Just behind the Minnewater lies the Beguinage 'De Wijngaard' (= the Vineyard). It is one of those typical areas in Bruges where
Just behind the Minnewater lies the Beguinage 'De Wijngaard' (= the Vineyard). It is one of those typical areas in Bruges where one can find more peace and quiet than in the sometimes busy and overcrowded streets of the town center. The Beguinage is a group of houses around a little garden covered with large poplar trees. It was here that during the last seven centuries lived the beguines of Bruges. In 1937 the beguinage became a monastery for the Benedictine sisters who still live here now. In the rapidly changing world of the 13th century, some people became more attracted to a purer and more mystical form of religion as a reaction to the growing material and formal aspirations of the regular clergy. The example to be followed had been shown by the apostles : poverty, simplicity and preaching. People from both sexes decided to follow this new movement, which resulted in the creation of numerous new religious orders and movements. The official religious institutions distrusted these new orders, so that they were very often persecuted or forbidden. In the Low Countries, however, the female followers of the mystical movement were tolerated in the form of the 'Beguine' movement. They were allowed to live in separate parts of the cities, in the so-called Beguinages. In this way, the religious authorities could control and supervise them. The beguines lived like regular nuns, but did not make the same binding vows that nuns normally made. Beguines usually made the vows of obedience and chastity, but not the vow of poverty. Moreover, they could at all times break their vows and leave the beguine community.
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