Begin the Beguine
While on the subject of Rutebeuf, what he had to say about the Beguine may be of interest:
En riens que Beguine die
n'entendeiz tuit se bien non:
tot est de religion
quanque hon trueve en sa vie.
sa parole est prophetie,
s'ele rit, c'est compaignie,
s'el pleure, devocion,
s'ele dort, ele est ravie,
s'ele songe, c'est vision,
s'ele ment, n'en creeiz mie.
Se Beguine se marie,
s'est sa conversacions:
ces veulz, sa prophecions
n'est pas a toute sa vie.
Sest en pleure et cest en prie,
et cest an panrra baron.
Or est Marthe, or est Marie,
or se garde, or se marie.
Mais n'en dites se bien non:
li roix no sofferoit mie.
Li Diz des Beguines Rutebeuf, 13th cent.
Whatever a Bequine says
hear only what is good.
All is religious
that she sees in her life.
Her speech is prophetic;
if she smiles, it's fellowship;
if she cries, it's devotion;
if she sleeps, she's ecstatic;
if she dreams, it's a vision;
if she lies, don't believe her.
If a beguinne marries,
that is her vocation:
the vows she professes
are not for life.
Last year she wept,
now she prays,
next year she'll be a wife.
Now Martha, now Mary;
now chaste, now married.
But never say anything but good of her,
For the King won't tolerate otherwise.
The Beguine, a lay order of holy woman, frequently came under attack by clerics because they interpreted holy scripture in the vernacular - which clerics believed would lead into errors and heresy - and also because they preached to the public, and a woman preaching, no matter how learned, was against canonical law (recalling that the preacher of the Steele sermon describes the papesse as 'that which is denied by faith).
Guibert claimed to have seen one of their bible's in French:
"whose exemplar is available to everyone at Parisian writing-shops so that heretical and erroneous, dubious, or stupid interpretations may be copied."
'Guibert predicted that such books would lead more and more people astray and recommended they be destroyed so that the "speech of things divine be no longer stained by vulgar utterance."
