The Silence We Keep: A Nun's View of the Catholic Priest Scandal (15 page)

In the world of work there was also little soulful solace or satisfaction to be found by women. Married or not, most women worked because they had to (men were fighting or killed in wars and crusades), and there were few jobs that women didn’t do. Yet even though medieval women excelled in the arts, crafts, and business; ran most taverns and inns; administered most charitable services; even led religious and political movements, never did they receive the authority commensurate with their skills, knowledge, experience, and expertise. And never did they earn
the right to govern their own guilds and professions. The exercise of authority by women (over men) was cognitively dissonant, altogether unthinkable, to the medieval mind, in the same way that women priests still cannot be imagined by some minds today. The exercise of authority, especially religious authority, is “naturally” unfeminine. By nature, women are weak and emotional, incapable of rational thought and divine insight, and therefore incapable of governing themselves, much less anyone else, especially men….

Only widows became entitled to self-governing privileges. In the Middle Ages they were legion, creating a powerful source of medieval sisterhood just as they did in the early church. All other women remained, in every aspect of life, submissive and subordinate to male authority. Even the most incompetent of the male species was held in greater esteem than the most brilliant medieval woman. And in the world of work, a woman’s contribution was valued at half as much as her male counterpart’s—paid half as much because it was literally assumed that women ate half as much. That was the basis for job discrimination in the Middle Ages. For as laughable as that may seem, it is not that different today in many parts of the world. That’s how much sexist thinking refuses to change. Even the world of work was not a very liberating or fulfilling life choice for medieval women. Most were treated slightly better than slaves in the workplace.

Given the grim choices of marriage and work, and the church’s condemnation of women as weak, lustful, and evil, it’s no wonder so many looked for safety and salvation in religious life and sisterhood. And no wonder so many nuns went crazy mortifying, abusing, and neglecting their sinful bodies. Even though the monks and Church Fathers grew more hostile over having to support the growth of nunneries throughout Europe, medieval women continued to be drawn to the contemplative life
(keeping the sacred fires burning), continued to be liberated and inspired by the gospel of love, and continued to do so in increasingly large numbers. With nothing but discouragement from the Church Fathers, the medieval women’s movement into religious life grew to form numerous cloistered communities and uncloistered sisterhoods as well. According to McNamara, “Nothing could stem the tide of vocations or family strategies that filled established houses to the bursting point and caused new, informal foundations to burgeon everywhere.”
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Cloistered life in the nunnery was not the only choice of sisterhood for women called to religious life in the Middle Ages. Also of growing concern and dismay to the Church Fathers were the newly organized (and unorganized) groups of women committed to living a Christian life in celibate sisterhood, only without the constraints of monastic enclosure. Just as cloistered life within the nunnery experienced rapid growth in the Middle Ages, so too did uncloistered sisterhood emerge as a powerful alternative for medieval women drawn to religious sisterhood but not in the nunnery. The most popular and influential of these “secular” sisterhoods was that of the Beguines, a twelfth-century women’s movement born in Belgium, ignored by historians because they didn’t live as “real nuns,” but of utmost importance here in looking at how medieval women sought religious sisterhood, both in and out of the convent.

Given the chaos and corruption that filled the nunneries and surrounded the Church Fathers in the Middle Ages, it’s no wonder women drawn to apostolic lives of prayer and service would seek an alternative like that of the Beguines. Single, married, or widowed, the Beguines lived as nuns outside the convent, and according to the rule of life each community decided upon as its
own. While living as a Beguine, all vow informally to remain celibate as well as free to marry or enter the nunnery. Celibacy, simplicity, and charitable works governed their lives, as did a single-hearted devotion to prayer, study, and teaching. And just as we find among their cloistered sisters, so too do we find within the Beguine sisterhood the emergence of numerous visionaries and mystics. In and out of the convent, the sisterhood in the Middle Ages endowed us with the richest mystical writings to date, all of which eventually became spiritual ammo for the Church Fathers and their Inquisitions.

Everything about the Beguines irritated the Church Fathers from the very start, especially their independence from all authority, male or female. Neither husband, nor priest, nor parent could control these women, and furthermore, these women had no desire to control one another. Even though there were thousands of Beguines throughout Europe, never did they organize themselves into a “religious order” with superiors, motherhouses, rules, and constitutions. The Beguines hold nothing in common other than a celibate commitment to prayer and apostolic service, and no woman is superior or submissive; all are treated equal. All are one. In obedience to the spirit of God in one another, the voice of each sister is revered as holy, and in communion with one another decisions are made. The only “order” and “rule” within the Beguine sisterhood is that which each community accepts freely and lovingly as its own.

Within the Beguine sisterhood the sacred fire of virgin independence was revered as its eternal flame. All sisters were self-supporting, tax paying, even property owning and sharing. Some Beguines chose to live at home and care for family, while others moved in together and many lived alone. Just as in the Jesus Movement, many medieval women, especially widows, shared financial resources with sisters in need, even willing
homes and property to other Beguines. Because poverty was epidemic among women in the Middle Ages (as it is now), most communities chose a cooperative lifestyle and pooled resources, and all tended to congregate and settle in the heart of cities, often near hospitals, churches, or other religious communities. The groups of Beguines that came to settle all over Europe by the fifteenth century became known as Beguinages, meaning a sisterhood or community of Beguines.

Free from monastic enclosure and church control, all Beguinages were self-governing, living according to their own agreed-upon rule. At first, Beguines dressed like most medieval women, only more plainly and in darker colors. Later they developed a simple blue or gray habit, nothing extravagant or ornamental and nothing difficult to care for or assemble. The habit of Beguines came to symbolize their lifestyle as religious women, plain and simple. Contemplative life as a Beguine also included spiritual exercises common to their cloistered sisters and very similar to those we observed in 1964: daily mass, praying the Divine Office, special community prayers and meditations, examinations of conscience, spiritual reading, and retreats. Some communities chose more contemplative lifestyles than others depending upon the solitary needs of the sisters, but all shared a profound call to lives of prayer, and did so, in the words of Rilke’s poem “The Beguinage,” “in order that they may better understand why there should be such love in them.”

I imagine the lifestyle adopted by each Beguinage would attract women who shared a vision of contemplative and apostolic life. All Beguines treasured as a divine rule the freedom to choose their own communities, living conditions, and ministries. And all shared the ministry of hospitality to those in need. The informal vow of poverty in the Beguinage fulfilled itself through sisterly hospitality, the open offer of shelter to travelers and the
homeless, free care of the sick, and a sisterly table community to all in need. Would that we all vowed informally that kind of poverty and offered that kind of sisterly hospitality.

In the mind of many medieval women, there was no lifestyle more divinely free than that of the Beguine sisterhood. The life of every Beguine is freely chosen, with none of the forced submissiveness or deprivation upon which medieval marriage and the nunnery were built. Theirs was a sisterhood called to live smack dab in the middle of the world, not hidden forever in the cloister, a vision of sisterhood unlike anything the world had seen since the Jesus Movement in the early church. Poverty, celibacy, and obedience found expression within the Beguines in an entirely different way, solemnly lived instead of solemnly vowed. Of these extremely popular and powerful street sisters, one supportive sixteenth-century bishop in Antwerp wrote:

… it was a common capacity of many pious women in Belgium to rejoice in excellence rather than promise it. They preferred to remain chaste perpetually than to vow perpetual chastity. Likewise they were more eager to obey than to vow obedience, to cultivate poverty by frugal use of their fortunes than to abandon everything at once: they might be the kinder to the poor if something were left. They preferred to submit daily, as it were, to obedience within the enclosure than to be confined once and for all. In constant spontaneity they found compensation for perpetual claustration.
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No wonder medieval women flocked to the Beguines. A thirteenth-century English monk reported, “They have so multiplied within a short time that 2000 have been reported in Cologne and the neighboring cities.”
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Given the oppressive lifestyle of
marriage, work, and even the nunnery, women needed no encouragement in seeing how divinely liberating the Beguine sisterhood was—soulfully reminiscent of the Jesus Movement, even the vestal virgins they may have remembered. Neither wives, nor lovers, nor nuns, the Beguine sisterhood appeared as heaven on earth to thousands of medieval women, the most divinely appealing lifestyle of all. Despite their lack of a common order, and despite the fact that they never were and never wanted to be “real nuns” as governed by the Church Fathers, the Beguines emerged in the Middle Ages, as they do in my eyes now, as one of sisterhood’s most powerful and prophetic movements: divinely powerful for thousands of medieval women, and divinely prophetic today, a sign of sisterhood to come.

While the Beguines were recognized widely and esteemed highly throughout Europe as semimystical sisterhoods, their free spirits and unregulated lives never received anything but suspicion and disapproval from ecclesiastical authorities. No big surprise there. The independence of the Beguines from church control and supervision were a huge source of irritation for the Church Fathers. An independent, self-governing community of religious women was unheard of in the Middle Ages, and the Church Fathers were quick in their response to ensure that it stayed that way. The Beguines were nothing but trouble in the medieval church from the start, refusing to be supervised by anyone, especially the Church Fathers. The fact that they lasted as long and as successfully as they did is nothing short of one big medieval miracle.

Essential to the Beguine charism is preserving as sacred fire the celibate independence and uncloistered manner of their apostolic life, both of which were anathema in the medieval eyes
of God and the Catholic Church. All the saintly success and widespread popularity earned the Beguines ecclesiastical harassment and hatred. And given what we know of priesthood in the Middle Ages, it’s not surprising to learn that the Church Fathers looked at the Beguine sisterhood and saw a thinly disguised women’s liberation movement designed to escape all male authority—in marriage and in the church—making it the most subversively evil women’s movement of all. The Church Fathers looked at the Beguines and saw nothing but a kind of holy anarchy they could not tolerate.

Akin to the Beguines in their religious independence were the numerous hermits, recluses, and “anchorites” who populated the cities and countryside throughout Europe. These were women in the Middle Ages called to live the contemplative life in solitude, not in the nunnery and not in community. Of all medieval women called to contemplative life, there were and always will be those whose need for solitude demands that they live alone and devote their lives solely to contemplative works. In wanting to live a solitary religious life, many medieval women chose to live in hermitages and have contact with no one, or only those who come seeking spiritual direction. And while some of these solitary sisters were affiliated with and supported by monastic communities, all maintained independence from church control. All lived solitary lives according to the rule that best served their contemplative needs.