The present important beguinal “revival” in France includes a sector with a strong Christian inspiration and another secular one with a more limited, but anyway affirmed, reference to the beguinal history.
Béguinage de Perpignan
In the Pyrenees-Orientales, in Perpignan, in a renovated cloister, about fifteen people live in 14 apartments with the aim of “fostering brotherhood among Christians“. These people have signed a Charta committing themselves “to availability for service … and to the facility of forgiveness given and received” and also to daily prayer in the morning, a weekly community meal, participation to the Mass in the nearby parish on Sunday and a monthly meeting of spirituality. The rest of the time is left to individual autonomy. They were helped by a real estate and also building company, Vivre en béguinage (Living in a Beguinage), which made this renovation as the first of a number of future beguinages for spiritually oriented elderly persons. This association, in 2019, undertakes in the city of Tours (after Lourdes, Quimper and Mulhouse) its fifth project, “even if the concept has undergone several changes since the first, born in Perpignan five years ago“, Line Kortobi tells us in her article in Libération, 19 July 2019 .
Beguinage « Le Chêne de Mambré »
Opened in 2017, in Angers, it has 18 lodgings for retired lay people, priests and nuns. Built on the land of the congregation of the Missionary Sisters of the Gospel. The common areas are the oratory, the conviviality room and the garden. The buildings are small houses around the common garden
https://www.caue-observatoire.fr/ouvrage/beguinage-chene-de-mambre/
Other Christian realities are not only for dynamic seniors. For exemple, in Burgundy, in Saint-Martin-du-Lac in the Béguinage de la Croix-aux-Bœufs religious and laity live together and in Lille the project Synodie (marching together) has born from the initiative of two families.
Beguinage “La Croix-aux-boeufs”
La Croix aux boeufs, located in St Martin du Lac (Burgundy-Franche Comté) is a beguinage based on a strong Christian spiritual inspiration with initially an apostolic and monastic community. In the beginning, it consisted of about fifteen people, lay and consecrated. Oblates and couples are also part of it, without living under the same roof. Because the initial community has lived in Belgium for 5 years, they well knew the beguines and wanted to be inspired by them. With the high vocation of proclaiming the God’s word and thanks to their school of evangelization, “the Community offers retreats, seminars, teachings and training, in various forms according to the places, the needs, the groups and the persons requesting; during the day, in the evening or at the weekend, they organize occasional gatherings (summer campus) or undertake itinerant missions “. In short, a very apostolic vocation.
The first motivation of those who would like to be part of the Beguinage must be the spiritual pursuit, but the three vows – poverty, chastity, obedience – are not required to be admitted. Many other information can be found on their website , in the French text Le béguinage St Martin du Lac and also in the article written by the special envoy Gaétan Supertino, Ces femmes qui adoptent un mode de vie inspiré des béguinages du Moyen Age, the last of the 6 that Le Monde dedicated to the Beguinal movement, from 26 to 31 July 2022. Others texts :
La lettre 4 saisons hiver 2021
Programme de l’École de la sagesse 2021-2022
Programme des autres activités 2021-2022
On April 2024, the workshop “Beguines and beguinages. Yesterday and today“, run by Rita Fenendael . Séminaire Printemps 2024
An interesting contribution : vrai- faux béguinage
The video Les béguines, libres et folles d’amour : https://youtu.be/gtUH6W0eZbc
The 30-minute podcast Béguinages, Solidarités, Pèlerinages, from the programme broadcast on December 17th 2023 on channel 1 of the Swiss radio and television. The journalist Matthieu Wirz met the beguines of the beguinage of St Martin du Lac, in southern Burgundy, and created an inspiring reportage starting with their daily life.
https://www.rts.ch/audio-podcast/2023/audio/beguinage-solidarite-pelerinage-27460004.html?id=27460001
Address and contacts : 53 Chemin de la Croix aux Bœufs – 71110 Saint Martin du Lac
beguinage.71110@gmail.com Tél. 09 78 23 31 86 – 06 66 73 08 96
The journalist Line Kortobi informs us that a beguinage project is also being carried out in Paris, at Vaugirard Street, in the 15th arrondissement, where a “piece of convent” is “unearthed” by the Dominican sisters. The desire shared by the members of the Beguinage Association of Paris (Association du béguinage de Paris) is to found a “lay community for lay people, in accordance with the Christian faith of each in order to age well in the capital“.
Nouvelles béguines en Sainte Baume
They found each other thanks to particular convergences and decided to act in Sainte Baume (department of Var – France). This region is imbued with the presence of Mary Magdalene, because it is precisely there in the Provençal Tradition that she would have gone to when the disciples of Christ began their mission of preaching. It is therefore in the footsteps of Marie Madeleine that Rosa-Maria, Muriel-Raphaëlle and Viviane-Marie wanted to promote the memory of the Béguines in Sainte Baume, where their historical presence is attested (see Présence des béguines en Sainte Baume). Thus, in 2019, the association Mémoires d’Elles (Memory of Them) was born, which has its headquarters “Au Bois de la Paix“, in Plan d’Aups. Two of the three beguines live with their families in Sainte Baume. The memory of the beguines is nourished by the quest for information on their spirit, their way of life and their mystique… During their Meeting with these women, the new beguines in Sainte Baume, felt the mission of bringing them back to Light “Let’s not hide the lamp under a bushel” (Mc 4, 21-25). How ? By making them known and recognized, through various initiatives such as conferences, meditative walks, energy and Anointing treatments… Their vibrant presence accompanies them, guides them, gives them Joy. All this is well explained in the website: https://association-memoires-delles.webnode.fr/ . Our best encouragements to Muriel-Raphaëlle, Rosa-Maria and Viviane-Marie who revive the memory of the beguines of Provence and of all the other as well.
Vivre en béguinage
With the Beguinage of Perpignan, the concept of a beguinage for seniors with a spiritual connotation was born in France.
This first example rose many other demands. Then Vivre en Béguinage has considerably expanded and in 2019 it launched its fifth project in the city of Tours (after Perpignan, Lourdes, Quimper and Mulhouse). Today it boasts seven, but announces about thirty by 2025, distributed throughout the national territory. Target 2025 : 1000 residents. It also launched beguinages without a spiritual connotation. In 2020, Vivre en Béguinage was recognized as an association of general interest which now collaborates with various institutional partners (land management, local banks and various financial funds). And with Vivr’Alliance, of which it is a member, it won the Sustainable Investment Action SIA Awards. https://www.vivre-en-beguinage.fr
Béguinage solidaire
Béguinage Solidaire was born in 2018, driven by the problem of aging and the isolation of the elderly, but also by the new market that opens up on this field. To date it has made 6 beguinages, 4 others are in progress and 18 in sight. As for Vivre en Béguinage, here too there is a joint venture among a land management, an association, a management body and bank funds also open to individual “shareholders”, who want to provide for their families and/or for themselves in the future. https://beguinage-solidaire.fr
Today, the labellum “beguinage” is offered on the basis of certain criteria for the realization of the housing project for people of the third age
and low incomes (see the example of the Nord-Pas de Calais Department) and enjoys particular fortune in France. This development raises an interesting reflection on the possible “humanization” that this formula could induce in the face of one of the great problems of our today, namely the isolation and loneliness of the elderly.
There are, moreover, especially in the North, various other realities of shared habitats, mainly intended for the elderly, such as Le Foyer du Béguinage in Gravelines and even companies like Béguinage & Compagnie which take charge of the entire realization of a beguinage for this type of public. It is a modality that is growing and seems to be the missing link between the time of retirement and the nursing homes, more expensive and necessary only when personal autonomy is lacking. These initiatives, while not presenting spiritual connotations, nevertheless sought to retain the name and the typical architectural model of the beguinages and a functioning based on solidarity, sometimes refered to gender . The first of these initiatives was set up in Lambres-lez-Douai in 1997 by the social housing company Floralys, which in 2012 had no less than 17 “béguinages” and nearly thirty in 2020.
by Thomas Brégardis (Photographe ), 2017
An interesting experiment with feminist connotation is La maison des babayagas (The house of witches) in Montreuil, which since 2012 welcomes women over 60.
Here another article about this experience, Des béguines aux Babayagas, quelles alternatives de logement pour les femmes ? (From beguines to Babayagas, which housing alternatives for women?), written by Manon Legrand – photos by Romain Champalaune.
Sources
Les beguines, dossier, Lumière & Vie, janvier-mars, 2013
La retraite, un espace pour Dieu – La Croix, 21 et 22 mai 2011
Les béguinages reviennent à la mode – La Croix on line – 8/6/12
Le béguinage, nouvelle alternative à la maison de retraite -Le Parisien – 25 Avril 2012
Une société HLM réinvente le béguinage pour retraités, Le Monde, 19-20 août 2012Les béguinages tracent une novuelle voie – La Vie – 6 Novembre 2014
https://www.vivaparigi.com/la-maison-des-babayagas-la-casa-di-riposo-dedicata-alla-causa-femminista) and other information in Internet
Line KORTOBI for Libération newspaper:
https://www.liberation.fr/amphtml/france/2019/07/19/beguinage-quand-le-troisieme-age-s-inspire-du-moyen-age_1734278
https://www.liberation.fr/apps/2019/07/beguinage/The present beguinal “revival” in France includes a sector with a strong Christian inspiration and another secular one with a more limited reference to the beguinal history.
In the Pyrenees-Orientales, in Perpignan, in a renovated cloister, about fifteen people live in 14 apartments with the aim of “fostering brotherhood among Christians“. These people have signed a Charta committing themselves “to availability for service … and to the facility of forgiveness given and received” and also to daily prayer in the morning, a weekly community meal, participation to the Mass in the nearby parish on Sunday and a monthly meeting of spirituality. The rest of the time is left to individual autonomy. They were helped by a real estate and also building company, Vivre en béguinage (Living in a Beguinage), which made this renovation as the first of a number of future beguinages for spiritually oriented elderly persons. This association, in 2019, undertakes in the city of Tours (after Lourdes, Quimper and Mulhouse) its fifth project, “even if the concept has undergone several changes since the first, born in Perpignan five years ago“, Line Kortobi tells us in her article in Libération, 19 July 2019 .
Other Christian realities are not only for dynamic seniors. For exemple, in Burgundy, in Saint-Martin-du-Lac in the Béguinage de la Croix-aux-Bœufs religious and laity live together and in Lille the project Synodie (marching together) has born from the initiative of two families.
La Croix aux boeufs, located in St Martin du Lac (Burgundy-Franche Comté)
is a beguinage based on a strong Christian spiritual inspiration with initially an apostolic and monastic community. It is made of about fifteen people, lay and consecrated. Oblates and couples are also part of it, without living under the same roof. Because the initial community has lived in Belgium for 5 years, they well knew the beguines and wanted to be inspired by them. With the high vocation of proclaiming the God’s word and thanks to their school of evangelization, “the Community offers retreats, seminars, teachings and training, in various forms according to the places, the needs, the groups and the persons requesting; during the day, in the evening or at the weekend, they organize occasional gatherings (summer campus) or undertake itinerant missions “. In short, a very apostolic vocation.
The first motivation of those who would like to be part of the Beguinage must be the spiritual pursuit, but the three vows – poverty, chastity, obedience – are not required to be admitted. Many other information can be found on their website and in the French text Le béguinage St Martin du Lac.
The journalist Line Kortobi informs us that a beguinage project is also being carried out in Paris, at Vaugirard Street, in the 15th arrondissement, where a “piece of convent” is “unearthed” by the Dominican sisters. The desire shared by the members of the Beguinage Association of Paris (Association du béguinage de Paris) is to found a “lay community for lay people, in accordance with the Christian faith of each in order to age well in the capital“.
There are, moreover, especially in the North, various other realities of shared habitats, mainly intended for the elderly, such as Le Foyer du Béguinage in Gravelines and even companies like Béguinage & Compagnie which take charge of the entire realization of a beguinage for this type of public. It is a modality that is growing and seems to be the missing link between the time of retirement and the nursing homes, more expensive and necessary only when personal autonomy is lacking. These initiatives, while not presenting spiritual connotations, nevertheless sought to retain the name and the typical architectural model of the beguinages and a functioning based on solidarity, sometimes refered to gender . The first of these initiatives was set up in Lambres-lez-Douai in 1997 by the social housing company Floralys, which in 2012 had no less than 17 “béguinages” and nearly thirty in 2020.
by Thomas Brégardis (Photographe ), 2017
An interesting experiment with feminist connotation is La maison des babayagas (The house of witches) in Montreuil, which since 2012 welcomes women over 60.
Here another article about this experience, Des béguines aux Babayagas, quelles alternatives de logement pour les femmes ? (From beguines to Babayagas, which housing alternatives for women?), written by Manon Legrand – photos by Romain Champalaune.
Sources
Les beguines, dossier, Lumière & Vie, janvier-mars, 2013
La retraite, un espace pour Dieu – La Croix, 21 et 22 mai 2011
Les béguinages reviennent à la mode – La Croix on line – 8/6/12
Le béguinage, nouvelle alternative à la maison de retraite -Le Parisien – 25 Avril 2012
Une société HLM réinvente le béguinage pour retraités, Le Monde, 19-20 août 2012Les béguinages tracent une novuelle voie – La Vie – 6 Novembre 2014
https://www.vivaparigi.com/la-maison-des-babayagas-la-casa-di-riposo-dedicata-alla-causa-femminista) and other information in Internet
Line KORTOBI for Libération newspaper:
https://www.liberation.fr/amphtml/france/2019/07/19/beguinage-quand-le-troisieme-age-s-inspire-du-moyen-age_1734278
https://www.liberation.fr/apps/2019/07/beguinage/