The Beguines of Medieval Paris: Gender, Patronage and Spiritual Authority by Tanya Stabler Miller (review)

This lovely book engages with the histories of work, women, and spirituality, as well as with urban and intellectual history. It tells a story of women from diverse class backgrounds living together in spiritual community while maintaining their livelihoods in all facets of the silk trade. Focusing on the community of Beguines, Miller shows how these women interacted with their patrons, their clients, and their spiritual advisors as part of the fabric of the medieval city. Despite rhetoric attacking the beguines as sexually promiscuous hypocrites, Paris’s beguines enjoyed the patronage of Louis IX and thus an association with that king’s renowned piety. Although ultimately not even royal support could save Paris’ beguines from decline during the course of the fifteenth century, Miller’s book highlights the important role of these women in the religious and economic culture of the medieval city.

Chapter 1 focuses on Louis IX’s decision to build and support the Paris béguinage by providing both money and spiritual guidance. Miller argues that the beguines’ commitment to a spiritual life embedded in, rather than removed from, the secular world was in line with St. Louis’ consistent support for lay religious expression. Chapter 2 examines the béguinage itself where women of diverse backgrounds lived in community. Particularly interesting is Miller’s exploration of the ways in which property and its control functioned. Elite beguines maintained control over their property, which was beneficial to the community members but also a source of tension.

Chapter 3 brings to light the tight connection between beguines and Paris’ silk industry. Miller’s careful tracing of beguines through the tax rolls enables her to argue against the assumption that women’s work in the Middle Ages occurred within the household of the biological family. Instead, she identifies households of women united in their religious and business commitments. Chapter 4 explores the relationship between beguines and the secular clerics associated with the Sorbonne. Following Robert of Sorbonne, who saw beguines as models of humility and caritas, university clerics preached to and about the beguines. This discussion is important for shifting away from the assumption that beguines were only the object of clerical scorn.

Chapter five uses sermons produced about and by beguines to explore more deeply the collaboration between the beguines and university clerics. Particularly interesting is Miller’s analysis of six excerpts from sermons preached by the mistress of the Paris béguinage, who resisted the emphasis on beguines’ outward behaviors that she noticed in the sermons of the male clerics.

Chapters 6 and 7 detail the slow dismantling of Paris’ beguine community, especially in the wake of Marguerite Porete’s inquisitorial trial and execution for heresy. Despite their integration into the city, their support from prominent university clerics, and their royal patronage, the beguines were subject to persistent clerical attacks for false piety, which eventually took their toll. Miller suggests that some of this animosity stemmed from clerical anxieties about beguine’s poaching on their intellectual territory. She traces the effect of the condemnation of beguines at the Council of Vienne (1311/12). Even though France’s king insisted that the Paris béguinage was not subject to Vienne’s decrees, by 1485 the beguinage in Paris had become a convent for the Poor Clares, also known as the Order of Saint Clare. Despite this unhappy ending, Miller consistently makes the case for the centrality of Paris’ beguines to the spiritual, intellectual, and economic life of thirteenth and fourteenth century Paris.

One strength of this book is Miller’s adept handling of difficult sources. From the inconsistent and taciturn tax rolls, she identifies more than 100 individual beguines, linking most of them with the silk industry. She is further able to map the locations of the independent beguine houses to show their activity throughout the city. Her analysis of Robert of Sorbonne’s sermons, notoriously abstruse sources, reveals a new understanding of the beguines...