RELIGIOUS ENCYCLOPEDIA
Beghards
Latin countries; but their numbers were much smaller than those of the Beguines. As early as the thirteenth century a number of their houses, too, connected themselves with the tertiaries of the two great mendicant orders. Like the Beguines, many of them were partizans of the views of the " spiritual " Franciscans and Fraticelli. They practised begging ostentatiously, frequently had no fiiced abode, and wandered about in small groups, begging and winning adherents for their cause. They did not abandon this mode of life even after papal prohibitions were directed against them, but strengthened themselves by the adhesion of sympathizers who were expelled from the convents, and remained in close relations with the Beguines, by whom they were regarded as martyrs to the Franciscan ideal of poverty and channels of mystical revelations. In the Netherlands the fifteenthcentury Beghards appear for the most part as regular Franciscan tertiaries, organized from 1443 as a separate Congregatio Zepperensis beghardorum tertice regulce S. Francisci, with the convent of Zepperen, near Hasselt, as their mother house. Internal dissensions later split them into two branches. In the seventeenth century they were united with the Lombard congregation of regular tertiaries, and did not survive the Revolution. The internal •organization of their houses corresponded generally to that of the Beguines. The earliest Dutch Beghards were mostly weavers, who continued to follow their trade; later they frequently copied and sold manuscripts. The German Beghards followed a variety of occupations; but at the end of the Middle Ages begging was their main source of Tevenue. A special inner group was that of the ■" Voluntary Poor " (also called Poor Brothers, Cellites, Alexians; in the Netherlands Lollards, Matemans, Cellebroeders ; see Alexians), who required the entire abandonment of property by their members and bound them by permanent vows. Their strict organization, their enthusiasm for poverty, their zealous devotion to charitable duties, all point to a tradition reaching back to the beginning of the Beghard system. They are further contrasted with the ordinary Beghards by the fact that they held aloof for the most part from the Franciscan affiliations which have been seen to be so common. In the fifteenth century they associated themselves with the Augustinians. Public opinion, by the end of the Middle Ages, was even more unfavorable to the Beghards than to the Beguines; popular satirists and preachers alike speak of them as hypocritical beggars with a tendency to deceit and immorality; and the Reformation swept away the last remnants of them, in Germany at least.
The persecution of Beghards and Beguines as a heretical sect began in the second half of the thirteenth century, probably as a consequence of their relation to the "spiritual" Franciscans (see Francis, Saint, op Assisi, and the Franciscan Order). By 1300 the name beguinus was commonly used in the Latin countries as the accepted designation for the heretical " spiritual " party and Fraticelli, which naturally prejudiced the general opinion of the orthodox convents of Beghards and Beguines. Still more damaging was the fact that the German bishops,
about the same time, assumed that the pantheistic heresy of the Brethren of the Free Spirit (q.v.) found its chief support in their houses. Though,
as a matter of fact, this was probably
6. Persecu- true only of a small section, the name
tion as of Beghards was commonly adopted
Heretics, in Germany for the adherents of that
heresy. During the fourteenth century the belief spread that in some convents of Beghards and Beguines there existed an inner circle of " the perfect " who were alien from the doctrines of the Church and the laws of morality, to which the younger members were admitted only after years of probation. Whether or not these accusations were true, which it is now next to impossible to determine, the bitter hostility shown against the Beghards and Beguines probably finds its simplest explanation in the conflicts which arose at the end of the thirteenth century between the episcopate and the secular clergy, on the one hand, and the mendicant orders, especially the Franciscans, on the other, since these latter gained their lay following largely through the numerous houses of Beghards and Beguines. Several German provincial councils (Cologne 1306, Mainz 1310, Treves 1310) passed strong measures against them, and the Council of Vienne (1311) struck at them even harder, undertaking to suppress them entirely on the charge of spreading heretical doctrines under a cloak of piety. The execution of these decrees of suppression, which took place under John XXII, caused great confusion in the Church of Germany, the mendicants and sometimes the magistrates attempting to defend the Beguines. Since their total suppression appeared impracticable, John XXII compromised by making a distinction and granting toleration to the orthodox Beguines. Persecution did not, however, cease; and with the powerful support of the Emperor Charles IV, it was taken up once more by Urban V and Gregory XI. Without regard to the varying senses of the names, all Beghards and Beguines alike were condemned as heretics, excommunicated, and outlawed. Their property was to serve for pious purposes, for the support of the inquisitors, or for repairing city walls and roads. Between 1366 and 1378 remorseless persecution raged against them throughout Germany; but even then they found advocates, especially among the secular magistrates, and Gregory XI was finally prevailed upon to repeat the distinction between orthodox and heretical Beguines and Beghards, and to tolerate the former. About 1400 another storm broke out, aroused by the attacks which the clergy of Basel, especially the Dominican Johannes Mulberg made upon the Beguines of that city. By 1410 the Beguines in the dioceses of Constance, Basel, and Strasburg were driven from their convents. At the time of the Council of Constance (1414-18), which showed itself well disposed toward them, they won a victory of some importance when they secured the condemnation as heretical of a treatise directed both against them and against the Brethren of the Common Life by the Dominican Matthaeus Grabo. Attacks were still made upon them, none the less, and that a general feeling inspired such attacks is
Bernards Bel