Beguines were not nuns. They lived chastely and devoutly in a closed community, but they took no permanent vows, kept their own property, worked for their living and could leave and marry. Across the Low Countries in the 13th century that was an unusual amount of independence for a woman to hold legally, and the beguinages are the physical evidence that it existed. Visit Bruges calls them “emancipated lay-women who nevertheless led a pious and celibate life”, which is about right.
This one was founded in 1245 — some sources say 1244 — by Margaret of Constantinople, countess of Flanders, and it became a Princely Beguinage in 1299 when it passed under the direct authority of Philip the Fair of France. It is one of the Flemish Béguinages inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage list in 1998, and unlike almost every other beguinage in Europe it never stopped being a religious community: since 1927 it has been occupied by Benedictine sisters, together with a handful of single laywomen, and the Monasterium De Wijngaard along the west side is theirs.
Now the honest part, because Bruges makes this easy to get wrong. The buildings are not medieval. The thirty-odd whitewashed houses round the courtyard date from the late 16th, 17th and 18th centuries; nothing medieval survives above ground. What is medieval is the layout — the wall, the single gated bridge, the enclosed green, the church on one side — and the fact that a community of women has lived inside it continuously for nearly 800 years. That is a better thing to look at than fake half-timbering, but it is a different thing, and the postcards do not say so.
One house is fitted out as the Begijnhuisje, a small museum of a beguine’s living quarters, with its own modest charge; the beguinage church stands at Begijnhof 5. Otherwise there is nothing to buy, nothing to queue for and nothing to climb.
Silence is asked for at the gate and it is not decoration: Visit Bruges states that silence is one of the intangible values behind the UNESCO listing, and people live here. Talk quietly, do not photograph doorways and windows, and stay out of the private courtyards.
