§ 83. THE BEGUINES AND BEGHARDS. 489
The Luciferans 1 were so called on account of the promi nence they gave Lucifer as the prince of the lost angels and the maker of the material world and the body, and not be cause they worshipped Lucifer. It is doubtful whether they were a distinct sect. The name was applied without pre cision to Cathari and others who held that Lucifer was unjustly cast out of heaven. Heretics of this name were burnt in Passau and Saltzburg, 1312-1315 and 1338, and as late as 1395 in other parts of Austria.
As for the Warini, Speronistre, and Josephini, who are also mentioned in the Frederican code, we know nothing more than the names.2
§ 83. The Beguines and Beghards.
While the Cathari and Waldenses were engaging the attention of the Church authorities in Southern Europe, communities, called Beguines and Beghards, were being formed along the lower Rhine and in the territories adjacent to it. They were lay associations intended at first to foster a warmer type of piety than they found in the Church.3 Their aims were closely allied to the aims of the Tertiaries of St. Francis, and at a later period they were merged with them. Long before the close of the thirteenth century, some of these communities developed immoral practices and heretical tenets, which called forth the condemnation of pope and synods.
The Beguines, who were chiefly women, seem to have derived their origin and their name from Lambert le Begue, a priest
1 The notices are scattered. See under diabolus and Lucifer in Dollinger and Alphande'ry, pp. 174 sqq. M. Paris, writing of 1226 and Frederick's march through Northern Italy, speaks of Milan being a refuge and receptacle of all sorts of heretics, Patarines, Luciferi, Publicani, Albigenses, and usurers.
2 The Josephini are mentioned by the synod of Verona, 1184, and the bull of Gregory IX., June 25, 1231, and the Speronistse by Salve Burce, Dollin ger, II. 62, and in the bulls of Gregory IX., Aug. 20, 1229, June 25, 1231. See Fredericq, I. 75 sq.
8 Hase, Karl Miiller, Kirchengesch. I. 570, Alphande'ry, p. 2 sqq., and others treat the subject under the head of lay-activity.
490 THE MIDDLE AGES. A.D. 1040-1294.
of Liege, who died about 1177. l In a document of that year he is said to have preached to women and girls the value of chastity by word and example.2 It was a time when priestly concubinage in Holland was general. Like Peter Valdez, Lambert gave up his goods, sought to make known the Scrip tures to the people, and founded in Liege the hospital of St. Christopher and a house for women which in derision was called the beguinage. The women renounced their goods and lived a semi-conventual life, but took no vows and followed none of the approved monastic Rules. Houses were estab lished in Flanders, France, and especially in Germany, as for example at Valenciennes, 1212, Douai, 1219, Antwerp, 1230, Ghent, 1233, Frankfurt, 1212. In 1264 St. Louis built a beguinage in Paris which he remembered in his will. The beguinage of Ghent was a small town in itself, with walls, infirmary, church, cemetery, and conventual dwellings. According to Matthew Paris, writing of the year 1250, their number in Germany, especially in the vicinity of Cologne, was countless.3 Their houses were often named after their founders, as the Schelenhaus in Cologne, after Herman Schele, the Burgenhaus in Strassburg (1292), after a widow by the name of Burga. Other secular names were given, such as the Golden Frog, zum goldenen Frosch, the Wolf, zum Wolf, the Eagle, zum Adler.*
The communities supported themselves by spinning, weav ing, caring for the sick, and other occupations. Some of the houses forbade begging. Some of them, as those in Cologne, were afterwards turned into hospitals. As a rule they practised mendicancy and went about in the streets crying
1 The Beguines are called a sect, secta Bequinarum, in Guy's Practica, p. 264, etc. The term Beguines, or Bequini, is also derived from bec/gan, to beg, as by Jundt, or from leyiie, to stammer. See Haupt, in Herzog, II. 517. Lea, p. 851, seems inclined to advocate the old opinion which derived the name from St. Begga, d. 694, the mother of Pepin of Heristal and the reputed founder of a convent.
2 Premium castitatis verbo et exemplo predieavit, Fredericq, II. 33.
3 MuUitudo inmimerabilis, Luard's ed., V. 104. In another place, IV. 278, he gives the number as 2,000. He also states that they were governed by no Church "Rule, nullius sancti regula coarctatce. 4 Uhlhorn, p. 380.