven and used as a campus, especially for housing academics.
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Z33 Kunstencentrum (Art Museum Z33) is an experimental contemporary art and architecture museum in Hasselt, Belgium. Z33 stands for Zuivelmarkt 33, the former site of the Hasselt Beguinage. Since its acquisition by the Province of Limburg in 1938, the site has fulfilled a cultural function in the city centre in a variety of ways. In 1996, the Provinciaal Museum (Provincial Museum) and the multidisciplinary Centrum voor Kunsten-Begijnhof (Art Centre Beguinage) merged into the Provinciaal Centrum voor Beeldende Kunsten – Begijnhof (PCBK) (Provincial Centre for Fine arts – Beguinage).
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They were founded by the countesses Johanna and Margaretha of Flanders. A large part of the beguinage leaned against the city wall. It gave shelter to the beguines coming from small nobility and the newly formed middle class. The beguinage as it is now dates mostly of the 17th and 18th century.
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No hard evidence for the hypothesis was ever found in the Beguinage, and so, some authors Van Impe, J. (1981) in Mededelingen van de Geschied- en Oudheidkundige Kring voor Leuven en Omgeving, Jaarboek 1981 (volume 21), pp. 165-166 contest the present day beguinage as being the precise location of the battle.
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Main entrance gate of the Groot Begijnhof of Leuven The Groot Begijnhof of Leuven is a well preserved beguinage and completely restored historical quarter containing a dozen streets in the south of downtown Leuven. About 3 hectares (7.5 acres) in size, with some 300 apartments in almost 100 houses, it is one of the largest remaining beguinages in the Low Countries. It stretches on both sides of the river Dijle, which splits into two canals inside the beguinage, thus forming an island. Three bridges connect the parts of the beguinage.
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Beguine religious life was part of the mysticism of that age. There was a beguinage at Mechelen as early as 1207, at Brussels in 1245, at Leuven before 1232, at Antwerp in 1234, and at Bruges in 1244. By the close of the century, most communes in the Low Countries had a beguinage; several of the great cities had two or more.
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The Princely Beguinage Ten Wijngaerde (Dutch: Prinselijk Begijnhof Ten Wijngaerde) is the only preserved beguinage in the Belgian city of Bruges. There are no more Beguines living there, but since 1927 it functions as a convent for Benedictines, founded by canon Hoornaert. In the same year the houses at the west side were also reshaped and enlarged into the Monasterium De Wijngaard, a priory of Benedictine nuns.
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In the 19th and 20th centuries it was partly restored, but the restorations are hardly noticeable. With the French occupation of Belgium the beguinage with all it possessions became property of the Commissie der Burgerlijke Godshuizen van de Stad Gent.:nl:Klein Begijnhof (Gent) And in 1801 it was a legitimately acknowledged religious community. In the year 1862 the Duke of Arenberg bought the entire beguinage from the Commission.
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In her free time she made artificial flowers to decorate the church, as well as reading vernacular translations of the Bible and the Church Fathers, and writing poetry. She studied Latin with the assistance of the chaplain of the beguinage, and translated St Ambrose's Life of St Agnes and the Sayings of St Bernard. She died in the beguinage on 31 January 1625 and was buried in the church.
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Two streets in the Beguinage of Leuven. After more than 150 years in use by the local welfare commission and being inhabited by people not financially able to maintain the dwellings, the place was in deplorable state in 1960. The welfare commission decided to sell the complete quarter. A real estate developer showed interest but abandoned his plans when he learnt that the university wanted to buy and restore the beguinage.
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In 1299 it came under direct authority of king Philip the Fair and it was entitled as "Princely Beguinage". Benedictine nun The complex includes a gothic beguinage church and about thirty white painted houses dating from the late 16th, 17th and 18th century. Practically all of these are built around a central yard. The main entrance with gate can be reached via the three-arched stone bridge, the Wijngaard Bridge.
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The song captures some of the landmark places like the Market Square, Howest Campus, Sint-Jorisstraat, the Beguinage and several streets and canals. The song is choreographed by Stanley D'Costa.
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The community is presumably a few decades older. Local historians from the 16th century, including Justus Lipsius, mention 1205 as founding date. Just like other beguinages in Flanders, the beguinage in Leuven had a first golden age in the 13th century, and difficult times during the religious conflicts in the 16th century. One of the priests of this beguinage was Adriaan Florensz Boeyens, spiritual tutor of the infant Charles V and later known as Pope Adrian VI. From the end of the 16th century, and especially after the Twelve Years' Truce in 1621, the Beguinage had a second flourishing period, culminating near the last quarter of the 17th century and continuing afterwards, albeit in a gradual decline, until the invasion of the anti-religious French Revolutionarists.
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Later, many adopted the rule of the Third Order of Saint Francis. Beguine communities varied in terms of the social status of their members; some of them only admitted ladies of high degree; others were reserved exclusively for persons in humble circumstances; others still welcomed women of every condition, and these were the most popular. Several, like the great beguinage of Ghent, had thousands of inhabitants. The Beguinage of Paris, founded before 1264, housed as many as 400 women.
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Dyle in the Beguinage of Leuven The Groot Begijnhof has the appearance of a small town in the city. It is a succession of streets, squares, gardens and parks, with tens of houses and convents in traditional brick and sandstone style."Groot Begijnhof", Stad Leuven As a community for unmarried, semi- religious women (see Beguine), this beguinage originated in the early 13th century. The oldest written documents date back from 1232. A Latin inscription on the church mentions 1234 as founding date.
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She is commemorated on 17 December. Some hold that the Beguine movement which came to light in the 12th century was actually founded by St Begga; and the church in the beguinage of Lier, Belgium, has a statue of St Begga standing above the inscription: St. Begga, our foundress. The Lier beguinage dates from the 13th century. Another popular theory, however, claims that the Beguines derived their name from that of the priest Lambert le Bègue, under whose protection the witness and ministry of the Beguines flourished.
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Architectural sights worth visiting are the 12th century castle of the Dukes of Brabant, the Gothic church of St. Peter, the beguinage (begijnhof) dating from the 13th century, the 14th century Gothic chapel of Theobald and the Taxandria museum housed in a prestigious Renaissance mansion. Of particular interest is the Museum of the Playing Card. This is located in an old factory building downtown and houses a beautifully restored steam engine. The beguinage was recognized by UNESCO as a World Heritage Site in 1998.
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Southern part of the Low Countries with bishopry towns and abbeys, in about the 7th century. Beguinage of Kortrijk, where the last one of the Beguines, a medieval Christian lay, semi-monastic order, died in 2013.
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It is centred on the / and some neighbouring streets. The Aumale district mainly comprises / and its surrounding streets. It includes Erasmus House, the old beguinage and the Bibliothèque de l'Espace Maurice Carême public French-speaking library.
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After the invasion of the French revolutionaries, the beguinage of Leuven was not sold as bien national, as happened with most monasteries and abbeys. The properties of the community were, however, confiscated and attributed to the local welfare commission (the Hospices civils) and reorganised as civil almshouses. Beguines were allowed to continue to live in their houses but free rooms were rented to elderly and poor people. Some former clerics lived on their mandatory pension in the beguinage, among them the last prior of the abbey of Villers.
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Spanish quarter. This 17th century extension of the Beguinage is also known as Aborg, meaning `Old Castle' The name of the quarter of the beguinage, Ten Hove (Hof = Court), as well as the old name of the left river bank (Aborg = Vetus Castellum = Old Castle) seem to refer to previous settlement, possibly the court of the first Lords of Leuven. This would then have been the field where the battle of Leuven took place. In 891, the emperor Arnulf of Carinthia ended here in the invasions of the Vikings.
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Beguine of Ghent. Excerpt from a manuscript of the beguinage of Sint-Aubertus, Ghent, ca. 1840. In Western-Europe the era of the beguinages started in the 12th century. In Ghent they started building 2 beguinages in 1234.
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Several of these beguinages are now listed by UNESCO as World Heritage sites. Around the mid-thirteenth century, the French king Louis IX founded a beguinage in Paris, which was modeled on the court beguinages of the Low Countries.
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View of the Groot Begijnhof in Leuven While a small beguinage usually constituted just one house where women lived together, a Low Countries court beguinage typically comprised one or more courtyards surrounded by houses, and also included a church, an infirmary complex, and a number of communal houses or 'convents'. From the twelfth through eighteenth centuries, every city and large town in the Low Countries had at least one court beguinage: the communities dwindled and came to an end, over the course of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. They were encircled by walls and separated from the town proper by several gates, closed at night, but through which during the day the beguines could come and go as they pleased. Beguines came from a wide range of social classes, though truly poor women were admitted only if they had a wealthy benefactor who pledged to provide for their needs.
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The gate is neoclassical and dates from 1819. It is the only point of entrance and exit. All the buildings are situated within the walls of the beguinage. The lawn in the courtyard is surrounded by lime trees and beech trees.
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The image of the horsemen refers to the Apocalypse and is situated against the south wall. The seven stations of the circumambulation in honour of our Lady of the Seven Sorrows testify to the devotion of the citizens. The building where the Mistress of the beguines and her staff lived is situated in the northern corner of the beguinage. There you also find the farm and the hospital with the chapel dedicated to Saint Godelieve. Around the beguinage pasture and the ‘Achterstraat’ are about 100 houses and 7 convents, all of which bear the name of a saint.
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There was no overarching structure such as a mother-house. Each beguinage adopted its own rule. The Bishop of Liège created a rule for Beguines in his diocese. However, every community was complete in itself and fixed its own order of living.
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Part of a map of the city c. 1572. The Begijnhof is in the centre. NB: east is to the top. Chapel of the Begijnhof about 1725, illustrated by Jacobus Stellingwerff The Begijnhof, Utrecht, was a beguinage () in the Dutch city of Utrecht.
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477 Very little is known about her career. At the end of her life she was renting a house in a beguinage. She was taken ill and was cared for by a nurse. After she died she was buried at Antwerp Cathedral.
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Both helped the growth of a town. A watermill ('het Laermolen') was built outside town on the River Mark. It was already an old mill when it was first mentioned in 1391. In 1380 a Beguinage was established to house good but poor old women.
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In 1976, a course on drawing comics was instituted in the evening section. The academy was originally established in a former beguinage, the Hospice Saint-Abraham, but in 1895 moved to a purpose-built Renaissance Revival structure on Rue des Anglais, designed by Joseph Lousberg.
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In 1640, against her father's wishes, she lived for a time in a convent of Augustinian sisters in Ghent but did not join that order because, with her bad vision, "she cannot see the letters of the choral prayer." Instead she became a nun with Carmelite Third Order and took the name Marie of Saint Theresa (in French, Marie de Sainte Thérèse). In 1642, she entered the Beguinage of Ghent and took the sacred vows of obedience and chastity. In 1646, the direction of the Beguinage community was entrusted to a professor of philosophy, Michael of St. Augustine (born Jan van Ballaert), who became her spiritual director.
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Ida was born into a prosperous mercantile family in Nivelles, an important market town and pilgrimage destination in Brabant, a short distance to the south of Brussels. After her father died the family arranged for her to be married. She was aged only nine or sixteen (sources differ), and not wishing to marry she fled to a beguinage, a community of intentionally unmarried Godly women who lived in a shared community, but without taking vows or cutting themselves off from the world outside. The beguinage community that took her in comprised seven women who lived near the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in her home town.
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Anne was born in Brussels in 1549, the daughter of Adolphe van Doeveryn.Edward Van Even, "Doeveryn, Anne van", Biographie Nationale de Belgique, vol. 6 (Brussels, 1878), 113-114. She made her profession in the Grand Beguinage of Leuven in 1575, where she worked as an embroiderer.
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Nearby sights include the Collegial Church of Saint Peter and Saint Guido, for which the station was named; Erasmus House; the Old Beguinage (now a museum dedicated to religious community life); and Astrid Park, which is home to the Constant Vanden Stock Stadium, where R.S.C. Anderlecht football club play their home games.
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After the Reformation (circa 1580) the Begijnhof increasingly lost its independence; in 1613 the beguines were forbidden to carry out Roman Catholic worship, and orders were passed concerning the transmission of property and the allocation of living spaces to Protestant townswomen. By about 1675 the Begijnhof had effectively ceased to exist, as in that year the sources of income of the few remaining beguines from the municipal authority were stopped. 15-21 Wijde Begijnestraat As the beguinage lost its independence the builders moved in on its site: new streets were laid out and new houses built. In the aftermath the Begijnekerk ("Beguine Church") was named after the previous beguinage, and some of the new streets, such as the Wijde Begijnestraat, owe their names to it.
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Beguine of Ghent. Excerpt from a manuscript of the beguinage of Sint-Aubertus, Ghent, ca. 1840. A drawing of a Beguine from Des dodes dantz, printed in Lübeck in 1489. The Beguines and the Beghards were Christian lay religious orders that were active in Western Europe, particularly in the Low Countries, in the 13th–16th centuries.
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They had no founders nor did they make lifelong vows. They were unmarried women who made a vow of chastity and promised obedience to the parish priest, but since they were not expected to make a vow of poverty, they were free to dispose of their own possessions as they wished. They could renounce their vows at any moment and leave the Beguinage, for instance, to get married. We do not know exactly when the Beguinage was founded. According to the Amsterdam City Archives, the first time the word ‘beguines’ was used was in an official document of 1307 found in the accounts of the Bailiff of Amstelland. Another document, dated 31 July 1346, speaks of the Beghijnhuis (house of the Beguines) ceded to them by one Cope van der Laene on St Peter’s Eve.
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A house in Bad Cannstatt formerly used as a beguinage. It was built in 1463 and restored in 1983. At the start of the 12th century, some women in the Low Countries lived alone and devoted themselves to prayer and good works without taking vows. At first there were only a few, but in the course of the century, their numbers increased.
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The beguinage was located in the northern part of the city. The accepted date for the settlement there of the beguines is the second quarter of the 13th century. The enclosed but extensive site included a chapel, a groothuys ("big house") in multiple occupancy and a moeshof (communal garden). There were also a number of small houses which belonged to individual beguines.
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Church of the beguinage, Aalst. Aalst on the Ferraris map (around 1775). The first historical records on Aalst date from the 9th century, when it was described as the villa Alost, a dependency of the Abbey of Lobbes. During the Middle Ages, a town and port grew at this strategic point, where the road from Bruges to Cologne crossed the Dender.
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The current facade with its gothic-style leaded ogive windows dates only from the 19th century. When the present chapel was opened in 1682, 150 Beguines and 12 widows or single women lived in the Beguinage. The chapel has undergone many changes. It was extended considerably to the right and the Beguines were given their own side chapel on the left.
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A typical element in the beguinage of Leuven are the numerous dormers, often elaborated with crow-stepped gables and round arched windows. Many houses have strikingly few and small windows on the ground floor. The beguines were keen on their privacy. Houses with large windows on the ground floor used to be hidden by an additional wall, as is still the case in other beguinages.
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At the same time she displayed the gift of prophecy. Gertrude died in Delft on the feast day of the Epiphany and was buried in the Church of St. Hippolytus in Delft, as that beguinage did not have its own church or cemetery. Her name has never been inscribed in the Roman Martyrology, though she is commemorated in various others, and her cultus is a purely local one.
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In 1682 van Reesbroeck moved his residence to Hoogstraten, a small town in the immediate vicinity of Antwerp. In Hoogstraten he painted four paintings representing the four church fathers for the Saint John Evangelist Church of the local beguinage. These works form the only known works in the oeuvre of van Reesbroeck which are not portraits. In 1702 van Reesbroeck made his will and two years later he died in Hoogstraten.
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In addition, the UNESCO World Heritage Site Groot Begijnhof, a historic beguinage in the south of city, is owned by the university and functions as one of its many residence halls. Public transport within the city is primarily served by the De Lijn bus system. Leuven is a main hub in Belgium's and nearby country's train network. Leuven station is located in the northeast edge of the city.
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In a portfolio called "Bruges" (1919) he reproduced several of Brangwyn's watercolours as large woodblock prints. Especially interesting within the Bruges portfolio is The Bridge at Predikheren, which is published in two different sizes. The artists applied this practice to six other subjects during their period of collaboration: The Beguinage, Bruges, of c. 1919; Ruins of a Roman Bridge over the Loire River, also of 1919; The Devil's Bridge, c.
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Gertrude was born in Voorburcht in the County of Holland, to peasant parents, and entered domestic service at Delft. Her surname of van Ooten, or "of the East", came from her custom of singing a hymn which began: Het daghet in den Oosten, i.e., "Daylight breaks in the East", which she is thought to have composed herself. After living a pious life for many years, Gertrude obtained admission into the beguinage in Delft.
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Of the original buildings of the Begijnhof very little remains: there are a few converted buildings or fragments reused from demolished ones. The chapel, after use as a stable, was converted to a dwelling house in about 1840; substantial parts of the structure are present in the house Wijde Begijnestraat 112. Also, the terrace of houses in the same street numbered 15-21 is in origin a house of the beguinage converted in about 1840.
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Situation sketch of the Beguinage ca.1544, historical engraving from 1729, unknown artist Original chapel door (now entrance to the English Reformed Church, Amsterdam) Around 1150, a group of women came together to live in a religious community, primarily to look after the sick. These were the first 'Beguines’ although the name was not yet used. The women were not nuns and nor did they live in the seclusion of a convent.
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Already before 1240 a community of pious women settled at the domain 'de Wingarde' (old Dutch for vineyard), in the South of the city. This name probably refers to low-lying meadows. The beguinage was founded around 1244 by Margaret of Constantinople, after she requested permission to Walter van Marvis, bishop of Tournai, to move over the tomb chapel on the Burg of Bruges to the Wijngaard. In 1245 it was recognised as an independent parish.
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Guido de Bres was born in Mons, today in southwestern Belgium. His father was formerly known as Jean Du Beguinage (alternatively: Jan le Béguinage) was an itinerant blauschilder [lit. blue painter] which is indicative of the tin-glazed process, a precursor to Delftware, introduced into the Netherlands by Guido de Savino in 1512 at Antwerp. Jean changed his name to that of De Bres when he settled in Mons and with his wife bore five children: Jehan, Jherome, Christoffel, Guido and daughter Mailette.
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Lucas Faydherbe began working as an architect late in his career and without formal training. He had by then gained practical experience on various construction sites where he had worked as a sculptor. This was the case in the Church of the Beguinage in Mechelen, for which he is often erroneously attributed the role of architect. He did continue the work on the interior of that church after architect Jacob Franquart had to abandon the project for health reasons in 1645.
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Christ Carrying the Cross, detail of relief in Basilica of Our Lady of Hanswijk Faydherbe created a number of reliefs. He made two reliefs on the Adoration of the Shepherds and the Carrying of the Cross for the dome of the Basilica of Our Lady of Hanswijk in Mechelen. They visualize in a narrative manner an important religious event by integrating them into the concrete world of the believer. Another relief is placed on the facade of the Church of the Beguinage in Mechelen.
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The communities of beguines also served as refuges for women left widowed or unmarried by the participation of large numbers of men in the Crusades. The members frequently lived in individual apartments in a large, separately enclosed section of town called the beguinage. They renounced their goods and lived a semi-conventual life, but took no vows and followed none of the approved monastic rules. They dressed in distinctive costumes and spent their days in prayer, education, care of the sick, and work such as weaving.
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Michael of St. Augustine, noticing Maria's spiritual work and mystical graces, suggested that she retire to a more solitary place. In October 1657 she moved to the beguinage in Mechelen near the Carmelite church where she began her solitary life of study and writing. In 1659, she took the vow of poverty and renewed her vows of obedience and chastity. She read many spiritual works such as the writings of John of the Cross, Teresa of Avila, John of Ruusbroec, Eckhart von Hochheim and John Tauler.
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In 2009, 29 new bells and a baton-type keyboard for manual playing were added to the instrument. The north entrance of the church shows two Latin inscriptions indicating the foundation years of beguinage (1234 - anno domini MCCXXXIIII curia incepit) and church (1305). The east end of the church has a strikingly tall 14th century quire window, whose upper part illuminates the attic above the groin vault constructed in the 17th century. The interior is 27 meter wide (the widest church in town) containing a nave and two aisles of ten bays.
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Modern photo of the former beguinage in Windesheim The Congregation of Windesheim is a branch of the Augustinians. It takes its name from its most important monastery, which was located at Windesheim, about four miles south of Zwolle on the IJssel, in the Netherlands. This congregation of canons regular, of which this was the chief house, was an offshoot of the Brethren of the Common Life and played a considerable part in the reform movement within the Dutch and German Catholic Church in the century before the Protestant Reformation.
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In addition, several more beguines lived to the south- east of the beguinage in an area called Het Heilige Leven ("The Holy Life"). There is no information on the precise number of beguines or on the details of their rule of life, but it seems likely that they were numerous. From about 1400 the Begijnhof was assured of the protection of begijnmeesters ("beguine masters") provided by the city, although the measure was as much about control as protection. In the 15th century various bishops and archbishops of Utrecht ordered the city to protect the beguines.
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As early as 1397 the Beguines had a small chapel dedicated to the Blessed Virgin Mary. On 17 October 1419, after the enlargement of the Beguinage, Matthias, titular Bishop of Biduane (a small town on the Adriatic), in his capacity as vicar-general of Frederic III, Bishop of Utrecht, solemnly consecrated a new chapel. This chapel, with its own burial ground, was dedicated to the Blessed Virgin Mary, Saint John the Evangelist and the apostle Matthew. The church was badly damaged during the two great fires of 23 April 1421 and 25 May 1452.
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Besides these churches, the city housed St. Paul's Abbey, the 15th-century beguinage of St. Nicholas, and a 14th-century chapter house of the Teutonic Knights. Besides these buildings which belonged to the bishopric, an additional four parish churches were constructed in the city: the Jacobikerk (dedicated to Saint James), founded in the 11th century, with the current Gothic church dating back to the 14th century; the Buurkerk (Neighbourhood-church) of the 11th-century parish in the centre of the city; Nicolaichurch (dedicated to Saint Nicholas), from the 12th century and the 13th-century Geertekerk (dedicated to Saint Gertrude of Nivelles).
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The practice had two benefits: It kept the key handy at all times, while signaling that the wearer was wealthy and important enough to have money and jewellery worth securing. Drunk man's lock at the bottom (black lock) and a regular modern lock at the top A special type of lock, dating back to the 17th-18th century, although potentially older as similar locks date back to the 14th century, can e.g. be found in the Beguinage of the Belgian city Lier.R. De Bruyn, ‘Oude sloten op deurtjes in het Liers begijnhof’, in: 't land van Ryen jaargang 17, aflevering 3-4, 1967, p.
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Narrow street in the Groot Begijnhof of Leuven Timber framing in the Groot Begijnhof of Leuven Detail of a facade in the Groot Begijnhof of Leuven The beguinage of Leuven has the appearance of a small town on its own, with houses planned along a network of narrow streets and small squares. This is in contrast to the beguinages of Bruges and Amsterdam, where all houses face a central courtyard. The only large greenyard, on the left river bank, resulted from the demolition of some houses in the 19th century. Five houses date back from the 16th century, three of which still show timber framing.
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Ebner was born in the Imperial City of Nuremberg, the child of the patrician Seyfried Ebner and his wife, Elizabeth Kuhdorf. In 1289, at the age of twelve, she entered the Monastery of St. John the Baptist in Engelthal, which was a community of nuns of the Dominican Second Order outside the city, in the Burgraviate of Nuremberg. Founded as a beguinage some fifty years earlier, over the next hundred years this monastery was to become a much-renowned center of spirituality and learning. According to some, it might very well have been the foremost center of mystical life during the early fourteenth century in Germany, if not all of Europe.
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They recorded several Bach cantatas, including in 1995 Christ lag in Todes Banden, BWV 4. In 1996 a live performance of Bach's St John Passion was recorded at the 13th-century Begijnhofkerk of the beguinage of Sint-Truiden, the , with Paul Dombrecht conducting the ensemble Il Fondamento, Ian Honeyman as the Evangelist and Werner Van Mechelen as the vox Christi (voice of Christ). She collaborated frequently with the Capella Brugensis and the Collegium Instrumentale Brugense in Bruges, conducted by . In 1999 she sang Flos carmeli, Op. 106, a church cantata for soprano, women's choir and small orchestra, by the Bruges composer Joseph Ryelandt, with Ignace Michiels at the organ.
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When women eventually entered the wage market, they did so with unequal wages because their role in society had been devalued on the family level to the private sphere. Historically there have been various alternatives to the familial roles for women: celibacy (monasticism), beguinage (female urban secular communes), hermitesses (isolated single women as sages/healers) and vagabonds. However, during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries these roles disappeared because they were often seen as threats to a male-dominated society (as in the case of hermitesses accused of witchcraft and murdered). The Renaissance and Enlightenment furthered male domination through discoveries about the nature of man and men's organizations, creating individualism and less concentration of the family.
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At that period the Catholic Church was enjoying a surge in popularity and the Protestants were determined not to "give them back their church grounds". The various sections of the old church outside the part left for the modern chapel, were stripped of useful materials, to prevent them ever being used again for Catholic worship, and the ground was sold for the construction of shops, so that the Catholics could never have it back. The miracle church's function had already long been taken over by the Roman Catholic schuilkerk at the Amsterdam Beguinage. Despite these measures, the site still has many parts of the old church intact, and the cultural history of the entire site is important for the city of Amsterdam.
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In many cases, the term "Beguine" referred to a woman who wore humble garb and stood apart as living a religious life above and beyond the practice of ordinary laypeople.Labels and Libels: Naming Beguines in Northern Medieval Europe (Brepols,2014) In cities such as Cambrai, Valenciennes, and Liege, local officials established formal communities for these women that became known as beguinages. Beguinages (Begijnhofs in Dutch-speaking areas) tended to be located near or within town centers and were often close to the rivers that provided water for their work in the cloth industry. While some women joined communities of like-minded lay religious women, adopting the label "Beguine" by virtue of entering a beguinage, many women lived alone or with one or two other like-minded women.
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The Beghards were often men to whom fortune had not been kind—men who had outlived their friends, or whose family ties had been broken by some untoward event and who, by reason of failing health or advancing years, or perhaps on account of some accident, were unable to stand alone. If "the medieval towns of the Netherlands found in the Beguinage a solution of their feminine question", the growth of the Beghard communities provided a place for the worn-out working man. The men had banded together in the first place to build up the inner man. While working out their own salvation, they remained mindful of their neighbors and, thanks to their connection with the craft-guilds, they influenced the religious life.
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Colette was born in Corbie, a town in the Picardy region of France in January 1381 to an elderly couple."St. Colette of Corbie" Our Lady of Mercy Monastery, Belleville, Illinois She lost her parents in 1399 and, after a brief stint in a beguinage, in 1402 she received the religious habit of the Third Order of St. Francis and became a hermit, living in a hut near the parish church, under the spiritual direction of the abbot of the local Benedictine abbey. After four years of following this ascetic way of life, in 1406, Colette came to believe that she was being called to reform the Poor Clares, the Second Order of the Franciscan movement, and return that Order to its original Franciscan ideals of absolute poverty and austerity.
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Iranzo had a well known career on stage, which particularly excelled in his interpretations of classics from the Golden Age. Some of the works featuring him were Adolfo Marsillach and Molière's Tartuffe (1969), Felix Lope de Vega's The Star of Seville (1958), Max Frisch's Andorra (1971), Adolfo Marsillach's Flower of Holiness (1973), Arnold Wesker and Irene Gutiérrez Caba's Chicken Soup with Oats (1978), Martín Recuerda's The Arrecogías the Beguinage of St. Mary of Egypt (1977), José María Rodríguez Méndez's Weddings that were famous in the Rag and Fandanga (1978), Miguel de Cervantes's The Baths of Algiers (1979) and The Roll Lavapies (1979), Woody Allen's Aspirin for Two (1980), Santiago Moncada's Ears of the Wolf (1980), Martin Recuerda's The Deceiting (1981), Miguel Mihura's Peach in Syrup (1982), Ibsen's Mallard (1982), Euripides's Fedra (1984), Shakespeare's Julius Caesar (1988), Alejandro Casona's The Third Word (1992).
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Important museums in Ghent are the Museum voor Schone Kunsten (Museum of Fine Arts), with paintings by Hieronymus Bosch, Peter Paul Rubens, and many Flemish masters; the SMAK or Stedelijk Museum voor Actuele Kunst (City Museum for Contemporary Art), with works of the 20th century, including Joseph Beuys and Andy Warhol; and the Design Museum Gent with masterpieces of Victor Horta and Le Corbusier. The Huis van Alijn (House of the Alijn family) was originally a beguinage and is now a museum for folk art where theatre and puppet shows for children are presented. The Museum voor Industriële Archeologie en Textiel or MIAT displays the industrial strength of Ghent with recreations of workshops and stores from the 1800s and original spinning and weaving machines that remain from the time when the building was a weaving mill. The Ghent City Museum (Stadsmuseum, abbreviated STAM), is committed to recording and explaining the city's past and its inhabitants, and to preserving the present for future generations.
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Beguinage at Sint-Truiden with its chapel, left The understanding of women's motivations for joining the beguinages has changed dramatically in recent decades. The development of these communities is clearly linked to a preponderance of women in urban centers in the Middle Ages, but while earlier scholars like the Belgian historian Henri Pirenne believed that this "surplus" of women was caused by men dying in war, that theory has been debunked. Since the groundbreaking work of John Hajnal, who demonstrated that, for much of Europe, marriage occurred later in life and at a lower frequency than had previously been believed, historians have established that single women moved to the newly developed cities because those cities offered them work opportunities. has shown how the smaller beguinages as well as the court beguinages answered such women's social and economic needs, in addition to offering them a religious life coupled with personal independence, which was a difficult thing to have for a woman.
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