Klöster im Hochmittelalter

230 I Thomas Coomans

gests that the early fourteenth-century Franciscans of Maastricht identified
themselves less with the "poverello" of Assisi than with the theology taught in
the studium generale of Cologne (Fig. 13). This shift of visual expression and
architectural identity in the public space of Maastricht was also stimulated by
the competition between the Franciscans and the Dominicans. As soon as the
latter had completed the first phase of their Gothic church (1294), the former
made plans to rebuild their church (before 1305d±6).
Apostolic Poverty and Feminine Humility: the Beguinage Church
in Leuven64
Each town of the Low Countries had one or several Beguinages.65 Beguines
(mulieres religiosae) were semi-religious women living a communal life, a hith-
erto unknown type of community. The origin of the movement goes back to the
first years of the thirteenth century in the diocese of Liege, which included a
part of the duchy of Brabant, and climaxed in the years 1240-1280. The Church
hierarchy controlled this women's movement by asking Dominican and Francis-
can friars to be the women's spiritual guides. In Brabant, Cistercian monks of
Villers were also involved as spiritual guides. In the early years of the movement,
Beguines lived from work (help with household work, cloth production, hospi-
tals, etc.), rents, and begging, and were organised in small communities living in
houses spread over different urban parishes.
In 1311, the Council of Vienne, suspecting the mulieres religiosae of heresy,
submitted them to the Inquisition. That was to be fatal for the Beguine move-
ment, except in the Low Countries where bishops, princes, and patricians pro-
tected them. Their material organisation was another reason of their survival.
The cities, indeed, built enclosed quarters for the Beguines' communities out-
side the town walls, so they were partially physically excluded from the cities
and secluded into a peri-urban walled quarter with its specific parish church and

64 This part is based on ongoing building archaeological research and on: Thomas Coomans,
Belfries, Cloth Halls, Hospitals and Mendicant Churches: A New Urban Architecture in the
Low Countries around 1300, in: The Year 1300 and the Creation of a New European Archi-
tecture, ed. by Alexandra GAjEWSKi/Zoe Opacic (Architectura Medii Aevi 1), Turnhout
2007, pp. 185-202, especially pp. 194-195.

65 Walter Simons, Cities of Ladies: Beguine Communities in the Medieval Low Countries,
1200-1565 (The Middle Ages Series), Philadelphia 2001; Wim F. Denslagen, Begijnhoven in
Noord-Nederlandse steden, in: Bulletin KNOB 77 (1978), pp. 205-224; Pascal Majerus, Ces
femmes qu'on dit beguines Guides des beguinages de Belgique, Bibliographie et sources
d'archives, 2 vol., Brussels (State Archives of Belgium) 1997.