History
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. 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.
Read more about this topic: Begijnhof Chapel (Amsterdam)
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“History does nothing; it does not possess immense riches, it does not fight battles. It is men, real, living, who do all this.... It is not “history” which uses men as a means of achieving—as if it were an individual person—its own ends. History is nothing but the activity of men in pursuit of their ends.”
—Karl Marx (1818–1883)
“Don’t you realize that this is a new empire? Why, folks, there’s never been anything like this since creation. Creation, huh, that took six days, this was done in one. History made in an hour. Why it’s a miracle out of the Old Testament!”
—Howard Estabrook (1884–1978)
“False history gets made all day, any day,
the truth of the new is never on the news
False history gets written every day
...
the lesbian archaeologist watches herself
sifting her own life out from the shards she’s piecing,
asking the clay all questions but her own.”
—Adrienne Rich (b. 1929)