Belgium’s Beguinages: Tranquil oases in a world of noise and distraction

The clatter of suitcases rolling over cobblestones, motorboats chugging along a canal and visitors chattering in a smattering of languages provide a soundtrack to Bruges that makes it clear you are in one of Belgium’s most touristic cities.

And yet, about two dozen women residents and visitors have found a hidden sanctuary from its bustle in a spot over a small bridge and under an ornate arch with an engraved Latin phrase "sauvegarde,” or "safe place” in English.

Nestled in a sea of yellow daffodils lies an oasis of calm and tranquility founded in 1245: the Princely Beguinage Ten Wijngaerde of Bruges.

For 22 years, Trees Dewever has called this beguinage her home. She said it provides "an overwhelming feeling of calm and I think we need that in this world.”

Brigitte Beernaert (left) and Jo Verplaetsen speak during an interview in a house inside the Beguinage Ten Wijngaerde in Bruges, Belgium.

Her neighbor, 23-year beguinage resident Jo Verplaetsen, said the spirit of the medieval shelter is today soothing and social.

"Each day you are thankful to be here," she said.

However serene now, the beguinages emerged after the 12th century as an antidote to devastation.

Conflicts in the Middle Ages ravaged the male population, creating a glut of widows and single women who needed some kind of stability. They often chose the looser rules of the beguinages instead of stricter convents, said Michel Vanholder, a volunteer at the Grand Beguinage Church of Mechelen.

"They didn’t want to go become nuns but nevertheless they wanted to live together without men because there were not enough men to marry," he said.

Women who joined were called beguines, and while forbidden to marry while residing in the beguinages, they were allowed free egress, could own their own property and did not take religious vows of celibacy and poverty like nuns in adjacent convents.

"Women who didn’t want to become real nuns or religious could have an in-between form, becoming a beguine," said Brigitte Beernaert, who moved into the Bruges beguinage more than 20 years ago.

Resident Brigitte Beernaert reads a newspaper inside a house of the Beguinage Ten Wijngaerde in Bruges, Belgium.

Women in the beguinage often worked caring for the sick and poor, but also earned money with needlework and weaving lace. Some plowed profits back into the community.

But the beguinages were at different times embraced and persecuted by the Vatican. One prominent beguine, the French Christian mystic Marguerite Porete, was condemned as a heretic and burned at the stake in 1310.

Novelists Ken Follett, Charlotte Brönte and Umberto Eco have written about the beguines and their male counterparts the beghards.

Architecturally, the beguinages were designed for like-minded women to live in comfort, quiet and safety, with small gardens tucked into either easily accessible alleys or around a main square with houses facing a common courtyard. The heart of the community was almost always a chapel or church.

Today, UNESCO recognizes as world heritage sites 13 beguinages in Flanders, the Dutch-speaking northern half of Belgium.

German tourist Biata Weissbaeker who was visiting Bruges with her husband Achim said that such spaces were and remain crucial.

"Women need a place like this: a safe place that gives them the possibility to go inside themselves.”

A woman demonstrates lacemaking in the Beguinage of Lier, Belgium, during an open day. Photos: Associated Press

While the last beguine in Belgium, Marcella Pattijn, died in 2013 at the age of 92, the central tenet of the beguinage community has persevered over the past 800 years.

"Once you are in here, you are safe - that was of course literal in the Middle Ages, once you lived here, the law couldn’t take you away,” she said. "Today it’s more like a safe place for women alone.”

The beguinage of Bruges to this day still allows only women, although the grounds are now owned and maintained by the city itself, with residents renting from the city.

The beguinages of Belgium organize public activities hoping to foster community within through gardening, and outside through open houses.

A few of the Bruges residents recently planted raspberry bushes against the wall near the canal and they keep bee hives for honey. "The world is terrible for the moment, and this gives us the impression that it’s still safe here," said Beernaert. "This gives Bruges already a little bit of a small paradise, if you want. And living inside that paradise feels unbelievable.”

Associated Press