This collection of essays addresses two distinct needs on the subject of beguines and their reception during the late Middle Ages: the first being an attempt to collate the many incarnations and meanings of the word “beguine” over a period stretching more than three centuries and in various parts of Northern Europe; and the second being a need to gather sources and research on this topic conducted in German, Dutch, French, and English. Two very daunting tasks, to be sure, but both well worth the effort for a better understanding of the late medieval women's religious movement.

Walter Simons, who wrote one of the most important books about the Northern European beguine movement in his study, Cities of Ladies (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania, 2001), has the first and most comprehensive essay. His overview of the term “beguine,” from its earliest uses until 1250, sets the tone of the book by demonstrating the complexity of the term. It has become all too easy to understand the use of the term “beguine” as a pejorative because of the Clementine decrees from the Council of Vienne (Cum de quibusdam and Ad nostrum—the first of which begins with a passage defining “beguines” as women who, “since they promise obedience to nobody nor renounce possessions, nor profess any approved rule, are not religious at all” [92]), which seemingly dubbed these women as uncontrollable and heretical. The negativity toward the term is compounded by the fact that Marguerite Porete (whose story is told in Sean Field's essay, along with the stories of Douceline de Digne and other individuals who embraced the term) was called a “beguine” during her trials and condemnation just before the Clementine declarations in 1310. This universal condemnation was later, perhaps confusingly, amended by John XXII's Ratio recta (the text of all three pieces is provided in both Latin and English translation as part of Elizabeth Makowski's essay), allowing that there are some good religious women among these “beguines” who do not deserve punishment, but does not really explain how to tell which is which. Jennifer Kolpacoff Deane supports Simons's contention that restricting our understanding of the term to simple binary terms—either heretic or orthodox—only serves to obscure the relationship both sacred and secular communities shared with these women, and causes historians to muddle the nuances behind this term employed at different times and places, and for different purposes, throughout medieval Europe.

Even the form of the name employed by the church against the various women's movements that operated without its direction describes the particular objection that inspired the local groups. Thanks to a Jacques de Vitry sermon from the second quarter of the thirteenth century citing various names for what he deems mulieres religiosae (cited by Simons, Deane, and Vera von der Osten-Sacken in this collection), one begins to see how, though these women represent different movements in many different places, they were lumped together with groups deemed heretical. How quickly and widely these movements spread can clearly be seen in the variety of synonyms created for “beguine.” Various contemporary etymologies for the word—whether it comes from an association with the Albigensians or finds its roots in the Latin benignus or somewhere in between, depending on the tenor of its usage—give a glimpse at the reception the women received locally. By focusing on the definitions of the label, this collection shows the diversity of meaning and relationships the women had with their church and secular authority.

In examining the local application of the label “beguine” in contemporary sources, many of the particulars surrounding religious life for women in the later Middle Ages are made clearer. Deane examines mid-thirteenth-century Würzburg; Tanya Stabler Miller thirteenth-century Paris; and Letha Böhringer thirteenth- and fourteenth-century Cologne. By employing specific and innovative lenses, the authors force scholars to look beyond the heretical/orthodox binary to see how the various women's institutions succeeded or failed in their particular milieu. For example, Böhringer discusses how the models for the religious way of life traveled eastward from northern France with clerics, educated in Paris, to Cologne. By tracing the expansion of the movement in Cologne, using secular records for landholding and tax-paying kept in the Cologne coffer books, Böhringer's essay grants insight into the working relationship between these women and the local government. Though there isn't a general bibliography, the footnotes provide a wealth of European scholarship that English-speaking scholars will find very useful in dealing with some of the more understudied topics.

By connecting the beguine movement of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries to the later Devotio Moderna movement in the fifteenth century, the final essay by Koen Goudriaan offers a continuum for the various women's movements in Europe beyond the Middle Ages, allowing us to see the effect of the lay religious movements into the early modern era. Scholars should be able to see how important it is to not read the various religious women's movements as one tidal wave that can be judged and dismissed with a simple “orthodox” or “heterodox” label, and recognize a nuanced relationship between Christianity and the women who tried to find a place outside of direct church control. All of the essays contribute to the overarching theme that by studying the specific instances of beguines and their controversial relationships with the church hierarchy and the communities they served, scholars might be able to learn a great deal more about medieval Europe in general.

The editors leave us with a wealth of ideas for further study in their epilogue that can greatly benefit graduate students and scholars, not only with ideas pertaining to “beguines,” but also with a push toward an “ongoing cooperation across national, linguistic, and disciplinary boundaries” (224), an idea that is essential to the continued health of medieval studies.